Dirty Surface Water

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aquachris

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Dec 22, 2010
Messages
46
Location
Moreno Valley, CA
I've been cycling my tank now for almost a week. It's a 50 gal, with a fluval 304 running. The water seems nice and clear when you look at the tank, but when you look from above, you see little debri floating around on top. What can I do to fix this problem? I'm going to be adding a HOB soon, as a second filter. Would that help?
 
hmmm, what does the debris look like? There has to be a source...

The HOB isn't going to do much to fix the issue. The intake on an HOB is under the water, not on the surface. If you are looking for a way to get rid of the debris, you would have to have some sort of skimmer... but that shouldn't be necessary. Your best bet is to try to figure out what it is coming from and eliminate it. My guess is it is stuff from the substrate, being a new tank. Did you rinse the substrate well before adding it to the tank? What kind of substrate is it? What else is in the tank?
 
ya it probably is from the sand. I did rinse it for a while, but the water always seemed to stay cloudy no matter how long I would keep rinsing. I'm using Silica sand, from home depot. I did a lot of research online before deciding on it, and seems a lot of people use it with success. Other than the sand, I just have lace rocks and drift wood. They should both be fine though, since they were in another tank before mine. So it has to be the sand then huh? Any suggestions what I can do? Or is the skimmer the only option I have?
 
Yup It's the sand. Just use a net to clean it out once a day. It will eventually al float up.
 
That's normal for new tanks. debris will float and then will sink at some point. Every time I've setup a new tank, I've always had debris from the gravel float on top for the first week or two.
 
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