Need advice

[jaybk5211]

I was gone for 4 days and came back to a cloudy tank. It has apparently been cloudy since I left, father in law was looking over things while I was gone. I did a 10% water change before leaving, and put food in containers for him to feed daily while I was gone. I come back and I have a ton of diatoms on the sand, and everything is orange/brown on the walls of the tank and sump. I have a couple corals looking rough but most are ok. All my levels look fine, and I am thinking it is an algae or bacteria bloom. Algae I thought was usually green and this is milky white. I plan on doing a 20-30% water change today and getting the sand clean but need feedback. Tank has been set up since July, and I run Gfo and mildy dose the tank for additives and trace elements.

Here are a couple pics for reference.

 

[Reefing Madness]

Looks like an ammonia bloom. What are your water parameters?
Alothough its possible one of your corals spawned, that would make your tank look milky.

 

[jaybk5211]

It looks milky kind of, but I have a ton or orange/brown diatoms it looks like on the sand and coating the algae and sump. My ammonia is 0, almost all corals and fish look fine except a little receding on a chalice and a monti cap getting white streaks.

 

[brandon429]

Im convinced if I ever get a large reef that can't do super easy super reset 100% water changes Im going to get an old school, waaaaay oversized diatom filter to use for emergency water column strainings. those polishers are awesome and would work well for your issue here, they strain the water well of any suspended items.

emergency canister filters(s) x2 w low micron filters just the same, let em run

if your tank was mine id have those, a huge giant UV filter, and Id go through this weekend hand cleaning off all that organic fed growth and export it all from the tank. got dosed a little too much thats all, fed some primary producers and no clean up crews to attack beyond normal levels, easy fix. just some elbow grease export catchup

 

[zoous]

Brush and siphon it out. Do a good clean and add some carbon.

 

[jaybk5211]

I added carbon last night, haven't cleaned the sump yet. Just did a water change.

 

[jaybk5211]

Day 4 of cloudiness, not getting better. Really frustrating that I can't figure out why....

 

[brandon429]

the biomass has not been assertively exported, only partially so it rebounded. if your tank was in my living room it would be totally clean from a hard weekends work and id have a 55 w pond uv on it kept in the closet for just these events


you could easily wind up with a months long issue and algae invasion upcoming, but id opt right out of that. This tank commands forceful export that's all. Easy fix

at some point in my weekend of work id pay the lfs to truck me over 60 gallons pre made for easy wc

 

[brandon429]

Your tank has a massive fuel source to aid this bloom for quite a long time, without decisive action. I think the gfo helped prevent a worse outbreak

 

[jaybk5211]

Well we were all wrong, the GFO reactor had an issue, and was pumping the brown stuff into the tank and causing cloudiness. The GFO was like 3 different shades in the reactor, some was even a grey color. Not sure what happened but I shut the reactor down and its almost clear by lights out tonight.