cloudyness and cleaning sand!

[nini]

ok i perchased some marine sand a few days ago and the man at the LFS said to rinse it w/ tap water, is that safe to rinse my sand w/? i rinsed some of it a few times w/ the tap water but it still clouded my tank what do i do to make it crystal clear? will the sand eventualy settle? thanks a bunck
tif

 

[Colin]

Sand can be a real pain to get Chrystal clear and the only way is really to keep rinsing it. I will quite often put some in a bucket and run a hose through it outside for hours, or scoop out hand fulls in a net and run water through it that way.

If it is in the tank then you will need a good fine prefilter to remove the suspended particles and dirt. Probably better to take it out and keep on rinsing it. You need to rinse all of it for a long time but it is worth it.

 

[nini]

whats a prefilter? and the sand is starting to settle

 

[cthulhu77]

The prefilter strains out large bits of organic matter prior to the waterflow hitting the biological filter bed, so as to prevent decay and anaerobic collapse. (the dreaded tank crash)
If you have a good power filter, you might want to run it with some good grade filtering charcoal, or a product called "chemi-pure"...it will help remove those little bits of floating dust.
Keep an eye on those phosphates!

greg

 

[nini]

ok so that means i should buy the canister filter, and the prefilter?

 

[Illithid]

Most canister filters have a prefilter inline before the bio chamber.

A good question would be what do you have now? You want to add to fill what your current filtration lacks before redundancy.