Water clarity issue

Hello everyone, back with another issue that has been driving me crazy.

My problem is numerous white specks floating around in my DT. I did a lot of searching first as to what the problem may be, from pods (none of which look like my issue), to calcium precipitate. It looks like it is snowing in my tank and a lot of it collects at the top and the rest is blown around by the pump/powerhead. to help knock some responses off the list I've noticed are common; my fresh mixed water is crystal, no salt floating around. I thought it might be sand, but even after killing all water movement it just remains suspended indefinitely.

Params.
Alk - 9dKH
calc - 475
Mag - 1440

Nitrate - 20ppm
phos - .05mg
sal - 1.025
ph - 8.39

Please ask for any other info that will help.

Thanks!

 

Not to doubt your intelligence at all,

could it be micro bubbles somehow perhaps?

You have alot of fish in there! Any pics or vids?
If we could see it, maybe that would help

 

I wish it was micro bubbles, but I actually had an issue with them as well (since been fixed), and now this . I have plenty of pics but it's hard to get a good picture of the particles.

Left half


Right Half


And Specs (this picture does not do justice, in person there is many more particles visible)


Side shots



Back

 

Ohhh and ahhhhh nice tank.

Engineer goby might just be your issue.

 

Sand

 

+1 very nice!

 

;DThanks!

My engineer goby has made all the tunnels he wanted it seems, has not done any digging for months.

It doesn't seem like any sand is actually being lifted, even when one of my goby sift throughout the day it falls back down barely any is circulated around the tank.

 

I stand by the gobies being the issue. Do have a pistol shrimp as well?

The fine particulate pieces cloud the tank. The sifters may be stirring up stuff buried as well even just plain old debris that would stay buried if there were no sifters.

What type of mechanical filtration do you have? Sponge, floss, sock?

 

Man...nice tank...Do you have any powerheads, like Koralias near the top? They can pull sand from the bottom even 4 ft from the sand.

 

Try to catch some in a clear glass, then let it sit and watch them. You'll be looking for 2 things:
1) do they move on their own in the glass now that the flow has been removed?
2) do they float/sink/stay suspended?

bonus: try to sift off as much tank water from your glass as possible without losing any of your particles, and then dilute with RO water. Do this a few more times. Do they dissolve? If so I'd suspect some sort of water soluble precipitate. If not, then some sort of foreign matter or bacterial clump.