how long does it take southdown to clear up

[xrenx]

i added roughtly 70 pounds or southdown to my new 37 gallon this weekend (sunday). that was enought to make it about 4 1/2" deep. my question is how long should it take for the water to clear up. i changed alot of the water and it has gotten better but it's defnitely not crystal yet. i don't have any filters/skimmers running yet, they should be arriving today. is it normal for it take this long to clear up. what happens when i put fish in there and they stir up the sand bed? is cloudy water always and issue with DSB's?

 

[jdeets]

It will clear up on its own, if you're patient. As the system matures, nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria will colonize the tiny suspended grains and cause them to fall out of the water column. This will also keep the water from clouding as livestock stirs the sand, because the tiny particles will not remain suspended once they're colonized with bacteria.

I recently set up a new 180 gallon tank with 250# of SD sand. I waited a week and it was still like milk, so I ended up using a DE filter to clear the water (took about 6 hours). I ordinarily would espouse the "patience" approach, but in this case I was on a tight time schedule to get my old tank moved over to the new tank.

HTH

 

[Doughboy]

I did a complete change over from a UGF to aDSB and live rock. I took everything out, including the water and added the rock and sand. When I put the water back in I slowly pumped it with the return against the glass to minimize the disturbance. This worked for me. My tank settled down in about four hours. I've read many posts from others who's tanks were cloudy for days. I wouldn't worry too much.

 

[Reefer2b]

I had the same worry/problem when I set my first tank up two weeks ago. I washed the sand first in small amounts (about 15 pounds at a time) and think that helped, but it was still milk when I added the sand. But about 6 hours after I'd put in about 110 lbs of LR (in a 75gal) and got the skimmer going it was crystal. Now I'm just dealing with the cycling process.

 

[Snook65]

Xrenx, I am starting a new 120 gallon tank. This past Saturday I added approximately 250 pounds of Southdown sand to my tank. I did not wash it off at all before I put it into the tank as I read different opinions and decided this was the way I wanted to go. As of Wednesday, my tank still looked like milk. I had been running my protein skimmer 24 hours a day and it was producing a clay like substance. I finally put in three drawbags of poly filter along with several shrimp (To hopefully get some bacteria growth going) that I got at my fish market and within 16 hours my water had cleared up drastically. On Wednesday afternoon, I had canceled my live rock shipment coming from Premium Aquatics until next week because I was afraid how bad my tank looked not knowing how much my tank had cleared since morning when I left for work. Good luck.

 

[xrenx]

mine is still pretty milky. i rinsed it pretty thoroughly before i added it too. i may try putting a couple of small pieces of LR from my existing tank in there and see if that clears it up. i am just afraid to drop a bunch of LR in there and have it die off. i set up a emperor 400 w/carbon and a prizm skimmer in there this morning, hopefully it will be better when i get home from work today. if it's better, i am going to put 50 pounds of LR in there this weekend. thanks for the responses.

 

[jdeets]

Adding LR from an established tank should help, as the bacteria on the LR should help to colonize the particles more quickly. I might add to my prior post, however, that I set up the 180 with 100# of fully cured LR from Paragon and my water still didn't clear until I used the DE filter. FWIW.