Tropical Fish Forums

[koolguyal]

I recently got a 46 gallon and had layered it with flourite in the bottom and gravel on top ( a thick enough layer of it). I was told by the local pet store to put the water little by little in the tank.....which I was trying to do but unfortunately I put in too much water which instead of hitting the plate hit the gravel directly and seemed to have caused some of the flourite in that area to come up and the water got very very dirty.

I have only filled up about 15/20 percent of the tank by now. It has now been about 8/9 hrs and it seems like it is clearing up a little (before I was not able to see anything in there at all, now I can some of my rocks).

The question I had is.....should I wait it out and let it sit and then start pouring again? or should I take all the water out and start from scratch? Also how long can it take to settle down? I havent ofcourse been running the filter yet since its not full!

Any help would be appreciated

[Jon_The_Newb]

You may as well just continue to fill it and wait for it to settle after. You might have another little dust cloud before you're done filling anyway, so better to get it all done then wait it out I think.

Jon

[rfosgategt]

[koolguyal]

Thanks both you guys for the quick response. I was just stressed out that I might have screwed up. I will fill up the tank and then let it settle down

[menagerie mom]

Flourite is very dusty straight out of the bag, so if you didn't rinse it thoroughly I would take it out of the tank and rinse it first. Even after careful washing there will still be dust that will settle or be filtered out after several hours. If you don't rinse it, you will just stir up the dust that will probably eventually settle every time you do any maintenance in your tank.

[Rex Grigg]

Once just for giggles I took a 5.5 gallon aquarium and added most of a bag of raw Flourite to it. Poured in the water. It took DAYS for the dust to settle. I then repeated the experiment with Onyx Sand. It never did settle. I was running a AquaClear Mini on the tank at the time.

I always rinse substrates. I found a very efficient method that is pretty quick. I have it detailed in my Guide.
_________________
Link to my Guide www.rexgrigg.com


Semper Fi

[Jon_The_Newb]

I hated rinsing my flourite. I did it the way Rex suggested, but I got so tired of it, I barely got the last 1/3 or so of it wet before tossing it in to my 20 gallon =D

If there's anything I hate about setting up a tank, and there is, it's washing the substrate.

Jon
Who loves Eco-Complete, for the look, and because it doesn't need rinsing.

[koolguyal]

Well there we go, I didn't wash it at all since the person at the store said its better not to wash it. I added a good layer of gravel on top of it though so everytime I do clean the tank I would be taking up the gravel instead of the flourite.

Plus I have read somewhere that flourite also breaks down the excessive food of fish, at least some of it into food for plants so does not need to be cleaned itself and I am planning to get a nice bed of dwarf hairgrass going so I just have to pick up the little dirt on top etc.

But I will be researching more on that before I do actually go that route and not clean the gravel anymore if I have a good bed.

[Dave51]

if you did not rinse it out at all before putting it in the tank be prepared for dust storms every time you disrupt the gravel. Even with lots of rinsing it still always seems to cloud up a bit when disturbed.