Think I made a Boo-Boo

Wash thoroughly before using, but otherwise I don't see why you couldn't use it over again.

 

Rinsing thoroughly should be fine. I've used sand up to 8 years old before. when you start using really old sand you should probably do a soak in RODI for a few days on top of the rinsing.

 

Whenever I did an rodi soak I did it in a 5g bucket and we switched the water out after 24hrs then after that every couple days for about a week to week and a half. (I've gone as long as 2 months doing this... but really out of laziness and no tank to put it back in. lol.) It looks and smells brand new after that. This will help pull out any of the phosphates that are locked up in it (a nice source of food for your slime algae I'm guessing)....

If this sand is in a currently running system I would say manually remove as much slime as possible and then slowly take out old sand (put in bucket for soaks) while you add in that new sand on the opposite end of the tank... just work your way through the existing sandbed. Eventually you'll get it all removed/exchanged for cleaned up or the new sand. /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/wink.gif

Good luck!

 

Old sand can be full on "junk" like phosphates that leach back out and can cause nasty algae blooms.

My current setup was from a guy who let the tank go to crap for 4 years. It was probably awesome in its day, but I got a lot of live rock (and huge coral skeletons), and fought algae problems for at least a year while the "bad stuff" leached back out of the rock. Hair algae everywhere, and I mean a LOT of it. That is all gone now, but the live rock had just accumulated so much that it took a while. I still deal with some issues of stuff leaching from the rocks even a couple of years later, but it isn't as bad, or ugly as the hair algae was.

Others already gave good advice, but I just wanted to share that many of us have dealt with the reuse of stuff and some times what we think is saving us time, is costing us in other areas.