Big mistake?

After three days of having water and Instant Ocean in our new tank, it's still cloudy. Seems we forgot to rinse off the crushed coral before putting it in the tank. Do we need to start over? :-/

Not a big deal if we do, we have plenty of Instant Ocean left...

Go easy on me people...our last tank was fresh water...still learning.

 

hey I am a noob myself but it just might settle

 

No problem. Take a power filter (probably still have one from your freshwater tank) and fill it with filter floss, the kind that looks like polyester fluff to stuff pillows with. Use that on the tank and it will take out the cloud quick. Just be careful when you dump the used media that it doesn't fall back into the tank.

 

I did the same thing, luckily I had a fluval 404 and I packed it with filter floss. Problem solve in one night.

 

Hi, mind if I add something? Unless you are using Oolite or othe fine sands I suggest new users actually stir their coral for the first week or so to remove the dust in the crushed coral. Yes, use some sort of filter to remove the debris from the tank. I just like to remove as much as possible before I get started so if I need to shift things around I woun't kick up too much dust when living creates are in the tank.

 

Ah...we sold all of the old powerheads and filters with our old tank. This new one has a drop in filter attached to the back side of the hood filled with Black Diamond charcoal. My wife took it out yesterday and rinsed it out pretty good, but the water is still a little cloudy.

Dyngoe-- 1st of all GO STEELERS!!

2nd-- I couldn't really tell you what kind of sand we have. It's black and pretty fine. It came in a bag attached to the crushed coral. Pretty generic looking package. No brand.

If the salinity checks out today, we're going to take a water sample up to our store for analization and ask about getting live rock...or should we just wait for the water to clear?

 

Get your water moving and add a filter with some floss. Since its a brand new tank dont be afraid to stir up the substrate to get all that dust out. I would wait for the LR just because your LR will crate dead spot that the dust will settle in. Plus if your water is cloudy you wont be able to see anything when you d your aquascaping.

Marc.

 

Let me clarify cloudy...

I can see all the way through the tank, but the water isn't crystal clear...kinda murkyish grey-greenish color. The tank gets no direct sunlight whatsoever. Here's some pics of my setup so far.

 

Get a small power head. I think we thought it was much cloudier. This is normal. There will be this type of cloudiness for a bit but you need to get the water moving. the flow created from the filter isn't enough. It's kinda counter intuitive but flow will help.

J

 

Well, Jason...here's the big problem. This is one of those "self contained" tanks where the filter and light are all in the hood. There's really no room to put a powerhead anywhere. I know...just engineer one right? I would....but my wife is involved too, and there's another tricky part...heh, heh.

I have observed the flow comming out of the filter, and have watched a few pieces of floating "junk" get swept all the way to the opposite bottom corner before resurfacing. I don't know how much more flow would really be needed...but then again, I'm a noob!!!