Cloudy Water After Water Change

reeferericb · Dec 20, 2020

I don’t think I have anything to worry about, I’m just wanting to be sure. I just completed a 30 gallon water change using a DOS pump and Apex controller. The pump goes into my sump, so it’s not disturbing the sand. The little bit of reading I’ve done suggests this may just be precipitation from alkalinity and calcium rising too quickly. Does this information seem correct? I don’t have a phosphate tester, but my LFS did a test for me yesterday and said I needed to reduce my phosphate by half. The algae I was seeing has nearly disappeared since yesterday but now I have a somewhat cloudy white tank. I’m setting up a daily 2.5 gallon change to take place now, so I’m hoping this should help stabilize my water column and clear things up.
The fish were just fed before taking the pictures, I guess they wanted seconds tonight.

xxkenny90xx · Dec 20, 2020

How long was the saltwater thoroughly mixed before the water change?

reeferericb · Dec 20, 2020

xxkenny90xx said:
How long was the saltwater thoroughly mixed before the water change?

I keep a 44 gallon Brute can in the basement. This one was about half full when I added more RODI and mix. I let it mix together for a few hours before starting the water change. The Apex takes 24 hours to complete the change, so only a little (1/24) of the water change is added per hour.

reeferericb · Dec 20, 2020

My alkalinity, calcium and magnesium (to a lesser degree) readings have all jumped up since the water change. The alkalinity jumped up slightly more than 1 in a 24 hour period.

Dkmoo · Dec 20, 2020

don't think its alk/calcium precip from "rising too quickly in your DT". Calcium precip happens only when you add a super-concentrated source of carbonate/bicarbonate that does not contain calcium (such as your alk doser), into a solution that is also super-saturated with Calcium, such as your tank's water - most saltwater is already supersaturated with calcium as long as its above something like 300-350PPM? the reef chemistry experts in this forum can check me on the numbers?

Anyway, since the new saltwater mix already contains both alk and calc, adding it to a lower concentration solution such as your tank is not going to cause precipitation. Any precipitation would have already happened in the higher "superconcentration" of Alk and CA that's in your Brute. Do you see any in the Brute? Any saltwater naturally precipitates but the good ones have a good MG balance that slows it down.

chances are, the cloud you saw - if it happened right after your water change - is either the precipitation that was already in your brute now being pumped into your DT, or it could be microbubbles from your pump

If the cloudiness happened a few hours to a day after the change, then it could also be a bateria bloom, which is very common since your tank looks very new - it will go thru a few of these different ugly phases until it matures.

reeferericb · Dec 20, 2020

The cloudy water was noticeable as the day went on yesterday. It doesn’t seem to be any better today. The water change started at 5:00 yesterday and just finished at 5:00 today. Prior to the water change I was battling a huge algae bloom. Like I could scrape the glass every couple hours and see it coming off. Now the glass is staying much cleaner, so I know it made a difference. It’s never been totally clear even when I added my first fish a couple months ago. This is about the clearest it’s been. Maybe I need to add some filtering in the sump? I don’t use filter socks and I just put a carbon bag in the yesterday, though I’m not sure that will help this. At least carbon didn’t fix it before.

Dkmoo · Dec 20, 2020

how old is the tank and what are your params? specifically amonia/nitrite/nitrate/phos? your rocks still look very bare but i already see quite a few fish so my guess is that your tank is not mature enough yet to properly handle your complete nutrient cycle. As you said you were dealing with film algae on your glass that you scraped off followed by an 30% water change. that just means that 70% of the "dead algae" that you scraped off, + 70% of whatever "bad stuff" that caused the algae bloom, is still in the tank. So even if you did not feed anything else into the tank, the fish probably still pooped a few more times so all that combined is now feeding a new cycle of some other kind of bloom - cloudy water tend to indicate its bacteria bloom now.

Carbon won't help that b/c carbon only absorbs toxins and other desolved organics which also cause cloudiness. it won't help here if ur cloudiness is from bactera.

nothing really fixes it other than time as your rocks mature + good husbandry.

reeferericb · Dec 20, 2020

Dkmoo said:
how old is the tank and what are your params? specifically amonia/nitrite/nitrate/phos? your rocks still look very bare but i already see quite a few fish so my guess is that your tank is not mature enough yet to properly handle your complete nutrient cycle. As you said you were dealing with film algae on your glass that you scraped off followed by an 30% water change. that just means that 70% of the "dead algae" that you scraped off, + 70% of whatever "bad stuff" that caused the algae bloom, is still in the tank. So even if you did not feed anything else into the tank, the fish probably still pooped a few more times so all that combined is now feeding a new cycle of some other kind of bloom - cloudy water tend to indicate its bacteria bloom now.

Carbon won't help that b/c carbon only absorbs toxins and other desolved organics which also cause cloudiness. it won't help here if ur cloudiness is from bactera.

nothing really fixes it other than time as your rocks mature + good husbandry.

The tank is a couple months old. I have a clown, hippo tang, yellow tang, yellow tail damsel (I think) and a brittle starfish. There’s about 8-10 snails, three hermit crabs a porcelain crab (haven’t seen it since I added it a couple weeks ago) and an emerald crab. It’s a 125 gallon tank plus a sump. Nitrates and phosphate was a little high yesterday, everything else has been good. The alkalinity, calcium and magnesium are on the rise after the water change. Doing 2.5 gallons a night is what’s on tap now. As long as things keep improving I will likely keep that going. I do have another clown and a small purple and gold fish in quarantine. They won’t be added to the dt for at least 30 days.

reeferericb · Dec 20, 2020

I don’t remember the phosphate number, just that the lfs said the nitrate was on the high side and phosphate was high as well. He recommended a significant water change or a phosphate absorption tool.