Rinse and repeat... Very slow

I am adding some sand to my bare bottom tank and I have never done sand before. I see a lot of people saying the way to clean it is to throw it in a bucket and rinse and sift with hands then dump the cloudy water. My question is, does it need to be rinsed in rodi water? Because we have such low water pressure at my house it takes about and hour to produce a little under 2 gallons of rodi water. Can I rinse it in our regular water since it is such a small amount that is going to make it to the tank? Thanks in advance!

 

I rinse mine in regular water and drain.

 

I use regular water too. Wear glove too, it will chew up your hands after 15 lbs or so.

 

I like to add the sand to a shallow tupperware container and just set it in the sink. turn the water on lightly and let it fill up without making any sand spill over, and then just let the water run over and down the drain. You can stir it slowly with your hands until the water in the container is nice and clear.

 

pro.

 

+4 Regular tap is fine as long as it's not live sand.

 

Figured I should not wash the live sand... Might as well have not washed any of it, the live sand made my tank as cloudy as it could be. On the bright side there was no cloudy water for the first 20 lbs because I rinsed it so good!

 

So now onto clouding solutions. Is it faster to run my system normal and let the filter suck everything out or do I turn off pumps and filters to let it settle to the bottom? I imagine the 2nd option will cause problems in the future because the particles will still be in the water.

 

I always get a little cloudiness that resolves usually within a day or two. I used sponge as my mechanical filtration.

 

I have always done this. I have never rinsed my sand unless the tank was already running.