foggy water

[tomclx]

Hi all, and happy new year! I just purchased a 90 gallon tank. I plan on making it a reef tank. I just added my live rock, and now the tank seems to be cloudy. it has been cloudy for about a day and a half now. is this normal?

 

[fbm]

Normal no, uncommon I don't know I see alot of people asking this question. Try running some carbon and see what happens.
What kind of filtration system do you have?

 

[tomclx]

I am running a wet dry system with skimmer

 

[sepulatian]

Have you tested your water for Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate yet? It is not uncommon. Is the cloudyness a brownish-yellow?

 

[snookedsteve]

Go buy some of the blue mesh ( i forgot what it is called). It is for aquariums. Looks like an air condition filter. Cut that to fit in your drip tray in the top of your wet/dry. Should take care of the problem. Make sure you change it when it gets dirty though. You might want to run that in your wet dry all the time. I did when I had a wet/dry and it catches alot of the big sediment.

 

[clintjj]

Did you use crushed coral? If so did you wash it first really good?

 

[granny]

If this is a new setup and you put sand in for the substrate, it will remain cloudy for a while. NO matter how much you wash sand, you just cant get all that 'stuff' out of it. I put an aquaclear 902 powerhead with a prefilter attachment on it-a black plastic cylinder with the thickly woven diatom type filter pads inside. They come 2-3 to a pack. That polishes your water wonderfully well. I actually run it for a few hours every time I change my water to make it sparkle.

 

[scrapman]

I have a 90 gal with 2 Fluval 405 opposing each other.... over filtration you could say .... never any problem with cloudy water even after cleaning rocks, sand, blowing off detritus, scraping algae.... everything is crystal clear again within 45 mns.
IMO OVER FILTRATION IS THE KEY ...

 

[maeistero]

you know, this is a problem i never thought i'd see. after over 60 tanks, all using used stuff, i jinxed myself. i have one 60 cube that hasn't cleared in over six months. i used the sand from a 180 for this tank and another 29 at the same time, wanting to lower the sandbed in the big tank. the 29 was clear in a day. lr from the same 180 in both tanks running little carbon hang ons. it's a mystery sometimes. i've given to using the tank for new lr curing, the parameters have always held steady. regular water changes. i call it the haunted house.