Need some help

[Dragline]

hey everyone new here, looked like the best forum to join out of the bunch i just looked thru so hope this is the right spot to post this.

anyhow im new to the saltwater just set up a 55 gal tank today


got the water skimmer, powerhead, all that set up but made a big mistake in forgetting to wash down the sand (argonite) so now my water is all cloudy and has been for hours now.....guess its called sand dust

my question is how do i get ride of this?....should i turn powerhead and skimmer off and just let it settle? turn powerhead off and leave skimmer on?

or do i have to start all over and get ride of the ater and cash the sand this time lol.....yes yes i know stupid mistake but was excited to get going lol

anyhow thanks for reading any help would be great

[Ninong]

Hi Dragline,




Just leave it alone. It will settle down on its oiwn in a few days. I would leave at least one powerhead running but try not to point it at the sand bed. Keep the skimmer running or turn it off, either way is okay.

I deliberately didn't wash my aragonite sand before using it. I wanted all that fine aragonite silt in my tank.

[Dragline]

Hi Dragline,




Just leave it alone. It will settle down on its oiwn in a few days. I would leave at least one powerhead running but try not to point it at the sand bed. Keep the skimmer running or turn it off, either way is okay.

I deliberately didn't wash my aragonite sand before using it. I wanted all that fine aragonite silt in my tank.

thanks, and thanks for the reply got a few more questions how come you wanted to leave all that silt in there?

i had to add a little mroe salt to the tank today and move the sand around a bit in bottom even it out and it got all cloudy again...it did clear up quite a bit... am i doing something wrong? or am i moving a bit too fast and need to just let it clear up first then go from there?

[Ninong]

...how come you wanted to leave all that silt in there?

Because I wanted the silt in my sand bed to give it diversity. Finer particle sediments support a wide diversity of infauna.

i had to add a little mroe salt to the tank today and move the sand around a bit in bottom even it out and it got all cloudy again...it did clear up quite a bit... am i doing something wrong?

No, you're not doing anything wrong. You have to rearrange the sand bed in the beginning to even out the extreme peaks and valleys that form at this state of the game due to water currents.

... or am i moving a bit too fast and need to just let it clear up first then go from there?

You really shouldn't do anything until it clears up first but if you feel like spreading it around a little, even if you can't see what you're doing, then no harm done. It could take five or six days to clear up. That's fine. It just means you have lots of nice silt in your sand bed.

Every time you rearrange the sand bed you're going to cloud up the water a lot. That will go away in a few weeks. The cloudiness should clear up within an hour or two. Later on, it won't even cloud up at all. It will all just settle back down in a couple of minutes. But that's weeks away.

[Dragline]

oh ok thanks alot...clears up alot of my questions lol

was wondering if its going to be this bad everytime something moves on the bed


anyhow i just wanna make sure the guys at this aquarium place arnt just trying to get money off of me lol....he said to stop back in in a few days to pick up some live rock would it be wise to do so untill all this is settled?

[Ninong]

was wondering if its going to be this bad everytime something moves on the bed

No, not at all.

anyhow i just wanna make sure the guys at this aquarium place arnt just trying to get money off of me lol....he said to stop back in in a few days to pick up some live rock would it be wise to do so untill all this is settled?

I would wait until it has settled if I were you. Otherwise you won't be able to see what you're doing. If I remember correctly, I believe it took my 120-gal tank with 6" fine particle aragonite sand bed either five or six days to settle. At that point I ordered the live rock from an online vendor. But my tank was set up in the summertime, not January. January is the worst possible month for ordering stuff online, especially for delivery where you live. Therefore, it's probably better for you to buy your live rock from an LFS, assuming you can get some decent rock at a reasonable price. You should get somewhere between 45-75 lbs of live rock.

When you go to the LFS to get your live rock, bring a nice large styrofoam (or better) ice chest, with cover, to hold the live rock and keep it reasonably warm for the trip home. And transport it inside your car or truck with the vehicle's heater on.

Good luck!

[Dragline]

water isnt to a point where i cant see what im doing its just a bit cloudy now not as bad as it first was....had me worried at first lol....but i just didnt want the dust or silt to do anything to the live rock even if that was possible....lol why i came here.....

but thanks again for all the help

[Ninong]

If sand or silt settles on your live rock, just use a turkey baster to blow it off. It's a good idea to do that about once a month anyway to blow the detritus off the live rock.

[Dragline]

thanks! been a huge help thruout the last few days

just got back from the fish ship and got me 2 pretty decent size fiji rocks

[Ninong]

Is your tank as cloudy as this? (From this article.) I think that was Day 3. That's a 6-7" DSB in a 120-gal tank that is 27.5" tall. Later on I made both the sand bed shield and the light shield taller. I decided to conceal most of the sand bed from view and I had to raise the light shield taller to block light spill. My desk was only a few feet from the tank.

Both the sand bed shield and the light shield were removable in two seconds. I made them using black acrylic sheet -- 1/4" thick.

If I remember correctly, my dust storm took about five days to go away. At that point I had not yet added any live sand at all to my tank, so I jump started the sand bed cycle by throwing in a piece of fish that I swiped from the freezer (about 2"x3"x1/2"). I placed the live rock (fully cured) in my tank on Day 9. I added my first clean-up crew critters about 10 days later. I think I added my first live sand (real live sand) addition around Day 10 or 11. I remember that it messed up my live rock something awful. It took another 12 hours or so for this second dust storm to disappear. That was a 12-lb addition of live sand from the bottom of a vendor's live rock curing vat.

My tank was finished with the initial cycle within 48 hours after I added the live rock. I added my first fish (a small foxface rabbitfish) on Day 45.

[Dragline]

oh no not at all atleast lol

i wana say for the first day / day and half maybe even over the 2 days mark it was like that still but i also had the power head way down further in the tank then it is now (now up near the top of the tank) and it started to clear up heres a quick pic i took with my phone:

[Dragline]

hey everyone, got a few more questions real quick


first ive been having stuff grow on my live rock brown line type stuff ive had it sinc the live rock was bought came right from fish shop. also i have stuff living on the glass? thought i was seeing stuff at first lol

but there real small and move around and looks like they have left eggs maybe? all over the glass?

heres a pic of the rock tho cant really get a pic of the critters on the glass

there is also a little red something that has been growing for the last week do not think it has gotten any bigger tho....



here is the pic, thanks

ImageShack - Image Hosting :: img16042zo3.jpg

[Ninong]

first ive been having stuff grow on my live rock brown line type stuff ive had it sinc the live rock was bought came right from fish shop.

The brown stuff is probably a diatom bloom. That's a natural part of the cycle. It's usually gone within 10 days or so all by itself.

... also i have stuff living on the glass? thought i was seeing stuff at first lol

but there real small and move around and looks like they have left eggs maybe? all over the glass?

Well, it's hard to say based on that description. If you can find a 2x (or 4x) magnifying glass and then get yourself right up against the glass to get a better look, maybe you can provide a more complete description. In all probability this is a good sign, not a bad sign.

here is the pic, thanks

ImageShack - Image Hosting :: img16042zo3.jpg

That's the red foraminiferan Homotrema rubrum. Completely harmless, won't get any larger than the size of a pencil eraser.

Some sand (e.g., the beaches in Bermuda) has a pink cast to it because of the skeletal remains of red foraminiferans (Homotrema rubrum).

Homotrema rubrum

Came in as hitchhikers on new live rock.