Cleaning Argonite Sand

[mark7616]

Im trying to clean my argoite sand in RO water thing is the bloody stuff wont run clear i have rinsed it about 10 times in the buckets but water is very merky now do I just put this in the tank and run my external with a load of filter wool or do I need to persevere and keep rinsing till its clear any feedback would be great.

 

[bobf]

Im trying to clean my argoite sand in RO water thing is the bloody stuff wont run clear i have rinsed it about 10 times in the buckets but water is very merky now do I just put this in the tank and run my external with a load of filter wool or do I need to persevere and keep rinsing till its clear any feedback would be great.

Hi Mark - I had a similar problem with my tank when I first set it up. Since you have no livestock in your tank just now, I'd just rinse it through with tap water then chuck it in the tank.

However much you rinse it will still be cloudy when it goes into the tank - mine took a couple of days to clear, just bear with it. External filter with a bit of floss will certainly speed up the clearing. Even for the first couple of weeks mine had a tendancy to get cloudy - anything disturbing the sand would send a could up which seemed to take an age to clear. Arogonite seems to have a fair amount of powder grains which do take a while to settle, but it will.

From your other thread, I wouldn't bother running your skimmer yet - just the powerheads and external with the floss. Leave the skimmer off till you get your liverock and the cycl;e has begun. Later, assuming you get a good amount of live rock you will don't want any floss or sponges in the external (if decide to carry on using it), just rowaphoss and maybe some carbon. Some people stick live rock fragments in there too.

Good luck with it.

(you might want to cross reference your two threads by the way and just keep your set-up journal/questions to one thread)

 

[SkiFletch]

Agreed, rinsing it in tapwater is fine. And getting it TOTALLY clean wont happen. The "dirt" is really just fine calcium carbonate and won't hurt your system

 

[N1z]

I found i had to wash it out like 6 times before it wasent milky. I also used tap water but used a very fine table cloth and like did a few lbs a time and it was cleaned alot quicker.