Reef nutrition

Rinsed Tropic Eden Flakes with hose water, what now?

kinetic

Supporting Member
I was rinsing 30lbs of Tropic Eden Mesoflakes today (2.5 hours of rinsing, and it still gets a bit cloudy when rinsing) with hose water. I was going to use RO at first, but I realized it was going to take more than a quick rinse. So I used hose water for at least 2.5 hours. Just spraying, mixing by hand, over and over and over again. Water got a bit clearer at hour 2, and then I tried to get it even clearer for another half hour, but my hands were about to fall off.

Long story short, there's still plenty of hose water in the sand.

I was going to add it to my tub that's cycling dry rock (3 weeks and going), hoping the sand will help with the cycle, but I think the water that's in the sand is probably still has plenty of chloramine from the tap.

I added some stability and this water conditioner thing and I'm planning on waiting 24 hours, then dumping the sand in the tub. Is that good enough or should I do something like rinse it with a ton of RO water?
 
Just 2 rinses in RO/DI will get out nearly all of the tap water impurities. I would do about 10 lbs in a 5 gallon bucket with 2 gallons RO/DI, mix the sand by hand for maybe 10 seconds, then dump out as much water as you can and repeat once. Then move on to the next batch of 10 lbs. You'll be done in about 10 minutes at a loss of 12 gallons of RO/DI. If you have a 95% dilution twice you will have much less than 1% of the tap water left over and should be good without additional treatment.
 
Just 2 rinses in RO/DI will get out nearly all of the tap water impurities. I would do about 10 lbs in a 5 gallon bucket with 2 gallons RO/DI, mix the sand by hand for maybe 10 seconds, then dump out as much water as you can and repeat once. Then move on to the next batch of 10 lbs. You'll be done in about 10 minutes at a loss of 12 gallons of RO/DI. If you have a 95% dilution twice you will have much less than 1% of the tap water left over and should be good without additional treatment.

Genius. I need more 5g buckets... I tossed all of my Seachem/IO salt buckets from back in the day, and only have one left haha.
 
Yeah they are super handy to have. Cheap at all hardware stores. But in this case one is enough?

Probably need 2 buckets at least. Since 30lbs is sitting in one 5g bucket already. Yeah they're pretty cheap. I just remember having at least 10 empty ones from empty salt buckets before (free since it comes with the salt), so never thought I'd need to buy any. I have a 18 gallon tub, however. I think I'll just use that.

Thanks for all the suggestions!
 
Intetesting...I used a mix of reef flakes and didn't need to rinse at all. I have extra salt buckets you can have. ;)
What, that's amazing. Your water isn't super cloudy? I am using the dry sand (not the live stuff), and like I mentioned, 2.5 hours of rinsing later and it's still cloudy.
 
Back
Top