pinkfloyd1312
Community Member
32 gal biocube here. Tank is around 5 months old now. Running InTank media basket in chamber 2 with floss/pad and chemipure blue. I've run some phosguard on and off as well and that's it. Upgraded lighting to Steve's LED's 6 or 8 weeks ago (I like blues so the pics are kinda bad, sorry for that). I've had hair algae, brown algae, etc.. all expected and then things were fairly stable for a while. CUC keeps the rock work looking great and everything seems to be happy other than a torch that died. In additional to corals, I have a small six line and two clowns, definately not overstocked. That said, the sand bed just will not clear up. Looks much worse than the pictures actually show. Some weeks have been better than others but for the most part, vac and water change, 6 hours later sometimes less, looks like crap again and some days the lower third of the glass will get super cloudy in a couple hours, some days it's fine. I thought it was diatoms initially but I can't just stir it up into the water column, it just breaks up into gunky clumps and my vacuum doesn't really pick it up either, just falls back into the sand bed when I try. Sometimes there are air bubbles in it also. I initially thought it was diatoms but when I leave it for a few days it gets pretty heavy and dark and when I wipe the glass, I get a deep maroon color on my magic eraser. Also, diatoms should be easy to stir and make disappear right? IE: no clumping... It's been going on like this for a couple months now so my assumption that it would go away with good husbandry seems to be off base. I have done a 5 gal. water change every weekend but one since I've had this tank running using my LFS RODI water (that's right at 20% of what this tank will hold in water with all of the rock, etc..) and clean things up as best I can. I've cleaned the equipment thoroughly, rear chambers, blown off the rocks, pretty much everything that I can think of from a cleaning approach. I have had my water tested at two different lfs's and at home and phosphates are almost non existent. what the heck is going on here and what can I do? I have considered nuking it with chemicals but have resisted that for the past few months though I'm running short on patience. Time for chemiclean or is this something else.
