Cloudy water after live sand

[sunilp]

I am setting up my 180 gallon reef tank and I filled the tank with RO/DI water which took about 5 days. I did not want to rinse the live sand with fresh water thinking it may kill off whatever is live in it. I added the live sand to the tank full of water. The water was very cloudy initially and after running the pumps for about 3 days, the I got about 3 inches of visibility. I turned the skimmer on and that seems to have helped a bit. I now have 5 inches of visibility but it does not seem to get any better for about 2 weeks now. I rinse the filter socks everyday. Is there any other filteration method I can use to get rid of this cloudyness?

[hamiltonguy]

You can try shutting all pumps off for 24hrs, that's what helped with mine. My 75 has been cycling for a few days now and I would say it took about 4-5 days for everything to clear up. Mainly because I kept moving the rock around but what helped most was just shutting everything off and letting the debris settle. Also make sure none of your powerheads/returns are blowing the sand around.

Best of luck with the rest of the tank!

[Hnguyen85]

I would hook up a small pump on the inside wall of the tank with a hose going into a filtersock. That will help out a lot since you don't have to wait for all that sand to be drawn into the overflow. With the pump inside the tank, it will help move all that stuff into the filtersock faster and that should do the trick. A few of my friends do that and it works great. I've never tried it because I never really have a big problem with sand storms since I always add my sand in first.


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[kctango]

I had the same problem with my 110 setup I dont believe in washing sand. My water was cloudy for over a week, I did use a water clarifier which sped up the process. I ran my skimmer also and changed my filter media in the sump every two days. I will further warn you that you will get a fine layer of fine particles covering everything in your tank I sucked out this layer because it would cause the cloudyness to return when disturbed. I used my powerheads to blow off the rocks a little at as time until all the dusting was gone. It did take time but now the hardscape looks great. If you look at my build you will see my nice cloudy tank and all the dust.

[crvz]

2 weeks does seem like a long time. I'd probably also shut off the pumps for a day or so to see if that helps at all. Also, how are the filter socks being used? Could be that youre stirring those up and releasing what has been captured back into the tank.

[spags315]

Can I leave my fish in my 55g with the sand cloud?

[reefer1970]

I hope you don't have the same problem as me. I ordered that super white/ super fine live sand off Ebay and now my tank is constantly cloudy, especially when disturbed by my diamond goby. I just bought a diatom filter and planning on running it daily. If you bought what I did, do yourself a favor and get it out and add coarser sand.