When is Live Sand "bad"?

[Picasso]

I'm cleaning out my daughter's abandoned 14 gallon Bio-Cube. A couple months ago she pulled all the fish, corals, snails and crabs she could find and dumped them into my tanks. The tank has been heated, half full, no moving/ filtered water for a couple months. I went in to empty the rest of the sand and water because I need the tank and I was expecting a nasty smelly mess. Instead, there is no smell. The sand is muddy and mucky. I found one live bristle worm in there and one crab moving really slow. Is the sand gone? How can I get the muck out? Sand is cheap and I don't really need it but I hate to kill all the good-guy bacteria and stuff in there!

Thanks,
Catherine

 

[project5k]

sounds like what was in the bottom of my first sump, when i converted over to the new one, i let the old one sit for prolly a month or so, no heat, no movement, nothing, it never really smelled, so i just took all the water out and dumped it, then rinsed all the sand out with some water change water that i had just taken out of the tank, and then i just dumped the old sand into the new fuge, i didnt have any problems, no spikes, no nothing... maybe i got lucky, but that was my experience...

 

[Melosu58]

There is usually alot of trash in used sand. Sand is cheap so I always suggest just getting dry sand and starting over. It will become live over time and your LR will help out with the biological filtration.

 

[dcantucson]

I agree; dump it. It would be too much trouble to clean it up.