Just curious why the RO in the 1st place? Most fish do not thrive in mineral free water (in fact it's detrimental to most fishes osmotic regulation), except for a few killies that live in rain water puddles, and only have short life spans.
750 gallons of cloudy water - why??
- Thread starter bonesb66
- Start date
Maybe I not understand meaning properly, but not very weird to filter tank water with RO?!? Can try diatom or micron mesh filter.
Excuse me for using the term RO - i actually use what is called a HMA filter but most people are not familiar with that so i simply referred to it as RO so you knew what i meant - the PH is stable as HMA do not strip everything from the water, just the bad things such as chlorine and chloramine and other heavy metals.
First thing I've got to say is nice tank bro! Wish I could afford a tank like that.
As for the cloudy water well I'm no expert for sure when it comes to a tank that size but I've never had a problem like that with cloudy water. The clarity of your tank is probably just as you said from the sand. So that being said after 3 weeks and your system running on a drip I would think that there has to be some lacking in your mechanical filter media choices. You haven't told us how a HMA filter works so I'm assuming it probably works on the tank in a biological or chemical way and hence the tank isn't clearing up. You've also said you filled up a FX 5 with mech. filter material but again you didn't mention which kind so I'm assuming you probably used material that does both biological and mechanical and probably is more focused on biological and therefore lacking the ability to take out fine particles.
As someone else suggested I agree with filling the FX 5 with something like polishing pads, expect it to get dirty quick and expect to rinse the pads the first two days once a day. Purigen is also pretty good at filtering fine particles out and your FX 5 could probably benefit from the addition of that as well. In my opinion diatom filters are the best water polishers but I have a feeling your large body of water would be too much for a single diatom filter and just like the polishing pads will get exhausted fairly quickly, so I'm not sure that's the best route for you to take. If you fill the FX 5 with the polishing pads I think your tank will be crystal clear by the end of the week you can also add a clearing agent to up the effectiveness of the polishing pads and hopefully decrease the time needed to clear your tank.
Here's one of my puny 125's and the water is always this clear even after large water changes it clears up in about 1-2 hours at most.
As for the cloudy water well I'm no expert for sure when it comes to a tank that size but I've never had a problem like that with cloudy water. The clarity of your tank is probably just as you said from the sand. So that being said after 3 weeks and your system running on a drip I would think that there has to be some lacking in your mechanical filter media choices. You haven't told us how a HMA filter works so I'm assuming it probably works on the tank in a biological or chemical way and hence the tank isn't clearing up. You've also said you filled up a FX 5 with mech. filter material but again you didn't mention which kind so I'm assuming you probably used material that does both biological and mechanical and probably is more focused on biological and therefore lacking the ability to take out fine particles.
As someone else suggested I agree with filling the FX 5 with something like polishing pads, expect it to get dirty quick and expect to rinse the pads the first two days once a day. Purigen is also pretty good at filtering fine particles out and your FX 5 could probably benefit from the addition of that as well. In my opinion diatom filters are the best water polishers but I have a feeling your large body of water would be too much for a single diatom filter and just like the polishing pads will get exhausted fairly quickly, so I'm not sure that's the best route for you to take. If you fill the FX 5 with the polishing pads I think your tank will be crystal clear by the end of the week you can also add a clearing agent to up the effectiveness of the polishing pads and hopefully decrease the time needed to clear your tank.
Here's one of my puny 125's and the water is always this clear even after large water changes it clears up in about 1-2 hours at most.
what helped me was dropping in some carbon temporary and some sponges and keep on rinsing twice a day
Thanks for your nice comments – I’ve been waiting to do a detailed write up on it including the stand which may be of interest for people looking to get a large tank but I don’t want to post until I have a finished product for people to read I don’t want to post anything up.
I’m no expert for a tank this size either – I come from a 7x2x2, I’ve had cloudy water from sand before when it hasn’t been washed so really should know better, I’ve changed sand on my old 210G but thoroughly cleaned it and water was crystal again in a matter of hours I just thought with this HMA filter dripping water constant meaning the tanks already had over 20 water changes the sand dust would be diluted into the water and would be water changed.
Basically then, a HMA filter is just a unit that water passes through from the mains, it takes the heavy metals from the water which are harmful to fish and biological media such as chlorine and chloramine, this filters has a restrictor on for the flow and you can get a constant trickle or a drip – over the course of the week you can adjust this to water changed 50% or 150% what ever you choose – mine is being changed 7 times a week at the moment so I expected the sand to clear up quicker than it has done.
In the FX5 I have the standard FX5 mechanical which fits on around the edge of the filter leaving space for Bio through the centre, the Bio has gone in the sump and in the middle 3 chambers on the FX5 I have put layers of some foam I picked up from my LFS, I got it from the pond section and although the initial stage has quite large holes the final stage is pretty fine – perhaps I should try some of the filter wool they do as that’s much finer from memory.
Because the FX5 is running off the sump it can’t be turned on full blast because it can’t get the water fast enough from the sump (since they’re on the same level) but its still a decent turnover – plumbing it into the main tank to put on full blast would be too difficult due to the thickness of my brace’s on the tank.
Ultimately then I should get some better mechanical filtration in the FX5, the mechanical filtration in the sump is dreadful as I need to silicone some glass runners inside in order to place a filter sock on.
Your welcome bro! As for the HMA filter I'm still confused as to how it all works as you say it changes the water from the main. Do you mean your tanks water is constantly being changed with fresh water from your tap(sink or other home plumbing) or do you mean the tank water is being filtered by the HMA and it turns over all the water in the tank? From your wording I'm guessing you mean the filter changes over the water that's in the tank. In either case a filter that targets chlorine/chloramine and metals is using chemical filtration to remove or change these things and other trace elements from the water working on the same principle as other drip filters. That being said the filter isn't working on a mechanical level at all, not to say it's not an effective means of filtering the water just not effective filtering water mechanically.
The FX5 not being put at full blast is definitely slowing the amount of water per hour it's changing and that's part of the reason it's not efficient doing the mechanical filtration you have it geared for. Also the media your talking about that you put in the middle of the FX5 sounds like a foam/ sponge media. It's porous but the holes are big and it's geared toward filtering big particles out of your water and also creating a base for biological filtering. You want a polishing pad which focuses on filtering small particles out, they're labeled as such and in my opinion Fluval makes a decent polishing pad. Some of the other pads made by other filter companies are effective but seem to fall apart fairly easily after being used a couple of times.
Just remember like I said due to the high amount of free floating particles you'll need to rinse the polishing pads once a day for probably the first 2 days to stop them from clogging and becoming less effective. Also like I said a clearing agent like Crystal Clear would really help the polishing pads as it causes those fine particles to bond to each other making them easier to be filtered by the polishing pads.
Ok I just went thru this with my 120gal...its sounds alot and looks alot like what I just had...it looks alot like a bacterial bloom( new tank syndrom)...the bacteria is not harmful but the amoania spike is...what happens is that your adding all these fish to a new tank and there is not enough of natural build up of bacteria to break down the fish waste..which causes an as amoania spike....mine lasted for about 2 1/2 weeks..the best thing you can do for this is wait it out and keep an eye on the amoania levels...no water changes...it prolongs the cycle...i hope this helps...gd luck
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I've added mature filter media into the sump, conditioned all the new water and tested before adding fish several times, ammonia nil, retested several times, ammonia nil.
The HMA puts fresh water in the tank yes, it comes from the mains, goes through the HMA unit and then the fresh water goes into the tank, the tank would overflow at this rate quickly so there is a hole in the sump for excess water to overflow.
All the water from the HMA is fresh from the mains just filtered before it reaches the tank - almost like the units they put on fridges where you just get a trickle come out - that trickle goes into the tank, i thought all that new water constantly would dilute the sand particles and clean it up, it has done a great deal but progress has now slown down dramatically.
I will definitely look into some proper filter polishing pads as you could be right about this foam having too large a holes - any recommendations?
