jdieck
New member
So it has cleared already?
Some notes, Water clarifier is not needed and will not have a real effect unless you are using a fine mechanical filter, the only thing it does is to add a surfactant (many times some kind of silicon compound) to agglomerate together small particles so the larger clumps can more easily be filtered out by mechanical filters.
Second is that the purple up rarely does have an effect on calcium or alkalinity, it contains finely ground aragonite (calcium carbonate) which is intended to dissolve into calcium and alkalinity, the take is that at normal aquarium PH range of 8 to 8.3 the calcium carbonate does not dissolve so it stays as is so it is equivalent to adding finely ground sand to your system.
Third, Kent's liquid calcium is not concentrated enough and contains no alkalinity so the likelihood of it forming a "snow storm" precipitation is very unlikely.
Finally my best bet is that you created a bacterial bloom rather than carbonate precipitation by using the TLC for Salt aquariums.
The TLC which may be rarely needed if not at all contains a booster of bacteria in the hopes of speeding up cycle time, the real truth is that bacteria has to be fed and it is done by the ammonia formed by the decaying matter in the new rock.
If the ammonia amount is not high enough the added on bacteria blooms and then die for lack of food, that die off decomposes then blooming ammonia again so the cycle basically re-starts but with higher ammonia content which in turn ends up as a high level of nitrates once the tank completes cycled.
To prevent that yo-yo effect the best thing is just to let the initial ammonia feed the initial bacteria already in the rock (this is why live rock is used after all) and then the bacterial population grows as ammonia becomes available, This in fact is a faster process than having that initial boost and then die off.
Some notes, Water clarifier is not needed and will not have a real effect unless you are using a fine mechanical filter, the only thing it does is to add a surfactant (many times some kind of silicon compound) to agglomerate together small particles so the larger clumps can more easily be filtered out by mechanical filters.
Second is that the purple up rarely does have an effect on calcium or alkalinity, it contains finely ground aragonite (calcium carbonate) which is intended to dissolve into calcium and alkalinity, the take is that at normal aquarium PH range of 8 to 8.3 the calcium carbonate does not dissolve so it stays as is so it is equivalent to adding finely ground sand to your system.
Third, Kent's liquid calcium is not concentrated enough and contains no alkalinity so the likelihood of it forming a "snow storm" precipitation is very unlikely.
Finally my best bet is that you created a bacterial bloom rather than carbonate precipitation by using the TLC for Salt aquariums.
The TLC which may be rarely needed if not at all contains a booster of bacteria in the hopes of speeding up cycle time, the real truth is that bacteria has to be fed and it is done by the ammonia formed by the decaying matter in the new rock.
If the ammonia amount is not high enough the added on bacteria blooms and then die for lack of food, that die off decomposes then blooming ammonia again so the cycle basically re-starts but with higher ammonia content which in turn ends up as a high level of nitrates once the tank completes cycled.
To prevent that yo-yo effect the best thing is just to let the initial ammonia feed the initial bacteria already in the rock (this is why live rock is used after all) and then the bacterial population grows as ammonia becomes available, This in fact is a faster process than having that initial boost and then die off.
