White out

[Marcus K]

The last couple of days my tank has been cloudy. It seems to get worse and lighten up throughout the day to a point that you can not see the back. I had this happen a while back after I had added Caulerpa to my FO. Im not sure what day it started to turn cloudy but I did just do a water change. I am using IO and would like to test my salt. What do I need to test for, what would be a good brand of test kit? I have Hagen as that is what my LFS has. When my Caulerpa went A-sexual I yanked all of it out. Any thoughts? I have a batch mixed and ready for a change.

[Marcus K]

I did another water change with RO/DI water that I bought with no change. The water is green not white. Any thoughts.

[Jack]

Any idea where the nutrients are comming from? Finding the source and reducing/eliminating it is a good start. What do you feed, are the bulbs old, are you using sponge filters anywhere in the tank, is your skimmer not working.. ect ect ect...?

This green water syndrome or whatever is usually caused by really high Phosphates in the water. Maybe try a phosphate sponge?

[Marcus K]

Thanks for the reply, I just cleaned the skimmer last night. It takes about a day to start working(seaclone) still looking into replacing it. I had a green hair algae outbreak after I moved the skimmer to my Q-tank that I am curing some live rock. After a water change the water seemed to go cloudy so I moved the skimmer back and pulled all the green hair algae out of the tank. I also added some new charcoal. I have added some filter floss above the sponge that I have in my overflow today which seems to be catching lots of brown stuff. I have changed from tap water to bought filtered water to see if this help. Looking into a RO/DI unit now.

The bulbs are all new and I am only running half of them. Three 50/50 55 watt PC and a 10 000K 55 watt PC. Right now only two 50/50's are running.

I feed Formula One, Marine Pro flake, and Frozen Marine Quisine. I have a False Percula, Maroon, Dia. Dotty, Four Green Chromis. All this in a 90gal.

Marcus

[Doug]

Marcus, its hard to say what the problem is. Sounds like green water, which is an algae bloom. If thats what it is, there are several threads here about others with the sam problems and fix ups.

Otherwise a cloudy tank is usually just poor water related. That could be fixed by water changes, but I believe your problem to be the above.

There was one huge thread on it. Let me know if you cant find it.

[AJ_77]

What is it with 90 gal tanks and green water??

My own "green water" thread is unavailable now, but had some real doozies for pictures, you couldn't see 4 inches into the green murk.

I upgraded to a Turboflotor 1000 skimmer, put a borrowed UV filter on a slow powerhead, added carbon in the sump, added floss, changed the floss and carbon often, ran Kent phosphate sponge in a Fluval, reduced the photoperiod, ran a micron filter, and still had to remove my Tang as it was suffering.

Oh, and I put in a couple of donated clams - they love the stuff. After adding the UV filter and second phosphate sponge, things started to clear up. Lost a couple of corals but no fish. The clams grew...

Good luck with your green!

[Dorkel Marine 1]

Yes I remember Allans thread on green water. What an adventure that was. But I do remember you found out that the charcoal you were using had phosphates in it. Correct me if I'm wrong Allan. But you may want to check on your charcoal if your using some.

Using filtered water will help but it will take some time. I started out with tap water. Battled algae blooms forever. Went to filtered water and over time everything died down. I have small tanks so using filtered water from the store is feasible. Bigger tank, like you said getting a RO unit would be good.

Oh also I did larger water changes more often for a while too. Also started using a skimmer around that time. That of course helped also.

George

Thats been my experience.

[Marcus K]

Thanks everyone, I will do a large water change with RO/DI and look into the charcoal. It is getting better but not clear enough yet. Wish I knew what the cause was! Thanks again

Marcus