[Reefland]

Hi all!

For the past few nights, our tank has been cloudy and tonight it is even worse. You can see the cloudiness in the water, it almost appears as smoke. I have been running activated carbon in the tank for a few weeks now and the past few nights just some filter floss. It isn't getting any better. I placed a piece of filter floss in the tank last night and after about 4 hours it was brown. I took it out and placed in another piece and it is just as nasty.

The only thing added to the tank recently was top-off RO/DI water. Why in the world is it like this? Obviously it isn't the sand bed being stirred up, that would be easy to see.

Any ideas? Below are a couple of pictures.

Cloudy Tank:


Filter Floss (this is some padding that we pick up from the crafts department at Wal-Mart and have used it since day 1) that has been in the tank for exactly 19 hours:

[Northman_with_reef]

It looks good...

I would continue using the Filter floss, obviously its removing something from the water and that cant be bad... Try using even more floss and let it sit for 1 week.

[kevinpo]

I have experienced the same thing after 3-4 months on new tanks. I believe it is from bacteria, plankton, and micro algae. As my coral population grew it slowly faded away. I believe they eat it. Also my clams showed incredible growth during this time. I believe over time the tank water gets more sterile and therefore more clear just like a natural reef. That's why a natural reef is so clear. The water is very sterile except during storms or algae/plankton blooms. Certainly nothing to worry about if you corals are showing good polyp extention at night. They are the best indicators (IMO) of something bad in the water as they are very sensitive to anything harmful.

Regards,
Kevin

[Reefland]

Thanks for the information Kevin.

As of last night the tank was crystal clear again. I have a theory as well that I will describe below:

As mentioned the "filter" that I have been using is padding from Wal-Mart craft center; tt is like stuffing that might be used for pillows. The tank for a long time had a bit of cloudiness to it and I frequently used this product attached to the bottom of my drain pipe in the sump. As of recent battling the slime algae problem we had I was using this material and making our own carbon filter. I would roll it around the carbon, secure it with rubberbands, rinse it thoroughly (to clean the carbon dust out), and then place it in front of the overflow. Doing this not only aided in the elimination of the slime algae but also helped clear the tank.

For about the past week, I have went back to just using the filter floss and no carbon, with this I cut a piece and placed it in front of the overflow. After about a day of this the tank started getting cloudy again.

Now, I wonder if the material we used has some type of fime particles that were coming out of it? When I rinsed it with the carbon in it, I didn't have this problem. As soon as I did not rinse it the tank got cloudy.

Just another theory,