my tank looks really dirty!?!?!

[joebob7]

well my tank is a 20g long and has been up for 9 months now and the 4 fish i have put in there at different times have all died
except for my clean up crew (6 hermits 3 big snails)
but i have healthy corals
xenia (about 5 stocks)
frogspawn (2 heads)
GSP (2 patches)
purple people eaters (20 polyps)
assorted zoanthids (dragon eyes and such)
i was looking at different tanks and i realized that my tanks looks grungy and dirty
its not algea i had a big bloom of that that went away
i have a skimmer and the water is clear
but my sand is what looks so bad because it is brown on the top mostly because of rock fragments shell pieces etc
is this just my sand that is making it look so bad
as soon as i figure out how to post pictures which i still have no idea how to do
i will post some of the tank

 

[joebob7]

IMG_2572.JPG

 

[larryndana]

i can't view the pic?

 

[joebob7]

yeah i cant either im not sure how to post them

 

[cherish life.]

before you post you have to go to manage attachments on the post page and find that file on your computer

 

[joebob7]

ok i figured it out
here are a few of my corals
some people eaters and dragon eyes i think

 

[joebob7]

yayy here are some more!!
in the last pic you can see the ugly sand

 

[stdreb27]

That is an issue with water quality normally, my tank looked like that for about 6 or 7 months, I think it look that long to get most of the tap water out with regular water changes, I've switched to RO/DI and my sand looks alot better.

 

[jhebi]

What you can do is get some buckets put the fishes, corals since is not that much stocked and stir the sand and vacuum take all the dirty water and do a water change and it would help.....

 

[stdreb27]

From the picture it looks like argonite right? You should be able to vac that out, you'll prolly have to do that several times, I did once a week. Replacing 20% of the water. It shouldn't take you as long with the nano tank.