The "milkshake" is not going away - how long?

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Nickeleye

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Apr 13, 2004
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Yesterday afternoon I added 30 pounds of base rock and 90 lbs of sand to the 15 gallons of water I had circulating in the tank (it's a 40g tank). The sand is a mix of 60 lbs CaribSea sugar sized grains and 30 lbs of CaribSea Oolithic Select sand. There was no easy way to add the sand to the base rock and water since the sand came in bags pre-moistened. Now I've got a giant milkshake. It's been nearly 18 hours and all of the heavy stuff has settled, but I've got foam on the surface of the water and I can see about 1" into the tank on any given side. I've seen people say it can take weeks for these particles to settle... I also have my powerhead in the tank as well as the heater. Should I leave the powerhead on or leave it off to help the particles settle? The problem is that the base rock already has life on it and I'm trying to preserve as much as possible so I'm not sure if using the powerhead or not is a good idea. I'd also like to use the powerhead to circulate the heated water.

Any thoughts?

:confused:
 
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Hey Nick,

Just had a thought...

You know what we could do, is this; Perhaps not the most popular idea, but it'd work, for your purposes. We could go to the store and get some water (I'm going to need some after I do my water change today anyway), go back to your place, siphon out most of the water from your tank, since you've got more than adequate an amount of sand (plenty of the fine particles that have settled too), CAREFULLY add back in the new water, and it'd be clear, so you could go ahead and do what you need to do and add the rest of the stuff to your tank.
 
it will take a few days, just be patient, and try to ignore it. it took mine a bout 3 days to fully clear up
 
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