Sandstorm in my tank!

[Alanna]

Ugh . . . I have a great white sediment cloud in my tank! I bought a bag of Aragonite sand and about 5# of live sand. Rinsed them in separate buckets and added it to the tank around my live rock. Now I have a huge cloud.

 

It settled overnight, but the slightest water movement stirs it all up again. I siphoned out a lot of it, but there is still more continuing to settle all over everything. It's so thick I can't even see the heater attached to the back glass.

 

Does it eventually sink into the sandbed so it doesn't continue to stir up?

 

I see all these great pictures on the members page of their crystal clear water and wonder if I did something wrong or if it's just a waiting game?

 

Also, I had a couple of damsels hitch-hike home in a piece of the live rock I bought. I'm glad I had the forethought to bring a bucket of saltwater instead of letting them wrap it in newspaper.

 

Anyway, will the silt floating around hurt them? I currently have them in the transport bucket with their rock.

 

Suggestions?

 

Alanna

[krysis]

The cloudiness is normal. My tank was cloudy for a few days after adding in the sand. I don't think it will hurt the damsels. How did you get damsel hitch-hikers??

[Alanna]

I bought a few pieces of live rock from a lfs and they have a shallow tank with their rock and lots of damsels swimming around.

 

Evidently, there were a couple of damsels hiding out in the rocks when they lifted them out.

[lizbeth]

I usually use a HOB filter with floss to get the water cleared up. The floss has to be rinsed frequently.

 

What kind of damsels are they? Are you going to keep them? If not I'd return them now, they can be difficult to catch in a main tank. Personally I really like all the blue damsels.

[Korbin]

I took a regular hang-on-back filter and bought filter floss separately ( a big bag of it). Run the filter with the floss compartment stuffed full, then turn off the filter, and lift the entire filter off the back of the tank and rinse the whole thing out. If you turn it off and then back on again, you will dump all kinds of dust back in.

 

Also, once you get some bactera and algae going, the particles will flocculate and come out of suspension. But I hate waiting.

Don't worry about it. Your tank will be clear soon enough. The next step is to get a digicam and post some pictures.

[coralreefengr]

I don't see where you mention your tank volume and powerhead size. I have a 10 gallon with a Maxi-jet 900. We have the flow directed at about 45 degrees upward and the unit is placed more than 3/4 the way up the side of the tank. It took a while for us to find the appropriate size powerhead without making sandstorms. Maybe you already thought of that, but I can't think of anything else that would cause it. We also have fine sand on one side and more coarse sand where there is more flow. It's a trade-off, but it works.

[Alanna]

I called the lfs about the damsels and they said consider it part of the benefits of adding live rock.

 

The floss is a great idea! I'll pick some up tonight. After leaving a trickle filter with a regular carbon filter in it going for a day, it has cleard up significantly.

 

Of course, the dust is still settled on top, so I'm sure it's going to be a few days before it's totally clear.

 

I'll be posting pics soon.

 

Thanks for the advice.

[SeaMountain]

errrrrrr... Did the LFS tell you to "RINSE" the Live Sand? I'm thinking that's not the thing to do. Aragonite, maybe. I dumped 20lbs of Arag-Alive into my 10g without a rinse.

 

Rinsing LS would wash away beneficial microbes and sh-tuff. Not that this addresses your cloud problem, but just wondering if you actually rinsed the LS or not, and why.