Tank cloudy and white or green fuzz

Kingkold020 · Dec 30, 2020

Not too sure if this is a bacterial bloom or not but I recently took a very close look at my aquarium and I realized the are a ton of little particles in the water. At first I thought it was just more copepods because the just multiplied like crazy a couple of days ago. Then I looked online and someone said that copepods don’t swim so I’m not sure what the particles are. I also have super tiny, like very tiny pieces of fuzz on the rocks. It looks kind of like hair and I’m not too sure if it’s the start of green hair algae. It’s also on the snails as well. At first I thought it was food because the day before I dropped a super small piece of algae wafer in to see if the snails and hermits would eat it and it disappeared within a few hours. I should mention I have no fish and my only stocking this far are 2 hermits 2 Astrea and 2 trochus snail and the spot in which it fell has pretty low flow so I’m not too sure where that went. I have also started to develop a greenish brown algae on the glass and rocks. I’m not too sure if it’s diatoms, dinos, or some form of green algae. I just had my diatoms outbreak and that is over so I ruled out diatoms and my nitrates are very low.

My plan is just to do a 20 percent water change tomorrow and if any of this stuff comes back then Ill start to panic lol. I came here though to see if any of these things are something I should be worried about. I also wanted to know if I should raise my nitrates and how I should go about doing that if I do.

Tank Parameters:
Nitrates: 0
Nitrites: 0
phosphate: 0
Ammonia: 0
Calcium: 440
Magnesium: 1290
pH: 8
Salinity: 1.023 (I know it’s low I finally got my calibration solution today)
Temp: 79.5 F

Tank has been running since November with the only additions being the livestock mentioned above and a Ricordea.

If pictures are needed I’ll get them at 5:30

Mastiffsrule · Dec 30, 2020

Evening,

From your description alone it does not sound like anything to worry about. The items floating in the water column probably are just tiny particulates that can be filtered out mechanically. Are you running any type of filter sock or other media to capture fine particles? The brown stuff sounds like tank uglies or diatoms.

I would ask if there is a reason there is no fish in there. You should have something in there to provide waste to support you established bacterial bed.

Kingkold020 · Dec 31, 2020

Mastiffsrule said:
Evening,

From your description alone it does not sound like anything to worry about. The items floating in the water column probably are just tiny particulates that can be filtered out mechanically. Are you running any type of filter sock or other media to capture fine particles? The brown stuff sounds like tank uglies or diatoms.

I would ask if there is a reason there is no fish in there. You should have something in there to provide waste to support you established bacterial bed.

Right now I am just running the filter media that comes with an aquaclear 70.( Foam, carbon, bio balls). The reason I didn’t have fish yet was because I was waiting for my lid from Amazon which took more than a while to come in. I actually just put it on yesterday and that’s when I noticed the particles in the water lol. I plan to get a royal gramma or fire fish tomorrow so I’m very excited.