Any advice

[friendorfoe]

Well it is morning and my tank is still exactly as bad as last night! How can i go about getting the sand out successfully? How long can i leave my fish in a 5 gallon pail with a filter heater and bubbler. By the way i have 7 fish. 2 mollies a swordtail and 4 corydoras.

I posted this in my post from last night and am sorry for double posting i just hoped more people would help me out in a new post.

for anyone looking at this for the first time, I put play sand in my tank last night and you can't see an inch into the tank it is just brown/ red

Anyone who can help, thanks a million.

PS. Thanks Kasakato!! my fish all made it through the night....I really owe you!

 

[pl*co]

Can you swap out the water? Here's what I'm thinking... if all the fish are elsewhere, now is a good time to drop the level of the water down so as to give the sand less water to settle in. If you don't want to chance losing all the bacteria (and kick off another cycle) maybe 50% wait a bit before refilling and then take out 25% twice more after that with a period of time before replacing the water that was removed? This might give everything a chance to settle down without having so much water to settle at once.

 

[petcrazy213]

Just a question ... did you wash the sand thouroughly before putting it your tank?

I used playsand for my Marine tank and I had to wash the sand (swishing it around and around then dumping the excess water and rinsing and swishing, over and over) like 20-30 times before the water started coming out clear instead of murky. Now I use this sand from the reptile department (doesn't have calcium or anything added) and it works wonderfully. I never have to rinse before adding it and it doesn't get murky at all.