# Dirty Dirty Flourite



## pollpegj (Jul 24, 2008)

My first time using flourite in my new 55 gallon. All I can say is what do I do now. I washed it for at least 30 minutes and thought it was clean, I was wrong. After a day it is still as dark as the Mississippi. Should I just do water changes or what? Its only one bag mixed with my gravel also. HELP


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## carlos05 (Aug 8, 2006)

Its going to be dirty for a while...i've never used flourite personally but I know it takes time. You can do WC if its an established tank but if its a new tank, I would hold off on the WC and just be patient. Make sure the filter doesn't clog up too much and change the water polishing pads since they will be clogged pretty badly. Eventually, the dirt in the water should settled as they get more water-logged. Hopefully someone with experience will chime in and give better advice.


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## Mangala (Jul 23, 2006)

I know I saw someone's setup where they had stuck all their flourite in a 30 gallon bucket out back and just stuck the hose in the bucket for a couple hours. I would personally be afraid that it would then get rid of all the flourite! 

But then, what do I know? I just use tahitian moon sand...


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## ZooTycoonMaster (Jan 2, 2008)

Don't worry, this was my tank when I put in Flourite:









It'll clear up in a few hours


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## rich815 (May 21, 2008)

I washed mine for about a hour but it was not a simple "stick the hose in" but a rinse and dump, rinse and dump, then a few times through a strainer, etc. 

Do not want to wash too much as you will wash out a lot of what's good about it. Looked muddy as all get out when I got it in the tank but running my eheim 2028 it was 80% better the next day, then about 80% better from that another day later, and by day 3 or 4 or so was pretty much crystal clear. Needed to replace the fine filter pad in the eheim after that though as no amount of rinsing it took out the sediment. 

That said though from then on every time I'd plant something up, or move a plant, the substrate would get disturbed and it's clouds galore all over for about a couple hours or even overnight. That sucked. Finally topped off the flourite with about an inch or so of white sand. Then a year after that I topped that with some SMS as I wanted a darker substrate. 

I get great root growth right down through the second and third layer of sand and flourite so the plants love the stuff, you too might want to have a top layer of something cleaner like I did though to prevent cloudiness every time you rescape or even move one or two plants.


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## mavisky (Jun 18, 2008)

I just fired up my filters and let them run for a couple days. Cleared right up eventually.


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## purplecity (Jul 28, 2008)

yeah i just bought some play sand from home depot and
let it settle in my tank, its been about 2-3 hours its clearing up slowly

also i have a question, once my tank is setup with the play sand , if i get in there and start planting will it cloud up again?


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## BottomFeeder (Jul 26, 2008)

Glad I wasn't the only one to have this problem. It was a real mess for sure, but in the end I really do like it as a substrate. I have a fair amount of it in the 20g and a bit in the 55g.


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## DBL TAP (Apr 27, 2008)

Cloudy water is the one drawback of Flourite. You can rinse it for hours and you will still have some cloudiness. 

The key is to painstakingly pour the water very slowly into the tank. For a larger tank try this: pour the water into a white shopping bag and let it gently run into the tank.

Good luck!


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## cah925 (May 18, 2007)

I just plugged in my diatom filter and let the dust get sucked out of the tank.


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## pollpegj (Jul 24, 2008)

Thanks guys, I bought some floss for my filters. Hopefully That will fix it. Next step getting my drift wood to stay underwater.


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## Natty (Apr 2, 2008)

pollpegj said:


> Thanks guys, I bought some floss for my filters. Hopefully That will fix it. Next step getting my drift wood to stay underwater.


If you want to get floating driftwood to sink, just tie a heavy stone or something to the wood and throw it in a container full of water. After a week or so, give or take, it should finally stay down. This is what I do.

Also, for flourite, I found this method works very well:

Okay, we know the particles in flourite (good bag) can be very small and if you pour water into your tank fast, it'll push all these particles up. Also, since flourite is a clay substance, disturbance also causes breakage in the bigger pieces, creating more particles.

So the trick is to NOT stir the water as much as possible.

I've tried cleaning flourite and adding it to the tank and not cleaning it and adding to the tank. Cleaning it is better and unlike what most people think, a little cleaning doesn't kill the nutrient values since you're going to dose your tank anyhow.

*Method 1:*

1. It's a lot easier to wash part of a bag of flourite then a bunch of bags worth of the stuff. So what I do is get a rectangular tubberware and fill it with half a bag worth of the stuff or whatever amount you feel is easy for you to handle and wash.

2. Take a hose with a spraybar and spray the stuff. Dump water into plants so there's no waste, as much of the water as possible excluding the flourite, you're basically just rinsing it. Continue to do this till you see that the water is a bit clearer. Took me only 7 washes. Spray it till it's about 3-5 inches from the surface of the substrate, no need to fill the whole tubberware.

3. Now put it into your empty tank. If you need more flourite, repeat steps 1 and 2. Flatten it out and put watever plants you want into it now.

4. Now to add water, the most important part IMO. Let it slowly go in, very slowly, a good trickle. Just enough and not to the point where the debris or substrate is kicked around a lot. When it's about 1 inch or so from the substrate, stop. 

5. Leave it till the 1" of visible water seems clear, then once again, slowly fill it with water. Put it so the tube that the water is coming from as near to the substrate as possible. It is best to put the tube near a corner. Why? Less disturbance.

6. After filling it up, you can add an HOB with a sponge over the intake and a sponge or sponges inside the hob. Give it a few hours. Should be good. It'll take about a few days for the water to completely become clear, based on your filtering as well.

*Method 2:*

If you want to do the nonwash method, start from step #3.
However, it'll probably take longer for all the debris to settle.

NOTE:

Here are a few questions that you might have thought of from what I said:

Q: For #2 step, why do I have to stop at 3-5 inches? Why not just keep spraying it?
A: Because the point of washing it is to dump out the water with all the particles when there's the most particles washed up by the water. If you keep filling it past that point, you're just wasting water and not getting much of a difference. You just want to push those particles out before they sink back down into the substrate again.

Remember, flourite is a clay substance, if you continue to wash it, you'll continually get particles since the bigger pieces will continually break up into smaller pieces aka particles. The point is to wash it till it's decently clear, not all the way clear.

Q: For #5 step, why do I fill it up to 1" past the substrate and wait?
A: If you fill the whole tank up, particles that are still moving around remain moving around a lot longer since they can't settle to the bottom because there's a lot more room in the tank for the particles to move around in. The 1" method makes it so that the particles are a lot closer to the bottom and gives them less room to move in and therefore makes it easier to settle down.

This is what I do and I find it easy and useful. Never had a flourite issue.

*Since you already filled it up with the thing, here's my advice on it:*

*1. Suck out all the water.*

*2. Do steps 4 through 6.*


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## pollpegj (Jul 24, 2008)

Well, it settled. The filter floss did the trick, plus a small water change. Now I need to clean the glass off.


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## dooboogoo (Apr 19, 2007)

Haha, I just rinsed 3 bags of flourite yesterday. It took me 2 hours and I still had cloudy water. Its sitting in my 29g now with about an inch or so of water and I've been dreading filling up the tank.


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## tazcrash69 (Sep 27, 2005)

One other thing that I've seen work is to lay a plastic bag on top of the fluorite, and like Natty said, fill very, very slowly.


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

tazcrash69 said:


> One other thing that I've seen work is to lay a plastic bag on top of the fluorite, and like Natty said, fill very, very slowly.


Thats a really good idea. Better than putting a plate in and pouring water in onto the plate


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## robbob2112 (Oct 7, 2007)

In a new tank...I just add a few inches of water... dump the unwashed flourite in... let it settle a few hours... put a bowl or something in to deflect the water.. Fill it up, it clouds pretty bad.. drain until the flourite is just below the surface...fill it up again SLOWLY... only a little cloudy at this point and it settles out in an hour or so.

Just have to be careful planting or disturbing the flourite for a month or so or you get a plume of fine particles... after a while it stops being a problem unless you really stir it up.

This method leaves all the fine stuff in there and is simple... but only works from a fresh start.


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## Dr_GreenThumb (Jul 9, 2008)

When I first set up my tank... I tried the wash and dry method on two bags of flourite. 

I did 1/4th bag increments in a 5gal bucket. Put a hose in and swished it around with my hand, dumping the water every couple minutes until i was just able to see the flourite at the bottom of the bucket through the water (so not all the nutrients were washed out..hopefully.) 

from the bucket, dumped onto a beach towel on a cardboard sheet in the sun until it dried out. 

This took me about 2-3 hours due to some partially cloudy weather and slower drying time when the sun was hiding.

End result, I filled my 30gal with the flourite, then did 5gal bucket increments of water pumped with a syphon into the tank onto a plate until it was 2-3" deep then continued syphoning until 2/3 full then just poured.

There was no noticable dust at all.... Granted, I'm running an emperor 400 on a 30gallon. Can you say... overkill?


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## schwarkie (Aug 7, 2008)

I had the same issues with flourite. I have a small amount of fine size gravel on top of the flourite, but once you move a plant around or plant new ones... it will cloud up again, but like every one else said, eventually it will settle. The only problem is the dust on the plants and on the glass. Clean more and more. Anybody know if that dust is harmful?


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## scherzo (Jul 22, 2007)

I had to do a replant of my 55 gallon. I had rinsed flourite under white silica sand. It has been setup for 1 year.

It really clouded up! I'm not sure if the dust is harmful but I'm sure that it doesn't feel great on the fish's gills or eyes.. I even have clown loaches in the tank and they survived. 

I'm moving to a couple of new tanks in a few weeks.. and I'm staying away from Flourite. I have florabase and ADA aquasoil in other tanks and have not as much of a clouding problem.

It clears up.. but once disturbed.. look out! Kinda freaked me out.


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## Aquarist_Fist (Jul 22, 2008)

And that's also the problem with plastic bags and plates. They may work for the initial filling, but as soon as one decides to do some (re-) scaping, the all the stuff is in the water anyway. The only two things that really help are rinsing and patience.


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## lauraleellbp (Feb 3, 2008)

schwarkie said:


> I had the same issues with flourite. I have a small amount of fine size gravel on top of the flourite, but once you move a plant around or plant new ones... it will cloud up again, but like every one else said, eventually it will settle. The only problem is the dust on the plants and on the glass. Clean more and more. Anybody know if that dust is harmful?


Yes.

I made the mistake of adding a Yoyo loach to a tank with flourite and MTS. The yoyo loach turned the tank into a mud storm digging after the MTS, and it killed most of my plants, between having their leaves coated with the dust and the light blocked for several days.

You need to clean off the leaves.


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## Yassmeena (Jun 29, 2008)

dooboogoo said:


> Haha, I just rinsed 3 bags of flourite yesterday. It took me 2 hours and I still had cloudy water. Its sitting in my 29g now with about an inch or so of water and I've been dreading filling up the tank.


If you want to avoid cloudiness problems, don't fill up the tank. Instead take out the flourite and put it in a long short container for max surface area exposure to air (i.e. long cardboard box layered with heavy duty garbage bags and then towels, long rubbermaid storage box). Keep the flourite outside in warm weather till it completely dries, then throw it in your tank, fill with water and presto! 

That's what i did - with flourite SAND! Worked! :icon_cool 

Admittedly - I learned the methods from reading numerous posts by other users. hehe


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## dooboogoo (Apr 19, 2007)

Yassmeena said:


> If you want to avoid cloudiness problems, don't fill up the tank. Instead take out the flourite and put it in a long short container for max surface area exposure to air (i.e. long cardboard box layered with heavy duty garbage bags and then towels, long rubbermaid storage box). Keep the flourite outside in warm weather till it completely dries, then throw it in your tank, fill with water and presto!
> 
> That's what i did - with flourite SAND! Worked! :icon_cool
> 
> Admittedly - I learned the methods from reading numerous posts by other users. hehe



I filled the tank up the other day with very little cloudiness. So apparently I rinsed everything well.:thumbsup:


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## schwarkie (Aug 7, 2008)

How do you clean the dust off the leaves? With your hands? a brush of some sort?


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## dooboogoo (Apr 19, 2007)

I'd say whatever works.


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## lauraleellbp (Feb 3, 2008)

A cosmetic or paintbrush should work pretty well.


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