[OCSREEFER]

I have added 40lbs of cured live rock a week ago. in the past few days I have been noticing slightly cloudy water, I have added lime water for makup water the last few nights. I premixed the pickling lime 1 tsp per/gal and let it settle over night... Could this be causing my cloudness..?

I have mad a DIY course filter in my sump to catch larger items but other wise I do not have any other filter media in the system, the follow is my setup..

Its a 72 Bow with Mega overflow,
1 to 2-1/2" sand DB
40 Lbs Fuji LR
40 Lbs Kielini LR
Lots of snails and crabs
1-Yellow tang 1-yellow tail damsel 1 Mandrin Goby 2 Percula Clowns
2- medium sized cleaner shrimp
Red tree spong
green star polyp - asst mushrums - sabae anonome

20 Gal long sump
Mag-7 return pump (in sump)
SeaClone Skimmer (yaya Im working on the $$ for a MR1)
two maxi jet900 with Coralife power center for wave action.
Coaralife 265 watt - 2 Actinic - 2 10,000k

Nitrate 10 ppm mg/l
Nitrite 0
Alk 250 KH
pH 8.3



Any suggestions..?
Thanks
Nick

[Valclore]

Wow, 10 ppm nitrates.?.?. You should be doing more water changes, It could be the main reason why your tank is cloudy. Also, if your running mechanical filtration then clean them out more often. The funk that's left on the pads will cause major nitrates. Also have you checked for phosphates?? and what is your calcium levels.?

[OCSREEFER]

Is 10 ppm on the nitrates a problem, on my scale it is shown between Ideal @0 and Okay @20...?

I'm waiting for new pack of tests for cal and phos...
I just did a 15% water change yesterday,, mybe I should do another one today...?


Thanks
Nick

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by OCSREEFER

Is 10 ppm on the nitrates a problem, on my scale it is shown between Ideal @0 and Okay @20...?

I'm waiting for new pack of tests for cal and phos...
I just did a 15% water change yesterday,, mybe I should do another one today...?


Thanks
Nick

Define cloudy - is this cloudy like milk cloudy, or cloudy like lots of suspended dust cloudy ?

Did the cloudiness start when you added the new rock, or when you started dripping the limewater ? There is a limit to how much calcium you can actually put into solution, if you are at the upper limit, that can cause cloudiness.

I doubt it is nitrates - I've yet to see nitrates make the water cloudy, and especially not at a level of 10ppm. Opinions vary here, but depending on your livestock, Nitrates should be kept below 20ppm, prefereably below 10ppm to 0ppm. Bear in mind the accuracy of some test kits doesn't let you distinguish between 0 and 10ppm very easily anyway.

Personally, I would cut back on the lime a little (or even completely), at least until your test kit arrives and you can accurately gauge how much you need to dose. Water changes are usually a good thing, though unless the livestock appears to be in distress, I would let things settle for a day or two between changes.

Steve

[drilldr]

There are so many reasons for "cloudy" water. Speaking from my own experiences, I repalced my skimmer w/ an MRC-2. This helped a great deal on my 180 gal softie tank. I still had a yellowish tinge to my water in spite of repeated water changes. I finally introdused a Red Sea Ozonizer. I found my begining ORP to be 85. This is a really poor ready and showed I had a lot of disolved organics and such in my water. After 2 days I made it to 290 and my water quality improved significantly. All my other numbers are within normal parameters. I also felt that I was overfeding my fish and now I am very judicious about frequency and quantiy of food and this really lowers your ORP and can witnessed by visual water color changing. You may need to check your feeding or definitely change your skimmer. The injectors used on products like the MRC line seem to do a great job with foam. Hope this helps.

[MIKE NY]

Also running something as simple as carbon should help.

[patsfan1130]

Originally Posted by MIKE NY

Also running something as simple as carbon should help.

Get a better skimmer and run a power filter with carbon for a few days.