Whoops! Didn't rinse the sand

[Twigwise]

Finally got a chance to set up my 20long last night, but in my rush to get it all set up before the sun went down and I was eaten by bugs, I forgot to wash the sand I'm using.

The sand is a super-fine "riverbed sand" meant for turtles and other aquatic reptiles and also amphibians. I'm not particularly worried about the quality of the water since it's meant for reptiles and amphibians, and the filter is running to pick up any particulate. But! After running the filter overnight, the water is still cloudy. Like, I can see into the tank better, but it's still really foggy in there. I can't see my wonderful setup!

Should I do some water changes? Should I wait for the suspended silt to settle? I'm at a loss, this is my first big setup and I'm out of my depth, so to speak. Any advice?

 

[Axolottie]

I did a very similar thing except I rinsed it, but rather quickly and it made my water so cloudy.
I waited for 2 days to see how clear it would get, then preformed a 50% water change on the 3rd then after another 2-3 days it was basically crystal clear.
I'm not sure how cloudy you water is, but I believe when I first added my sand, I could only clearly see about 30% into the tank from the front.

If not, you could, even though it's a huge pain, remove the sand from your tank, place it in a container and just run water through it while shifting the sand with your hand. I slightly recommend this option more since 1: your tank hasn't established a cycle yet and is basically brand new so it would be easy to do it now. And 2: you will continuously experience cloudy water with every water change since adding the water with shift the sand around and more debris that was trapped under the top layer will fly up and cloud the water again.

Hope I could be of some help!

 

[Blackbun]

This will clear. My filters have a number of compartments one of which filters through a wool like fibre and then a compartment of activated charcoal. I'd be more concerned about impurities you can't see such as dissolved salts.