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luke2214 · Members Joined: 01 Jul 2011 Location: Arnold, Maryland

Today I added 30 pounds of argonite sand to my 27 gallon aquarium. Before hand, I had drained all the water and refilled it with water with the new sand. The color of the water quickly turned to a milikish gray color. Should I run my filter or just leave it off??
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Marcos Avila

The milkiness is due to very fine sand particles that can easily stay in suspension in water. This can be avoided to a certain degree by putting the sand in a bucket and rinsing it several times in tap water before adding it to the tank, but there will always be a little bit of cloudiness in the beginning.

If you have decent filtration this will normally clear up in a day or three...
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luke2214 · Members Joined: 01 Jul 2011 Location: Arnold, Maryland

The packaging said that it was prerinced so I didn't rinse it out- my bad, I have a decent Marineland power filter running and I'm leaving it on all night. Do I need to take the sand out and rinse it or will the tank clear by just using the filter? Thanks
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Marcos Avila

The factory pre-rinse may help, but as the package gets knocked around during transport the sand grains keep on rubbing against each other and new fine particles are produced.

There's not much you can do now. I wouldn't touch the sand anymore, the more you mess with it the more cloudiness you'll produce. Just let the filtration do its job and give the suspended sand some time to settle.

If it doesn't show visible improvement in a couple of days then you might think about some type of intervention, like doing a large water change.
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Success with a fish/tank is measured in YEARS, not months or weeks...

luke2214 · Members Joined: 01 Jul 2011 Location: Arnold, Maryland

OK will do, thanks
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nikelodeon79 · Regulars Joined: 08 Nov 2007 Location: Wisconsin, U.S.A.

I actually had a similar issue... didn't rinse the sand because it was supposedly prerinsed. I actually ended up taking all the water, decorations, and sand out of the tank and rinsing the sand. Luckily, I didn't have any fish in that tank yet, although it was a real pain.

I discovered fish nets make great sand scoopers... but they tend to get bent out of shape by the time you're done.
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