sand making tank cloudy ?

[JF Sirois]

I have a 75 gallon wich I added sand as a substrate maybe 2 months ago. The tank has since been always cloudy. I do a 50% waterchange weekly and i take most of the debris out. I have a Fluval 404 running and a little in tank filter. I do always exactly the same cleaning as my 150 and my 20 gallon wich both have gravel and they are always cristal clear. I cleaned my canister filter 2 weeks ago but it's still cloudy

 

[krichardson]

That sand has tons of dust in it.....oftentimes you have to soak and rinse sand and gravel quite a few times before placing it in your tank in order to remove the dust residue.

 

[JF Sirois]

That sand has tons of dust in it.....oftentimes you have to soak and rinse sand and gravel quite a few times before placing it in your tank in order to remove the dust residue.

I rinsed it before i put it in the aquarium and i have done about 8 water changes since. I'm starting to think it will always stay cloudy

 

[krichardson]

Apparently you did not rinse it enough.The dust will eventually either be filtered out or settle back into the sand over time.

 

[pescado209]

i had this happen before with pool filter sand. tank was always cloudy no matter how often i changed the water, it was a 150 with an fx4 and an ac110, so i was moving alot of water.

i removed all the sand and it cleared up over night.

i say ditch the sand. i added play sand from home depot and havnt had any issues since.

 

[TwoHedWlf]

Apparently you did not rinse it enough.The dust will eventually either be filtered out or settle back into the sand over time.

Yup, you didn't rinse it enough. There's an equation to calculate it. It's Timesyouverinsed*2=EnoughTimes