A few questions from a new guy

[blinkmqn]

Ok, I have started my new hobby of panning and sluicing. I have played with both a few times and come up with a few specks and tiny flakes in a creek near my house. The area looks great and like i said, i have found a little bit of gold so far. So on to the questions
I am finding a small amount of very fine white/yellowish material at the end of sluicing and panning. So what could this material be? I have taken a couple pictures of it and on the picture it appears bright yellow.
I have a Angus Mackirk Foreman sluice. I have gotten the hang of the set up and i am getting the "V" and sometimes the double "V". The creek is moving good and im "happy" with the appearance and function. What rate should i be able to feed material into the sluice? And when taking it out for a clean out, what is the best way to remove it from the water without losing material?

Well i guess that is enough for now, i may come up with more.
Thanks in advance!

 

[taternut]

Could it be small pieces of quartz? The best way to take the sluice out is by lifting the back end where your tailings would be so that it stops the flow and if you're doing a cleanup all of your material the comes loose will just sit there or get sucked up behind the riffles because of draining the water out of the feeding side

 

[KevinInColorado]

That fine light yellow material that does NOT look metallic is likely to be a tin compound (ie an oxide) as tin is quite dense. Be sure to remove it from your gold if you plan to melt your gold as tin makes gold very brittle if they are melted together.