Gravel Washing

[IsaacMTSU]

I have a 90 gallon that I am currently setting up and I figured the best place to buy enough substrate to fill the thing without emptying my wallet was the landscape store close to where I live. I bought 3 cubic feet (approx. 200lb) of tiny pea gravel for $20 (as opposed the epoxy coated pea gravel at petco for $15 per 25lb). It was a nice bargain, but washing the gravel was RIDICULOUS! I'll post pictures when I get out of class... :headbang2:

 

[paperdragon]

Yeah, I used the bagged pea gravel from Lowes. It takes quite a bit more cleaning than "aquarium gravel".

 

[Que]

I don't know if it'd work the same but I just put all the Soilmaster select in the tank the way it is, filled the tank with water and then used my python to vac the yuck out of it. I did this water fill and vac a few times and I think it works out better than rinsing bucket after bucket and still ending up with cloudy water.

Q

 

[IsaacMTSU]

I started out by putting them in the teal 35g thing and taking it to the car wash...that was dumb. (They only spray about 20g of water for about $1.50 :headshake2 So I just put them in three containers I had lying around and started filling and dumping water...my roommate helped me (thats him in the pic).


Enlarge

I got enough rocks to fill the whole 90g tank bottom (approx 47"x17") about 4" thick for $20


Enlarge

I cleaned them out for about an hour before I put them in the tank but they were still very nasty. It will have to circulate for a while... plus the tannins are still coming out of the driftwood. I'll have to change the water anyway.


Enlarge

This is definitely the way to go as far as pea gravel goes. Unless I find out later that the epoxy coating they have on aquarium gravel (that is 5x as expensive) really is worth something to the chemistry of the tank...

 

[Mgamer20o0]

it takes time to clean and pea gravel is quicker to clean then sms.