Painting kitchen cabinets turned my water cloudy.

[Jimmyneptune]

I have two aquariums, a 93-gallon cube and 80-gallon frag, in a family room that is 6 steps down from my kitchen. My wife is having the kitchen cabinets painted white. The painters used a spray gun to paint the cabinets. They sealed off the entire area with plastic drop cloth to contain the spray.

Yesterday they primed the cabinets and everything was fine in my tanks. Today they pained the cabinets and now my water is all cloudy. The skimmer has white gunk in the collection cup. I am not sure what is happening in the tank, maybe paint particles got in the tank.

On the 93-gallon, I hooked up a BRS carbon reactor mini with carbon and a Marineland Magnum Polishing Internal Canister Filter and put in a new filter sock. On the 80 gallon I put in a filter sock on my overflow in the sump and placed a bag of activated carbon in the sock.

I was just looking for advice on what I can do now?

 

[sixty_reefer]

You may need to get old of as much activated carbon as you can and maybe a large water change as soon as possible.
If it’s the painters, your tank may have been contaminated with solvent.

 

[Glenner’sreef]

The skimmer has not only pulled the paint out of the air, it was probably the key cause of your problem. It should have been unplugged during the painting. Painting, Carpet cleaning, air fresheners etc. are bad news for our tank with skimmers.
I would do back to back to back water changes. Carbon not so sure about? Good luck.

 

[Nathan Peel]

I have two aquariums, a 93-gallon cube and 80-gallon frag, in a family room that is 6 steps down from my kitchen. My wife is having the kitchen cabinets painted white. The painters used a spray gun to paint the cabinets. They sealed off the entire area with plastic drop cloth to contain the spray.

Yesterday they primed the cabinets and everything was fine in my tanks. Today they pained the cabinets and now my water is all cloudy. The skimmer has white gunk in the collection cup. I am not sure what is happening in the tank, maybe paint particles got in the tank.

On the 93-gallon, I hooked up a BRS carbon reactor mini with carbon and a Marineland Magnum Polishing Internal Canister Filter and put in a new filter sock. On the 80 gallon I put in a filter sock on my overflow in the sump and placed a bag of activated carbon in the sock.

I was just looking for advice on what I can do now?

Running carbon is good. You may want to change it out sooner than you normally would. Also, you could do a water change. Other than that, not much you can do.
Your corals don't look too upset. So that's good. I'd say just let it ride out and again, maybe do a water change.
Although it is probably because of the paint, maybe it's unrelated?
I'd check to make sure something else isn't wrong. Test your water and see if anything is out of wack.

 

[Jimmyneptune]

Running carbon is good. You may want to change it out sooner than you normally would. Also, you could do a water change. Other than that, not much you can do.
Your corals don't look too upset. So that's good. I'd say just let it ride out and again, maybe do a water change.
Although it is probably because of the paint, maybe it's unrelated?
I'd check to make sure something else isn't wrong. Test your water and see if anything is out of wack.

Its the painting for sure, that is the only thing that has changed. The corals don't look agitated yet. I have been looking at my ph and it seems stable.
What tests would be best to check for due to contaminates.

 

[Jimmyneptune]

The skimmer has not only pulled the paint out of the air, it was probably the key cause of your problem. It should have been unplugged during the painting. Painting, Carpet cleaning, air fresheners etc. are bad news for our tank with skimmers.
I would do back to back to back water changes. Carbon not so sure about? Good luck.

You are 100% right, the skimmers should have been off.

 

[JGT]

Hopefully paint is a latex which shouldn’t be too bad from a toxicity standpoint. If it’s oil then you might be in for a rough ride.

 

[Harold999]

I even go outside if i spray deoderant under my arms. Seriously, no joke.

 

[DeniseAndy]

Bet the neighbors love that. "Oh, that is just Harold, he has his funny ways."

 

[Jimmyneptune]

Day 2 and my coral and fish are still alive.
My anemones are deflated but color is still good. There was a snail on the side of the aquarium all day and then dropped to the floor of the tank. It was moving when I set it up rightI will know more when the lights come on.


I believe the problem was the skimmer drawing in the paint particulate.

There is still lots of white film in the water.


other issues:

I had my ph drop to 7.49 on the one aquarium but it went back up to 809, usually that tank runs at 8.4 or more. The drop happened over the course of an hour or two and took that much time to climb again. The drop happened after cleaning my skimmer.

Skimmers are acting wonky, they filling with white pasty foam.

Will get white foam in overflow and first chamber of sump.


I have been trying to use a mechanical filter with filter floss and skimming.
I just hooked up sediment filter to see if that will pull out the film.

I have about 36 gallons of water made ready for a water change and I could make another 40-60. I haven’t done a water change because it seems like I would only pull out a small percentage of the total volume of the white film by changing the water.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Day 2 and my coral and fish are still alive.
My anemones are deflated but color is still good. There was a snail on the side of the aquarium all day and then dropped to the floor of the tank. It was moving when I set it up rightI will know more when the lights come on.


I believe the problem was the skimmer drawing in the paint particulate.

There is still lots of white film in the water.


other issues:

I had my ph drop to 7.49 on the one aquarium but it went back up to 809, usually that tank runs at 8.4 or more. The drop happened over the course of an hour or two and took that much time to climb again. The drop happened after cleaning my skimmer.

Skimmers are acting wonky, they filling with white pasty foam.

Will get white foam in overflow and first chamber of sump.


I have been trying to use a mechanical filter with filter floss and skimming.
I just hooked up sediment filter to see if that will pull out the film.

I have about 36 gallons of water made ready for a water change and I could make another 40-60. I haven’t done a water change because it seems like I would only pull out a small percentage of the total volume of the white film by changing the water.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

A few 30 percent water changes space out every 12 hours helped me when my tank was contaminated with toxins.

 

[ZombieEngineer]

If you have a BRS style reactor, you could crank the flow as high as it will go and put in a 1 micron sediment filter in one chamber and as much carbon as will fit in the other one. Change the carbon regularly until the clouding goes away.

Otherwise and in addition to above, a large water change is in order as soon as you have enough heated to do so. I would target 25-30%. Set skimmers to run more wet than usual and dump cups frequently.

 

[DaJMasta]

If things are still alive, you've likely dodged the worst of it. Large water changes and filtering out anything that will come out is a good general approach. If you're ultimately curious as to what it was, you could also collect a sample for later ICP analysis - probably easiest to check on as soon as it happens, but if you're still seeing signs and still pulling out stuff, it's still in there in some concentration.


For small amounts of surface film, you can actually just lay a sheet of clean printer paper on the surface of the water and then pull it off when saturated. You should have more than enough mixing and gas exchange not to need it, but it can be helpful to see through or if the film is particularly concerning.

 

[HudsonReefer2.0]

I even go outside if i spray deoderant under my arms. Seriously, no joke.

They do make solids and gels. Just sayin

 

[JGT]

They do make solids and gels. Just sayin

Or based on the stench coming from some of the teenage guys at my gym, au natural is apparently “in”

 

[Jimmyneptune]

If you have a BRS style reactor, you could crank the flow as high as it will go and put in a 1 micron sediment filter in one chamber and as much carbon as will fit in the other one. Change the carbon regularly until the clouding goes away.

Otherwise and in addition to above, a large water change is in order as soon as you have enough heated to do so. I would target 25-30%. Set skimmers to run more wet than usual and dump cups frequently.

I have a BRS mini reactor so a standard sediment filter is way to long. I tried buying a sediment filter from Lowes to hook up to the reactor but they were incompatible.
I had to shut down my RODI to pull a chamber off so I can use it with the reactor.
So which is better now water changes or sediment filter?

 

[LeftyReefer]

Bummer.

This is another good reason why it's a good idea to run your skimmer air intake from outside (fresh) air when possible. Although that isn't without problems too.

Had your skimmer been pulling in fresh outside air, maybe this wouldn't have happened?

Saying that, it could have just been over-spray, or it could have been the skimmer pulling it out of the air. hard to say at this point.

Hope everything makes a full recovery for you, glad you found the issue pretty quick.

 

[ZombieEngineer]

I have a BRS mini reactor so a standard sediment filter is way to long. I tried buying a sediment filter from Lowes to hook up to the reactor but they were incompatible.
I had to shut down my RODI to pull a chamber off so I can use it with the reactor.
So which is better now water changes or sediment filter?

One water change as soon as possible. We know for sure that will help. Sediment will only help if what got in the tank is suspended and not dissolved. Carbon and skimming will help anything dissolved.

If you have an extra sediment filter and a hacksaw, you can cut one to fit the mini reactor without taking your RODI down.

 

[DeniseAndy]

If you happen to have a canister filter around, youcan use it with just some felt and pull crap out. I have one for times I want to polish (use 1micron sheets) or need to filter the tank a lot without water changes.

 

[Firepony]

I would have covered any open area with plastic and tape it down Real good so nothing can squeeze the tape. Then shut off everything, even the light if it has fans in it
I had to do this with my 30g, 75g and 120 gallon because here in Florida..bugs are bad and I had to set off 6 bombs in my house. Granite I had to leave everything closed up tight till the next day...but nothing happened and everybody was fine this was 5 months ago. Just a suggestion