Is there a way to "reset" sand?

[American Flyer]

I am in the process of breaking down a system and building a new system. The sand I have is full of junk. I don't care if the sand dies. If I pull the sand out of the tank, let it dry and then run it through the same process as curing live rock, would that essentially clean the sand?

 

[Leroy]

What I'd suggest to do as I have done in the past. Wash the sand out of all the debris. I fill a 5 gal bucket a quarter to half way and run it under the faucet of the tub, stirring up all sand till it overflows. Unfortunately it's not summer to lay the sand out in the sun and bake it. Tho in the past I have baked sand in the oven. When I first started out in the hobby and asked the same question for sand for a 90 gal 4" deep, I was told to wash it RODI water. Unfortunately I had no mass amounts of RODI nor money for an RO unit so I roughed it. It turned out fine as it sat in the tank a few days till I was able to fill with water from Hannafords RO water. Others will have their own methods of what they'd do.

 

[American Flyer]

Thanks for the reply!

 

[Aquaman_68]

rinsing it in RO/di water would be key...shouldn't take all that much water...Maybe 25 or so gals...Than maybe soak in ro/di water for a day at a time & replace the water in the bucket every day for a week...(the ro/di water will act like a sponge & pull the contaminants & phosphates out which will leach out of the sand to the water...)

HTH,
B

 

[Matt L.]

I've tried to wash sand before too.

Now it's winter, so this is hard, but one thing I found that works is to put the sand on a towel, and then run water over the sand. The silt will wash out, while the sand particules stay on top of the towel. If you could place the towel on some egg crate, which was on top of some 2x4's, which were on saw horse, that would be best, but it takes a lot of water. i used a garden hose.

The second solution which i used was described above, and that is to fill a bucket part way with sand, and then mix the sand manually to stir up the debris. Keep the water running in the bucket, and the debris will go over the edge. This is useful for that final rinse with RO/DI water too.

Matt

One thing I found that helps

 

[American Flyer]

Thanks for the replies. It is out of the tank and sitting in buckets until the spring. I got it as clean as I could so that it wouldn't stink up the garage. I am going to add a RDSB to the system in the spring.