Help me Clean up my Water!!!

My fish tank is going on 8 months old....

90 Gallons
20 Gallon sump
BRS Dual Carbon / GFO reactor
150 gallon REEF OCTOPUS 6 Protein skimmer
Mag 7 Return Pump
EDIT: koralia 1400
about 40 lbs of Coarse and 40lbs fine sand from marco rocks

My fish tank has been really "dirty" since the day i set it up and I'm fed up with it. I see some of these other fish tanks on the forums and even at my LFS and they all look like the fish are swimming in air and I want to get my tank like that. heres what my water currently looks likes :

I started with all fine sand and hated it.....so i slowly siphoned out as much of it as i could and replaced it with well rinsed coarse sand. im glad i did and the new sand looks awesome. but i need to get rid of the rest of this stuff in my water column. I'v tried a 200 micron filter sock on my overflow pipes as well as some filter floss in my sump baffles.....the floss seemed to pick up a lot of debris but also let a lot of floss out into the tank and wouldn't stay in place.

Any advice?

And thanks in Advance,
RTM

 

Hi RTM

what else do you have in terms of flow?

if the flow is good enough throughout the set up, particles stay in suspension until they reach the overflow, and then can be taken out by sock or filter wool etc


if the flow is not adequate, those particles settle somewhere, until disturbed by activity of fish/ inverts etc and thus the tank always seems to have varying degrees of floating debris in the water

a blast with a power head to shift everything that is settled and then randomly doing same over course of a couple of days, should help to get the 8 months worth of detritus moving towards the overflow and captured by the sock

PS a 200 micron sock is not much use for capturing the fine particles that are making your water look dirty
I know, I tried with a 100 micron sock and it was about as much use as an ashtray on a Harley Davidson

you want a 5 micron sock - but you need to monitor it, becuase they clog quickly and could cause an overflow

 

A koralia 1400 on the other side of the tank from the return.

Have any recommendation for where to pick up a 5 micron filter sock? All my LFS sells is 200 i think.

 

Hi Rtm
can' say with any certainty from your location, just checked Big Als and BRS for you and all they have is 200 micron listed

one thing you could do is line the 200 micron sock, with the filterwool you have, ensuring there is no easy direct route for the water through it
you are best running this when you have a full day free, so you can stand close and observe and be there to prevent overflow etc

if you line the inside of the sock with filter wool
attach it to the overflow pipe
and then randomly blast the rockwork with a power head over the course of the day get the water dirty and allow it to run off into the filter wool lined sock
at end of the day remove and clean the filter wool ( or throw it away)

then following weekend repeat

this also solves your issue of filter wool being lose and drifting around your tank

Steve

 

Don't say *dirty* it actually looks pretty clean. It'll settle down. If you can't put a sock in it (lol) throw a hob filter or canister filter on it filled with some fiber.