Need help with murky/greenish water

[honkey sauce]

i think you just added 17lbs off amoniauncured liverock

[Slick Fork]

The rock was really quite clean, and would it've caused the "murk" to start almost as soon as it got put in?

[Richard_Dicosimo]

what did the rock smell like before you added it? if it smelt skanky at all it probably had a bunch of die off on it. as for the algea bloom i have never had this problem but i bet a uv sterilizer would help alot or even ozone.


Richard

[kwirky]

having lights on while curing liverock is asking for trouble. learned that myself. try running it for a while with no lights, do some weekly water changes to export the ammonia, and run a phosphate reactor to make sure any ammonia being converted to phosphates by dieing algae is removed. some algae can thrive off ammonia or phosphates, or nitrates, only neednig one of the three.
killing the algae will only provide nutrients, causing another bloom shortly afterwards. you gotta fix the nutrient conversion, and export the nutrients, so lower your lighting cycle, do water changes, and run a phosphate reactor. also if you have a substrate, remove as much as you can for now. it'll only hold dieoff in it until it gets disturbed to cause another bloom later. when it's all fixed, you can put the sand back in again.

your snails will probably starve, though, cuz they'll have nothing to eat.

next time i start a tank from fresh, i'm going to cure all my rock at once in rubbermaid bins, making it easy to dump the water and rinse the rock, and NOT light it for about 2 months. would have saved me so much grief if i did that.

[Slick Fork]

Well, the good news is that the tank is looking MUCH better, I can see the back wall!

I had thought I was being smart and avoiding problems by buying my rock in smaller amounts as I went along. I think the next rock I get will go straight into the rubbermaid bin for a while!