Sand, no filter, swam water look, ugh...

[ThePearlFish]

In my 20 long I have sand and I had to take my filter out cus I can't get it to work properly, but everytime I go to clean the tank when I pour clean h2o in, the whole tank looks like its a murky swamp cus of all the dirt that gets kicked up from the sand when the water goes in. And I don't have a vacuum like the ones you all describe (I am on a kinda short budget which sucks, I dunno where or how much it costs or which kinda vacuum thingies you all use :( ). I'm stuck. I tried to put a tablet of those water clear things even though I had a gut feeling it was worthless to even try.

Well, they always say listen to your gut instincts! heh heh.. My poor corycats constantly try to skim the surface of the sand frantically trying to keep the sand clean, but I dunno, poop can't be eaten.My snail does a pretty decent job keeping the rest of the tank fairly clean, but again my big issue is this water.

Any thoughts? I think I need help..

~TPF

PS- title was meant to say swamp water look not swam water look. i dunno how to correct it.

[Jupiter]

If you want to prevent dust and debris from being picked up when you add water, what you do is add a small plate inside your tank and pour the water onto the plate so it doesn't disrupt anything.

You don't even need a vacuum attachment, those are for gravel. Just get one of those plastic tubes. They can't be more than $5.00. Check Walmart or Petsmart, but Walmart will probably be cheaper.

[ThePearlFish]

I have been trying to dump the water slowly onto my pot decoration in the tank, maybe I am a bad water dumper :P

~TPF

[ThePearlFish]

so i cleaned the tank again today but still no luck getting the murkiness out. i decided that next time the tank is due for a cleaning, i am going to take out all decorations and fish, then take out the sand and rinse it well. hopefully no one gets stressed or dies swimming in their murkiness during the next couple of weeks or i don't go crazy seeing the water that cloudy all the time. (i already kinda stressed them out today cus i just tried to clean it yesterday.)

[Rohland]

Just be aware that sand is a good insulator and if you wash your sand with cold water, like from the hose for example. That when you place the sand in the tank it will drop the temperature, and could take a while for the temperature to come back up.

Also I had to do the same, take all my sand out and re-washed it. My new logic is if you think its good enough, another hour could only make it better :D

I washed it the first time maybe close to an hour.. Then had to take it our and washed it for two hours. My sand is fine, now.

[ThePearlFish]

I will keep in mind not to stick my fish in right away after cleaning the sand so I don't stress them out with the low temp. Thankfully, my heater is pretty strong and heats the H2O up fast, so they wont be out for too long. I think the most stressful part of the whole experience for them is going to be catching them and being in a different container while I clean the tank. They are all verrrrryy good at keeping away from me, esp. since its a big tank.


Do you have to redo this sand washing thing cus of cloudy water often? Or only when the dirt builds up bad again and makes it murky?

~TPF

[Rohland]

No, dirt never build up again. The water was cloudy. But now I can stir my sand and nothing happens.

[ThePearlFish]

hopefully it works! thanks.

~TPF