# Cleaning Substrate to prepare a tank.



## vinjo (Dec 8, 2010)

So I've often heard it's highly advised to wash out your substrate before placing it in your aquarium.

I just bought 40 pounds of Aragonite substrate. I placed it into a bucket and filled it with water... tried to place a shower head at the bottom and let the water run... even after 20 minutes it was still pretty cloudy. Eventually I gave up and just placed it in my tank and figured I'll just have to let the filter do the job.

I still need another 40-80 pounds to properly cover the floor of my 90G.

I wanted to know if there was some better way/technique of cleaning sand/substrate.


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## igor.kanshyn (Jan 14, 2010)

Cleaning substrate or soil should be done to remove floating dust and mud that you don't need in a tank. Some substrates that are not just inert rocks can be washer forever and they still make water cloudy. 
Aragonite should release calcium or something like that. It is its feature. It makes no sense to wash that calcium out 

Once I spent a lot of time washing the soil and after that it clouded a tank badly. After 10h of a filter work, the tank was perfectly clean.


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## BillD (Jun 5, 2006)

Wash the substrate in small quantities and it will go much faster.Substrate acts as it's own sand filter when you try and wash it, trapping particles the water is moving. Washing in small quantities negates this. You will use a lot less water also. The shallower the depth of substrate the faster it will come clean.


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## vinjo (Dec 8, 2010)

tried this method, it worked great but was very time consuming. In the end I took half of it dumped it into my aquarium filled it up with water swishing it around for a bit then emptied the tank. Did this 3 times and then let the filter do it's job for a few hours and voila.


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