sciencefiction
Member
- Joined
- 26 Feb 2013
- Messages
- 3,406
Hi all,
I recently took apart one tank that was running for 2 years planted in inert white sand.
I am placing a soil substrate beneath and re-using the sand.
However, after ripping all the plants out I noticed the sand of course is full of "dirty" brownish particles. They settle very fast as in within a minute the few times I disturbed them and they are small enough to fall between the grains of the sand which is about 0.9mm grain size.
My question is, before re-using the sand should I siphon out all these particles or are they some sort of beneficial stuff that I can re-add to the tank? I don't want to remove everything but then again there's no point adding detritus to a new setup that can cause trouble.
There were not any anaerobic issues in the sand at all when I turned it around, all looked very healthy to me, no smell, despite the "brown" detritus particles and the fact I didn't touch the substrate for such a long time. They brown particles look a lot like filter mulm.
I recently took apart one tank that was running for 2 years planted in inert white sand.
I am placing a soil substrate beneath and re-using the sand.
However, after ripping all the plants out I noticed the sand of course is full of "dirty" brownish particles. They settle very fast as in within a minute the few times I disturbed them and they are small enough to fall between the grains of the sand which is about 0.9mm grain size.
My question is, before re-using the sand should I siphon out all these particles or are they some sort of beneficial stuff that I can re-add to the tank? I don't want to remove everything but then again there's no point adding detritus to a new setup that can cause trouble.
There were not any anaerobic issues in the sand at all when I turned it around, all looked very healthy to me, no smell, despite the "brown" detritus particles and the fact I didn't touch the substrate for such a long time. They brown particles look a lot like filter mulm.
