Cleaning pool sand filter

Okay, everybody always wants to understand how to use sand properely. Myself having must add more sand and an electronic digital digital camera convenient, I decided to take a few pictures to greatly help everyone else completely.

To begin with, we purchased two 50-lb. bags at $5.92 each from your home Depot. The sand's stock number is 09 at my Residence Depot (in Virginia). I have included it just in case it's the exact same throughout Residence Depot's range.

We're outside today. CAUTION: it is cold here. You must certainly not clean your sand then dump it into the tank if this has fish with it currently! The abrupt drop in temperature can eliminate your seafood! My sand is neat and in the home for an overnight warm-up to background room-temperature. Here is the "bucket brigade" setup therefore the two bags of sand.

1. Fill your buckets about 50 % way-up with water BEFORE you add the sand, this can assist you in suspending a lot more of the fines with your initial inclusion of sand. Today pour the same amount of sand into each bucket, NEVER fill over fifty percent the bucket with sand! After pouring inside sand, the buckets will appear like picture above.
2. Ok, now get your hose pipe (we utilized mine without a nozzle regarding the end) and tilt the bucket to one part, just enough to really have the sand about an inch from the side of the bucket, at once drown the sand within the container with water. You would like the bucket tilted allowing the suspended particles to move completely in the place of have the possibility of sinking back down into the bottom if you leave the container upright. At this point you have a bucket with dirty sand / water and it will seem like the picture below.

3. Keep flushing the sand with the hose (recall the bucket is leaned to at least one side, correct?) untill the water operates clear. By moving the hose near you can blend the sand and never have to use your hands. If you study and accompanied the above course to use no more than a 1 / 2 a bucket of sand (the less the simpler) it must take you not as much as 5 minutes per bucket (NOTE utilizing pool filter sand, other sands will take longer) to finish with just what seems like the picture regarding the right (above).
4. Listed here is a hand and hand comparison of very first container clean, next to the second bucket which includes the dirty sand and water from pouring the sand engrossed.

5. When it comes time to include the sand into tank, you should use a synthetic kitchen area strainer with really fine material mesh in the center. Simply scoop from sand through the container enabling the water to drain down within the container, after that slowly lowered the information to your container. Unload the scoop once it really is at the end. Your water risk turning a little cloudy after you've gotten all of the sand inside container, but it should clear within a few hours. This method causes at the least disturbance to the finer grains of sand, and certainly will be done using the fish nevertheless in container.

Please, please, please allow time for the sand to warm up before adding it to virtually any tank with live seafood on it. An alternative would be to fill the buckets with heated water as part of your house to boost the temp of the sand. Guarantee its between 75 to 85 degrees, do not get caught up either path!