diamond watchman making tank cloudy

[FreezeFins]

]ust starting to add fish to my first saltwater aquarium. After about 60 days of cycling live rock, I have Just added a diamond watchman Goby to a 60g tank. Water is constantly cloudy while my filter is trying to keep up with all the silt he is kicking up.

Does anyone have experience with this problem? Will the silt eventually be filtered out? How long can it take? Is it not a good idea to have this fish in a tank with fine sand? Is there any extra steps I should take to clean the wet/dry filter?

 

[Socotroco]

Im having the same problem. I would be following this thread for solutions

 

[rdnelson99]

Just a beginner myself so I am watching too. Plan on adding one as my last fish. One thing I would say is that I have been told you need a well established sand bed or they will starve. That is why I am waiting until my last fish to make that addition.

 

[TLTGF]

Well, IME my tank was cloudy as all heck for about (3) days from his sandstorms, but after that, once the top-layer of dusty crap was flipped around, now I still see little 3" puffs of sand, but they disappear almost immediately.

Mine sifts sand for 18 hours per day so he finished my 54 gallon in about 3 days.

He still sifts like crazy, and the sand has never looked better.

 

[Socotroco]

Should I change my sand? Can I do it with harming my fishes or bacterial balance in the tank?

 

[TLTGF]

I've always heard no not mess with sand too much, that it can release gases and other nasties into the tank.

Soco how long have you had the issue? How much flow do you have in the tank?

 

[Socotroco]

My tank is one month old. Is a fluval edge and the aquaclear filter is the one causing flow in the tank. I bought the diamond goby last week.

 

[TLTGF]

Well, I honestly can't speak to a smaller tank like that. It may work the same, but I'm not sure. The reason i was asking about flow is because shortly after I got my goby I added two Koralia 750's to my tank, and that huge boost in water flow really seemed to help keep the sandstorms to a minimum. My sand is pretty fine as well, though it has been in the tank for (4) years and in another for (6) so its about 10 years old. I'm not sure that would really make a difference, but it might.

Its hard for me to say, because our systems are so much different. I have no mechanical filter at all, I only have an overflow going to a sump filled with more liverock.

I will say that it took a few days of getting stirred up before the sand super fine dust particles started to settle. Then they settled all over my LR and that was a pain, but now I just use a turkey baster every couple days to blow off the rocks, and now big problem. Like I said too, the PH's really helped getting the sand blowing around and through my sump.

 

[MikeyD]

I had the same problem when I started my 40 gallon. I put a fluval 305 canister on it and it cleared my water in about 24 hours of all the fine stuff then I just rinsed out the canister and filter medias and foam and my water has never been cloudy again. Get some nassarius snails they help sift the sand and eat leftover food. I have about 25 in my 40 gallon. But they burrow in the sand so they don't really come out until food is dropped in the water. I have a green mandarin goby and a spotted mandarin goby they help sift the sand a little too. For the edge aquarium if u ho to petco they have a nano canister filter for tanks up to 10 gallons. I would definitely recommend canisters for main tanks and hob for small quarantine/hospital tanks like I have on my 20 gallon hospital tank

 

[Socotroco]

Ok, thanks for the help

 

[ilostnemo]

mikey you have two mandarins in a 40 gallon?

 

[MikeyD]

Yea 2 mandarins in a 40. They get along just fine. They ride on each other its so cute. They don't bother each other and even play in the same cave

 

[ilostnemo]

my concern is pods.

 

[MikeyD]

Oh lol. That's everyones concern. Lol. I feed them arcti-pods but they mostly eat emerald entree, and baby brine shrimp. I put 1 teaspoon of arcti-pods every other day. They are healthy as can be here is two pics of them. One is a green mandarin goby and the other is a spotted mandarin

 

[ilostnemo]

they may eat them now but they can easily go back to just pods and that 40 would be ate dry in a day

 

[MikeyD]

If they stopped eating. I would buy pods from reefs2go.com. U can get 2000 for 38 bucks I would buy a couple thousand add 2k to my main tank and about 4k to my 20g quarantine/hospital tank so they can propagate.

 

[ilostnemo]

2000 is about a days worth for 2 of them.

 

[MikeyD]

Yea I hear that

 

[FreezeFins]

I have one 550 gph Koralia, and i'm going to add a 750 gph this week.

Does it help to have them higher or lower in the tank?

 

[ilostnemo]

aim it towards the top