My Problem

[sdminson]

:yikes: So I thought it was the diamond goby causing havok and creating huge dust storms in my tank but it wasnt his fault. I never rinsed my sand out and was not aware that I needed to. So now what can I do?

A) leave it and wait for the small particles to get air born and sucked through into my sump? How long will this take will I have a cloudy tank for the next six months?

B) Remove all the rock a total of about 110 pounds and take out the sand sift it out and replace it? Will this cause my tank to cycle all over again? Im guessing this is going to kill off a lot of the live bacteria and other goodies I have going. Is this going to hurt my diamond goby? Will he have enough food since I just stripped his bead.

C) I havnt come up with a C but if you can Id be very gratefull. How do I fix this mess? Ive always rinsed my gravel out for freshwater but didnt even dawn on me to do it for my sand and the LFS forgot to mention to do that so here I am what do you think I should do?

 

[scubagirl12]

I did the same mistake the first time I added sand to my tank. I just have a 12g though and it did take almost a week to get perfectly clear.
Another time I added sand to a tank I rinsed it out a few times and still had cloudiness for a couple of days.
Never seemed to hurt anything though.

 

[ralph atl]

shut off some of your power heads for a little while a few times a day might help. Don't worry about it, otherwise.

 

[sdminson]

If I shut them off isnt that going to allow the silt to just settle back down?

 

[jade76]

If its live sand your talking about, I did the same thing...with three bags...god forgive me I didnt know what I was doing...anyway, turn off your powerheads, because if you dont sand will get in the shafts and wear grooves, but it should settle after about three days ...it sucks but...it will be fine...afterall when I did this , I had a tank full of fish, not corals but they all survived just fine. Oh and just a thought you might wanna do a couple water changes because to much sand at once an deliver a punch of toxins if not careful.

 

[xyzpdq0121]

Diamond gobies are BAD about this... it took about two weeks for all the dust to finish sifting out when I first added my huge 4" diamond goby. Just let it be. Every once in a while, take a powerhead and blow off the rocks. Yes this will stir things up again but after a while, everything will move to the sump. You can try a micron sock (that is what I use) and it will speed up the process.

 

[sdminson]

Thanks Ill just wait it out then and blow it off from time to time.

 

[blind1993]

if you shut the pumps off make sure you have a way for the tank to get O2.

 

[cameron]

Ride it out IMO. If you want you can throw a sock on the filter that is really fine, but eventually everything will settle on its own.