Cant belive how GREEN and CLOUDY my H2o is.

Ok here I am about ten days later responding. First, I must express my gratitude for the concern of these great 3reef members. Thanks for the help guys.

A couple days after my last post and with the lights set for a 10 hour on cycle, my water started to turn green again. Its seems to turn cloudy green in the bottom half of the tank the most.

I immediately ordered a Marineland HOT Magnum 250 filter due to its ability to be purposed for Diatomaceous Earth filtering (DE Filtering). In my experience (pools) DE filters average filtration down to 2 microns. I've read on some reef forum someone use the term "sub micron". When getting down to 2 microns, I dont think sub micron means a whole lot of difference. I also ordered a Koralia powerhead to help out.

It took these items awhile to arrive, I came home from work to see the box in my entry way yesterday. Sooooooo,...

Today I went to a reliable LFS and purchased 15 gal of salted R/O, and 5 gal of un-salted R/O. Good thing because the salted tested at 1.028, and I was able to cut it with the freshwater R/O and came out with a perfect 1.0255.

I did a light gravel cleaning and removed 15 gallons of this Green water out of the tank, making sure the siphon/gravel cleaner stayed in the bottom half of the tank to really suck that green cloud out...

I put all 20gallons of new R/O (I needed to top off my tank to begin with). I pre-coated my HOT magum with DE, and I installed my Koralia powerhead. I love these powerheads because I can move it to clean different parts of the sand bed from outside the tank using the magnetic mount. I've repositioned it a couple times already.

So with the Fluval running, the H.O.T. running DE, and the Koralia. I'm getting some serious flow along with some quality DE filtration. My fish are all still alive, a few behaving stressed(hiding) some. My anemone is showing himself again, my couple coral frags which had mostly closed (including my frogspawn) are all starting to open again after the water change. My Mandarin dragonete's behavior has not changed at all during this whole time, along with my snails, hermits and shrimp.

I will be taking a full range test and reporting back in 24 hours.

With the 50% water change, of course it looks alot better lol, but the lower half of the tank water is still a bit of a green cloud, i'll probably Mag float brush the area a little later.

Thanks again everyone.

 

Okay two days since I started running the DE filter and did the 45% water change. Parameters are as follows.

PH 8.2 - Nh3 0ppm - No2 0ppm - No3 0ppm - KH 179ppm - CA 420ppm to 440ppm.

Specific Gravity - Coralife Deep Six Hydrometer 1.025 - Red Sea Hydrometer 1.022 (I know I need better technology).

As said, the DE has been running for two days with the new powerhead being repositioned to flush out the green cloud that occupies the lower half of the tank. On the first day the green looked worse, but I realized it was because of the increased circulation with the addition of the powerhead plus the new Magnum 250. I think the stuff was getting kicked up off the sand bed.

Day two. (today). I was discouraged by the way the tank looked over the last day, and I had kept the lights off , this algae seems to respond so quickly to my lights being on.

So I decided to clean out the Magnum running DE. When I got it apart lo and behold the DE was caked THICK with the green slimy stuff! I cleaned the filter and got all the DE out it was nasty and full of algae. Re-coated with fresh DE and set it to run again.

I turned on the light, and I am able to report that the green cloud is almost gone. When you step back and look at the tank now, theres much less yellow in what you see and its even starting to show blue again.

My fish, few frags, snails everybody is out and fully active roaming about. I did some light target feeding for everybody and they all ate till they were full. I hope to keep it improving as it looks now more possible than ever.

The light seems to be a big factor. Also I think I need a big ole ball of Chaeto to put in my tank in a basket or something.

I hope to get maybe an Aquamaxx HOB skimmer for my tank soon. I havent touched the Fluval 205 canister, its been running this whole time without a cleaning, I think maybe two weeks straight now. Has Chemi Pure, and two bags of Carbon, plus the sponges, and a handful of ceramic bio balls.

My lights are kind of a weird set-up that im still building up. I've got two T-5 bulbs one of them is Actinic blue and the other one is called Power glo, its more white. I also have an ecoxotic panorama 12w Actinic LED module running. Im hoping to change all this to maybe the Actinic LED module I have plus a 150w Metal Halide like a Phoenix 14K. I've seen them set up in my local store and I truly like the color more than all the other set ups they have running. Its a clear choice for me pretty much. I'll sell the T-5s to help out.

Been a rough road, but so far so good and learning alot.

 

Thank you so for the detailed follow up.

I am really glad you mostly like found the root to the problem and the tank appears clearer. All this because of one thing.

Another very good case for do not place things from the wild environment in your tanks.

Continued good luck.