Help, My Tank's Been Cloudy Forever

Just curious, do you have a baffle for the return? I ask because it looks like you have a 20 gallon high for your sump, and the water level on the side is straight across... and we can see both ends in the picture.

 

There is no baffle. What is hard to see is that the plumbing routs the flow away from the return into a reverse durso to keep it laminar. There are no micro bubbles. This is a much different clouding.

 

I'm not saying it is or isn't microbubbles... but I see tons of bubbles on top of your water. More so than my entire sump, which hasn't been designed to minimize bubbles in all chambers.

 

I understand and appreciate the thought. As I hope you can see from the picture however, the problem is a bloom, not micro bubbles.

 

Yes, and I wasn't doubting your ability to know/see the difference.

Do you have a diatom filter? My tank had its own bloom for a long time. Things that I found that helped:
1) Get the skimmer running at peak (may even run a bit wetter skimmate)
2) Diatom filter (just hook it up and leave it run for a few hours)
3) Water changes (minimally effective)
4) Reduced feedings (you're getting a bloom from some nutrient, reducing nutrients may help)

I didn't try lights out, but others have suggested it to be effective.

 

Yeah. I've been trying to think in terms of targeting root causes. To that end I'm reducing feedings and any dosing dramatically (I prefer not to stop things other than one at a time in order to better ascertain the effects). At this point though, I may just be frustrated enough to attack the symptoms and try lights out, diatom filters, or perhaps UV.

As for my skimmer, I guess I just don't know. The bubble is about an inch from the top of the cup at this point. While it is making foam, its not making this big dense column of foam that you get when there are sufficient proteins for skimming. I feel like the water is still too clean for this skimmer and because its not pulling out gunk, its not pulling out enough bacteria along with it. I'm tempted to toss some egg white in to see what that does.

 

I'm tempted to try UV as well... lots of people swear by it for clearing up water.

 

I just had a week plus long white cloudy water issue myself that was a bacteria bloom. I bought a cheap 24 watt uv sterilizer from PetCo and it was clear in 3 days. That was on a 210gal plus 75gal sump too!

 

Have you removed the sterelizer? How long has it been removed if it has been? I don't want to run one permenantly, but would be willing to give it a try as an interem fix.

 

Well I just had an ich outbreak so I haven't removed it yet, but people say once the bloom is gone it doesn't come back (unless you have something really wrong feeding it).