The Puffer Forum

I'm setting up a 20 gallon for my f8 currently housed in a 10 gallon with just gravel and some dead coral, having a problem with buffering and such... so went out and got the crushed coral today --- i see that even after rinsing the coral a million times that it is VERY cloudy in the tank, when will this clear up usually?

Yup.

Add some micron filter pads or polyfill (can be found at any hobby shop) to your filter and rinse them every few hours or once a day to speed up the process. In the end it should take about a week or so.

The cloudiness will dissipate eventually. How long it takes depends on how much turnover you have in the aquarium (how many times the water passes through the filter per hour) and what kind of filter media you're using.

Carbon would help clear up the cloudiness pretty quickly. So would the addition of filter floss. You could also do a large water change.

All in all, it could take a day or two or three. You'll probably also notice more cloudiness everytime the gravel is disturbed.

If you wanted to clear it up REALLY fast, you could use a product like Seachem Clarity. It makes the particles clump together so they are removed by the filter more easily.

My cloudiness disapated in less then 24 hours, however for the next several water changes it would get cloudy again. You could also use some purigen if it's not clearing up quickly enough... that always works super quick for me.

I used a product called "Crystal Clear", my tank was sqeaky clean overnight, even when I stir the crushed coral.

Just rinse your filter every hour or 2.

IME most cleaning chemicals (liquid products im refering to) for water cloudiness only work for organic materials and not for shell debris (though it is still organic in a sense.) The liquid products 'clot' the messy waste so the filter can pick it up. IME its been easiest to just do the process with mechanical filtration rather then chemical.

Tihsho wrote:IME most cleaning chemicals (liquid products im refering to) for water cloudiness only work for organic materials and not for shell debris (though it is still organic in a sense.) The liquid products 'clot' the messy waste so the filter can pick it up. IME its been easiest to just do the process with mechanical filtration rather then chemical.

Well basically all it does is act sorta like a "glue" to attract the particles together, which in turn get stuck in the filter easier than they would by themselves.

(plus i had some left over from another project)

Glue that is reactive to organic substances, not everything. You've got to figure that this 'glue' doesn't stick the fish together aswell as gravel and decor. I have used these products before and have an idea how they work.

Well I can testify that clarity will work on non-organic dust as well. I've used it in the past. It was neat, but completely unnecessary. If you were really curious, you could easily ask seachem and they'd give you a good explanation of how it works and what it will work on.

Most I have seen are used for organic matter. Good to know that there is finally a product out there that is quick and effective that works on inorganic waste aswell.

You can get some more detailed info here if you like: http://www.seachem.com/products/product ... arity.html
the FAQ answers a few questions outright.

Seachems products usually are fail proof. Might get some for when I setup the new 80.

thanks everyone, suprisingly, i didnt do a thing and let the filter do what it does and this morning when i awoke - crystal clear!! :0)
thanks again for all your input but ill keep the clairty in mind for an unclear future!

and it irritates me that i re-read my post and my subject i misspell stuff!! clubself
thanks again!!!