# flourite dust, safe? flora-max, should it be rinsed?



## freph (Apr 4, 2011)

I'd take the fish out first just to be on the safe side. If the instructions say rinse, then rinse (and their website does say it's pre-rinsed but a rinsing is recommended). I think the cloudiness is just from too much substrate disturbance while filling. Be very careful with filling and make sure it's not agitating the substrate.


----------



## Jacob928 (Jan 29, 2012)

Yeah i would take the fish out. They'd be pretty stressed if you just slowly destroyed their habitat before their very eyes! lol. And i dont have any experience with that substrate, but i don't think anything could be as cloudy as flourite.


----------



## DMtankd (Dec 2, 2009)

I've definitely stirred up some pretty serious flourite clouds during re-scapes and never lost a fish, but you would definitely want to take them out for a complete redo. First to avoid any accidental trauma while your digging around in there. Second, you're pretty like to have the tank re-cycle if you take out all of the substrate (that's where a large part of your beneficial bacteria live) and replace with new, uncycled substrate. So, you should take the fish out and keep them out until you can make sure your ammonia/nitrite levels won't spike.

Out of curiosity, why are you bothering to swap? I've not used floramax, but from what I can tell, flourite and floramax are pretty similar.


----------



## scapegoat (Jun 3, 2010)

DMtankd said:


> Out of curiosity, why are you bothering to swap? I've not used floramax, but from what I can tell, flourite and floramax are pretty similar.


i've got flourite red in there now. it's the larger brown/red granules. I thought i'd like the look of it, and i just don't. it's also horribly dusty. anytime i clip plants or move plants it kicks up a dust storm that only settles on everything... i hate it.

the floramax i purchased is the smaller black granules. i'll probably rinse it out well first.


----------

