pepper'scove

Honestly the pictures are too grainy for us to see much of anything. Also, fresh water and saltwater are two very diferent animals. I would not worry until you have salt water in the tank for a few weeks. Salt water skimmers will not function in freshwater, and will have no filtration affect on your water.

Midnight,

That's the best I can do. The pictures here are from my iPhone 4, but I just set up a stand and took some pictures with a 12MP camera that I have and they came out just as grainy... I hear everybody on the whole issue about saltwater and freshwater being different, but it seems like the water should be clearer. The pictures are very representative of what I see when I look at the tank. I would think that at least with carbon running on the drain line for several days now, that the water would have cleared up in a meaningful way. So I guess the better question is, in your experience, if your water was that milky looking, what would you make of it? From the experiment above I've determined it can't be due to microbubbles, which is a relief, but I can't think of too many things that would cause the tank water to be such a milky color. My main thoughts are that it could be residue on the glass or some kind of dissolved solid present in my city water. But the other thought going through my head is that maybe that is just how all tanks look when the room is dark and they are the only things with light on them. Of course, all these suppositions are based on the fact that this is my biggest tank ever, so I have nothing to compare it with, I just don't know how clear the water should be. Anyway, at least I know it's not microbubbles, but now the question is what is it, or do I just have a misconception about how clear the water should be... I've stared at a lot of tanks so I think it should be clearer but...?

midnight is 100% correct on the skimmer not doing anything for freshwater

if it is an impurity in the glass you should be able to see it with no water in the tank as well but otherwise if i look from end to end on my 75 gallon i can see clear through all 48" of glass and water crystal clear (mostly.) If you have a mag float i would try cleaning the tank glass with it and see if it is just a cleaning issue. It may be something in the tap water if you are not using a RO-DI unit or purified water so keep that in mind when you go to make and add salt water to your tank. lastly this is just a theory so take it with a grain of salt: (this part is fact) freshwater is easier to have a higher ORP than salt water meaning that it oxygenates easier so my theory is maybe (I have no idea what a extremely high ORP could do to water quality) it is extremely over oxygenated since your skimmer has been going as well as everything moving through a sump which typically keeps a saltwater tank in normal levels but would be pretty extreme for a freshwater tank with no inhabitants in it actually using the oxygen. I would stop using to sump until you get the salt water in the tank and get the tank cycle started.

Low light photos are pretty grainy, maybe too grainy to tell for sure, but there does appear to be some murkiness from somewhere. Couple of options come to mind. (1) Leave the skimmer off. It's not really doing anything right now, and any microbubbles introduced by the skimmer should settle out over a couple of days. (2) To check if there's something on the glass drain the tank half way, leave the light on and take another series of photos similar to the one's you've taken above. If there's something on the glass, the murkiness should remain without water.

Its only tap water, drain it and refill after cleaning the glass, super bright lights are going to replect off of any particle in the tank as well. salt water in my opinion is clearer than freshwater. Do you have hard water, that would explain the potential for non clear water as well.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Consider the protein skimmer turned off. If that doesn't help with the ORP then I will try draining the tank and taking another series of photos to determine if my tank has a residue on it. Also, I will try cleaning the inside of the glass with the algae scrubber. Pictures will follow in a few days. If the murkiness persists I will wait until I get my RO/DI unit from Marc (or Midnight if he ever writes me with details on his unit... hint, hint) and then try all of this again. Feel free to add anymore comments or suggestions. From Cyano's blog post (the one posted immediately after mine) I am relatively certain it will turn out to be a water quality issue. More experiments, and probably photos, to follow!

Oh, and thanks cyano and Midnight for going the extra mile on this. And blakew I really appreciate your addition as well!

I was mainly teasing Melev. I have a used 100gpd melev rodi unit. The RO membrane is about two years old and the other filters are 3 1/2 months old. the unit itself is in great shape. I will probably give it away in a local raffle as I would not expect to get much out of it.

just add salt! and get your skimmer going properly!

Well, no new pictures to share, but I did start draining the tank this evening. I noticed a few things. One, the glass had a film-like residue on it. Two, there is no way that film-like residue on the inside of the glass could have been causing the cloudiness I was seeing. In fact, I believe that it was deposited there as the water was draining from my tank. Among other things I took a trip to one of my lfs's today and looked from end to end in their tanks. One of those tanks, their 55 gallon live rock tank, was looking a little bit yellowish (they just got in a fresh batch of live rock and you could tell...), but it was no where near as milky as the water in my tank. Even with a high enough nitrate content that it was visibly discoloring the water I would still see colors on the other side very clearly!

So here is my conclusion:

1.) As previously stated, microbubbles are NOT at fault here
2.) The residue on the inside of my glass could have been there beforehand, but most likely was deposited as the tank was drained.
3.) The water is the most likely culprit (kind of scary actually. I drink the stuff everyday...)

Plan of action:

1.) Finish draining the tank
2.) Thoroughly clean the tank until the glass has an all over squeaky shine no matter how hard I hunt for spots!
3.) Fill it up one more time (or at least half way up) with fresh water.
i.) If the water is no longer cloudy looking I will blame it on the glass.
ii.) If the water still looks cloudy then I will blame it on the water (this is what I hope the case is in spite of the fact that I drink it everyday...)

If 3.) ii.) is the final outcome then I will be "happy" knowing that as soon as I get my RO/DI unit, that I will be able to "fix" the problem I have been having. If 3.) i.) is the final outcome then I will just be glad that I saw this now and was able to address it before I had a whole tank full of saltwater, live rock, and a ton of sand. In that case I would also be thankful that the tank was cleaned now, while it still can be.

Again, thanks for all your input, and I'm really looking forward to putting salt in my RO/DI water and covering up my sand and rock! Fish will be awesome too! Corals even better, but now I'm getting ahead of myself. Man, one day maybe I'll just be able to get all new stuff and then I won't have these types of problems! I still love this hobby, in spite of all my setbacks with it!

You can clean the tank with vinegar and water. It'll remove any deposits, and after a good rinse is ready to go.

So, here's the verdict. After thoroughly cleaning my tank with a 2:1 water/vinegar mix (thanks for the suggestion Marc! Otherwise I probably would've been using RO water and elbow grease... wouldn't have been too effective.) I decided to partially refill my tank. I also decided earlier today that I might as well just drop the $14 and get 15 gallons of RO drinking water from Wally World. Sure enough, the milkiness present in my water was totally gone (as compared to what it looked like when it was filled with tap). I'm happy to report that the water was perfectly clear, with no discernible attenuation of light/color from end to end! So that leads me to the following conclusion:

1.) My water is actually quite filthy!
2.) I seriously question the quality of my tap water...

For reference's sake:

Here's the tank with clean RO water under the exact same lighting conditions:

Update:

Speaking of jumping to conclusions before the evidence is all in (see my commend on the banggai cardinal project post...). I was so sure that my water was filthy that I didn't even bother to put the tap water in the tank. Instead I just compared the cloudy water to the RO water I bought at Wal-mart. But then I got thinking I might have sold myself short. Not that I plan to use tap water (not in the least bit!!), but I decided to just go ahead and do the experiment like I had written it above. Magic occurred. The tap water was not cloudy either... so I thought great, what now. Then I remembered that I hadn't flushed my system out after I plumbed it together. So that was one hypothesis. The other thing I noticed was that one of my drain pipes (the flexible one) had been dripping ever so slightly at first and although it had stopped I thought that maybe there could be some rust there that had leached its way into the tank. That one is easy enough to check and I will do so tonight. If that's rusty then the problem should occur again within at least a week (don't worry Midnight I won't be running them on the final system!). My other idea is that it could have been my heaters - one of them looks a bit rusted on one end (though I don't think that is the cause). Anyway, the first problem I thought of was addressed as I filled the tank back up with tap water. The second problem will be checked into tonight. Finally, the third problem was addressed by pulling the heaters out of the tank. If after a week my water is still clear then I will introduce the heaters and if it doesn't get cloudy then I will blame it on a diffusion of chemicals present in the plumbing lines. I do know that there was no discernible difference in taste between the dirty water and the tap, but I thought I should fill you guys in on the whole story. Better to be honest than to appear "right."

Leave the light off so you don't cause any algae blooms.

Will do, thanks for the suggestion. I think I might keep the blinds closed too, just to be safe. The windows are far away, but hey, better safe than sorry. Glad I did this all now and not the first time I had rock and sand in the tank! I hope I get this solved even if I never figure out exactly what the problem was!!

Any news on the tank?

Originally Posted by baker.shawn

Any news on the tank?

Well, nothing of the super exciting sort. It's still running and thus far is still clear enough that I can see straight through it. There have been no algae blooms and no issues with microbubbles, so at this point my working hypothesis is that I had left over primer from when I plumbed my tank up and on the initial fill up it got diffused throughout the water and made it cloudy. However, I have not yet added the heaters back in to make sure that they don't cause the water to get cloudy either (due to the rust issue I mentioned in a previous comment).

However, on the excitement chart, there's a good chance I'll be getting a used tank from some relatives. I haven't seen it yet so I'm note totally sure what size it is or what equipment goes with it, but at bare minimum I'm hoping to get enough good stuff that I can make some money by selling some of the equipment. Then hopefully I can justify purchasing the VorTechs, lights, or RO/DI unit. So, nothing super exciting with my tank (although I'm still a proud papa), but things are looking up for the near future of my equipment purchasing provided my relatives come through!

clear glass is always good and free equipment is always exciting!! a couple months ago i had my uncle pass on a RODI and a nice collection of reefing books! it felt like my birthday lol

Well, after a 5 day period the water was more or less clear. However, I went away for the weekend and when I got back the water was noticably CLOUDY. After adding my new hood and inserting an old powerhead from my basement, when I got home today the water was beyond cloudy. So I'm draining it again and don't feel like I really understand what's going on with my setup. What I do know is that it stayed clearer for longer than the first go round and that only after adding the hood and the old pump did the water become super cloudy. Not sure what to think about this... Oh, on a brighter note, I believe I may be getting a new 6 X 54W light in exchange for my tank (the 90 gal. I got over this past weekend) along with some new bulbs. That would mean I would only need VorTech's, an ATO, an RO/DI, the Sicce Syncra 4.0 return pump, Live Rock, Sand, Fish, and Corals. Basically, 5 more pieces of equipment (2 VorTech's) and the biologicals. Getting closer!!

I'd have to imagine you are getting some type of bacterial growth with water circulating for days on end. Not a surprise, as this isn't a museum piece sealed with vacuum.

Originally Posted by melev

I'd have to imagine you are getting some type of bacterial growth with water circulating for days on end. Not a surprise, as this isn't a museum piece sealed with vacuum.

Marc,

I was thinking that I was probably getting some of that. Especially after putting the used equipment into the tank and having the water get SUPER CLOUDY within a pretty short time span. However, I haven't done any tests for ammonia. Now that I realized I can test for this I think it will be something I can actually figure out (at least I can confirm the prescence or abscence of ammonia). The thing I was wondering though is, wouldn't charcoal pull that out of the water pretty fast in a tank that literally has nothing in it other than equipment? I don't know. I'm going to try to test the water that's still in my sump tonight. Thanks for continuing to take interest.

-Jeremy