Switching from gravel to sand for first time! Excited but, wondering?

Hi, I'm wondering if while I clean the sand, (I got the all naturals from caribsea, pure white) could I use the horse outside? I could stir it up better cause we ave many settings on our hose.....just wndering and cnat start till I get this last question answered! Thanks guys !
oh and by the way we have well water

 

Well if the horse doesn't mind I suppose it would be ok.

On the other hand if you were to use your hose you'd just want to verify it doesn't contain lead. Gotta be careful with hoses because of that.

 

Thanks!

 

Yup, I used my hose outside to clean my sand. I filled 5 gallon buckets about 1/3 of the way with sand, and then stuck my hose with the nozzle all the way to the bottom and let the water kind of bubble up through it. When the bucket was full I drained most of the water and repeated until the water ran clear. If you're going to do this with your fish in the tank, then you need to do a final rinse with the right temperature water before you add in the sand back into the tank because it gets really cold from the hose water.

 

Thanks! good point! I actually made a mistake, I filled the bucket, dumped the water, but a quarter of the sand came out. aslo, is pool filter sand a good choice? I don't want to spend 150$ on aqaurium sand if another alternative looks great and is just as nice.

 

Pool filter sand is what most people here suggest and it's what I went with in my 30 gallon. I think it looks wonderful, very natural looking. It's much cheaper and easier to work with than some of the aquarium sands. The one I used for my shrimp tank because I wanted black substrate is very fine and actually makes these crazy sand bubble things from the surface tension of the water that are next to impossible to get rid of when rinsing.

 

Pool filter sand is fine, I used the Home Depot sand before (no issues there).

 

AWEOSME! Thanks you guys ! I'm going for that natural look! Can I put a mineral layer/ (fertilizer/nutrient under the sand for my plants?