If you have a HOB filter too maybe try to use some filter floss in your filter compartment too , it really clears things up . I run Chemipure Elite bag, Filter floss ( polyester fibers from inside pillow with no chemicals added ) , and a poly filter and works like a charm for crystal clear waters !
Tank is looking great though btw !! I love the rock work and simplicity of the arrangement using a nice focal point in the center , great job keep it up !
I’m new at this too, I think those are diatoms and is completely normal, it’ll go away and come back at times. At this stage of my tank I added a snail and couple crabs. Beautiful set up tho! Keep it up and like everyone says have patience cuz I sure as hell didn’t. Drove me nuts lol.3 weeks in and my ammonia went to 0 (yay). I did an 80 % water change.
My current parameters after the water change are:
Temp: 78.9
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites:0.5
Nitrates: 0
Salinity: 1.024
My tank went cloudy overnight. And I noticed brown algae on one of the rocks.
Suggestions? Explanations?
Is it safe to add a clown?
the water is still cloudy. Is it possible the salt separated ? It has tiny white particles and when I dip anything in it comes out with white dust all over it. Should I just do a whole water change?
Most likely bacterial bloom, change the water. TBH I never used any of the bottled bacteria in cycling any of my tanks, so I am not really sure how they are. But I always change most of the water and let it run for at least a day when adding first fish to a newly cycled tank.
What is the method of water circulation? Dusty particles sound like your sucking up and blowing out sand.
thank you!
Here's what the Ammonia Alert looks like green. I dosed my cycling invert QT again to make sure it's really cycled. It turned this color after a few hours. It's not as clear of a match as the yellow, but I think that's a reading of 0.05 or perhaps a bit more. I dosed a 20 gal long tank with 25ml of AlgaeBarn nitrocycle.+2 on patience being both the most important and hardest part of the hobby.
For the cycle, I highly recommend a Seachem Ammonia Alert. It's some proprietary way to measure ammonia, but it think it's actually measuring toxic ammonia only and not non toxic ammonium based on the values. It reports 0.05 as the lowest detectable level. Other test kits report the combo of the two. API, for example, reports 0.25 as the lowest detectable level.
I have a QT that I'm pretty sure had ammonia problems. It had been wet for over 2 months, and I had gone through a 45 day invert QT where I did feed the corals. I measured 0 ammonia and nitrite and some nitrate, so I figured it was cycled. I lost 3 of the 4 fish put in after the invert QT was over. Ich was involved, but I think small but harmful levels of ammonia from the extra bioload weakened them and made them suspectable to the ich. Once I got a seachem ammonia alert, I was able to know when to do water changes to save the last fish. I swear by them now.
Here's the formerly problematic QT, which is now fish-only since I used copper for the ich:
Here's my new invert QT:
That was going to be an example of the button showing ammonia (it was green yesterday), but it looks like the fritz turbostart was busy over night. I first added it on Wednesday, so that's a 4-day cycle -- amazing. I'll be testing for nitrite and nitrate, and adding more ammonia to make sure it shows up and the goes away before I add living things, but that's still amazingly fast.
Here is a side by side of fresh noncycled and a cycled tank, (with a bit of live stock). Actually it's more like noncycled and 4-5 months later...I'd guess diatoms. Especially if there are bubbles. If you have algea the tank is cycling, diatoms is when I added my first clown, but I had a half and half tank: the tank was cleaned but the live rock was kept in the old tank's water ~30g out of 65ish that's in the display of my 75g. This helped speed up my cycling (although I still waited a hard 30 days before adding anything) and I dosed Kent's marine additives from Petco. Still do, an no I dont measure just a dip of that a capful of this and whala, dosing done... I added frags and a fish, he's still alive, 1 frag the anthelia died a month later and all the rest are still alive, even doing well... even the aptaisa is doing well, the dastards...
