I have been reading for a few days now and thought I'd give a reef tank a try. I bought Red Sea salt for my 30 gallon tank. I got the water to a 1.021 salinity which took about 24 hrs to get and then I added 10 lbs. white fine sand, 15 lbs. coral type substrate and 10 lbs. live sand. I didn't read the bags on the first two which said to "rinse before use". Initially the water was a brown cloudyness mess. After 30hrs now it is still cloudy but more of a white cloudy. Did I mess up or is this normal????And what's my next step? Thank You.
Cloudy Water... Please help
- Thread starter blueshape
- Start date
Fast Fred
New member
Just something to think about...Sponges and bio-media are not going to be very good for your system if you plan on keeping anything besides fish. These things tend to be too good at producing nitrates from waste, thus causing high nitrates. The better choice for bio-filtration is live rock - about 1-2 pounds per gallon.
Getting back to the cloudiness...
It sounds as if the filter materials you are currently using is not fine enough to remove the small, dust-like particles. If after another day or two, you don't see any significant improvement, you'll need to find something that will filter them out. Your LFS should have filter felt. Maybe you could install some in the filter you already have. I run 100 micron in mine 24/7.
Even if the cloudiness settles down on it's own, you will probably stir it up again every time you disturb something in the tank.Better to try and filter it out now, IMO. A canister filter may also be something to try. I've never owned one, but I believe it would help your situation.
Also, on a side note, you'll want to increase your salinity to about 1.025-1.026.
Getting back to the cloudiness...
It sounds as if the filter materials you are currently using is not fine enough to remove the small, dust-like particles. If after another day or two, you don't see any significant improvement, you'll need to find something that will filter them out. Your LFS should have filter felt. Maybe you could install some in the filter you already have. I run 100 micron in mine 24/7.
Even if the cloudiness settles down on it's own, you will probably stir it up again every time you disturb something in the tank.Better to try and filter it out now, IMO. A canister filter may also be something to try. I've never owned one, but I believe it would help your situation.
Also, on a side note, you'll want to increase your salinity to about 1.025-1.026.
tkeracer619
New member
Do you have a skimmer? That will get ride of the cloud in a few hours. If not you should get a small one anyways.
1.025 is on the money. ~1/2 cup per gallon with instant ocean, not sure about that salt but I would assume its similar.
1.025 is on the money. ~1/2 cup per gallon with instant ocean, not sure about that salt but I would assume its similar.
NCreefwannabe
New member
My skimmer helped take out my cloud in no time. I also have a regular hang on filter with the packs it came with. I put pantyhose over them to catch any smaller particles of sand. Starting to collect my own mini dsb inside my filter lol.
Definitely wasn't the skimmer. The only thing that would have done it is media trapping the dust particles, like sponge type things on your pumps for the skimmers/filters.
I did the same thing with my sand like an idiot...took over a week to clear up with filtering. Don't worry about it. Just turn power heads off and runs filters and skimmers as normal. If you leave current creating items on it will just circulate when you want it to settle down to the bottom. A very delicate water change helps too. By delicate I mean nothing agitating like ditritus vacuums or dumping buckets....use pumps to transfer water to and from tank.
NCreefwannabe
New member
seriously lol, inside my skimmer you can see the dust... The skimmer helps a ton. Once the tank is clean, then skimmer doesnt produce tan crap anymore lol.
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