kayl

Hi Kayl. To me, a 60-70% water change is pretty high, perhaps to the point of being detrimental (I'm not familiar with the inhabitants of your tank). With the big drop in temp, you are probably right about the sand bed and a bacterial bloom.. disturbing the sand bed could have done the same think if there were some stagnant areas. Have you tested ammonia/nitrites/nitrate? If you are detecting any ammonia or nitrites, it might be prudent to do frequent water changes.

Other thoughts?

I'm embarrassed to admit that testing for ammonia/nitrites/nitrates couldn't have been further from my mind this morning!

I'll do the tests tonight and see what turns out. If they come back 0-0-0, I won't be doing another water change today. I have been running carbon, but I've got a ton of it sitting around, so I'll change that out tonight and get some new stuff in there to see what it can pull out. Hopefully the skimmer will get broken in today and start pulling any excess bacteria out of the water...

You didn't rinse the sandbed when you moved it? I would make up a bunch of new water, and put it in a rubbermaid tub, then move everything in there and rinse the sand. I've move many tanks and never had anything like this happen, but I've also never tried to reuse the old sand without first rinsing it. Usually a diatom bloom happens within a week but it clears up and all is good.

Blown76mav,

I may have the need to "Rinse sand" in the near future. Clarify the process, rinse in tap water or RO/DI or made up water? Let dry or reuse immediately? Thanks!

Some use tap water but since I don't like to wait for it to dry out, im a RO/DI rinser. I'll put it in a big tub and fill with ro/di water and swirl it around and then drain, I'll repeat this until the water stays clear. It will kill most everything in the sand bed but at least all the detritus is out and ready for use. I will keep a cup or two out before rinsing to seed the new sand bed as well.

If your tests come back with any traceable levels id do a SLOW and big water change I would do about 30-50% depending on how brave you are and where your levels are. I’m not sure if you’re using an ato but id have my ato pumping in fresh SW as I had a 1/4" airline taking out water, it would take most of the day or you can break it in to two but the gradual change will reuse stress and hopefully clear up any issues. It’s how I do all the water changes in my tank (lager but more gradual)

Your sand bed should be fine as long as it stayed moist and close to temp. Just keep on skimming, this is more than likely something you will have to wait out, I’m just curious are you keeping your lights on or off? You may want to keep them off just incase this is somehow a photosynthetic bloom, although it looks like white cloud vs green so that is unlikely

Definitely clean up everything so you can see what you are doing, and test the water for everything. Without numbers, we are just guessing.