Hi all,

while I was reading through all the posts on substrates, there was one
comment made on washing flourite that worked brilliantly (sorry. I can't
remember who the original poster was...) that I wanted to recommend to all
(or endorse..)

do this outside where you have access to a garden hose and a flower bed (or
anything that can benefit from flourite dust and also won't clog drains)

what you need:
a. on a garden hose, stick the "rain shower" type nozzle (can get
cheap ones for about $2 at your local hardware store)
b. kitchen wire-mesh sieve
c. clean bucket full of water
d. cup/scoop

1. take a cupful of flourite (keep it manageable, I only put probably about
1-1.5 soda can volume at a time)
2. pour flourite into a kitchen sieve (mine was about 8in diameter)
3. take the sieve over outdoor drain/flowerbed
4. use garden hose with rain shower nozzle and rinse until water runs clear
(water pressure doesn't have to be all that high). "swirl/jiggle" the sieve
like you see a cooking chef sautee-ing stuff while you run water through it.
takes approx 1-2min for pretty effective rinsing
5. dump cleaned flourite into a clean bucket full of clean water
6. repeat procedure until you are done
7. drain water from the bucket (to get rid of more dust)

when I did this, it really effectively got rid of most the dust before
putting in the tank, and the cloudiness in the water was minimal (1day of
external powerfilter cleared most of it. the remaining cloud is probably
bacteria bloom clouds right now which I've had before). I'm sure my
iron-poor flowerbed benefitted from all the flourite dust that settled on
the soil too (turned the surface of the soil red, but oh well)

I know if you have to go through 3 bags of this stuff, this will take lots
of water and time, but in the end, it may be worth the effort :-P YMMV

I was so amazed at how well this worked for me, I had to share it with
people... And thank you to the person who suggested it! (and sorry I can't
give credit to where credit is due..)

Linda