Haze/Fog water

[ansonluna]

I woke up this morning and my tank has the haze/foggy water. The only thing I have changed is the calcuim I dose with, but I dosed at about 4pm yesterday and there was nothing wrong with the tank when I went to sleep at 1am. I have to be at work at 1030am and I don't have time to check the levels. Anybody got any ideas?

[ansonluna]

OK, was able to do some quick initial tests.

PH - 7.8 (normaly around 8.4)
nitrate - 15 (normal)
nitrite - .15 (normal around 0)
amonia - 0 (normal)

will try to check alk and ca before i go to work. The tank looks like when i stir up the fuge on accident, but it looks normal down there and there are no living creatures down there big enough to cause a storm like this. I also don't have any caulpura, only cheato down there.

[ansonluna]

off to work. pray with me that i come home and everything isn't dead. :angel

[duc]

Do you have any kind of sand sifting fish (goby)? Mine will trash my tank when he finds the fine sand, he can white is completely out.
Clif

[hobogato]

that low pH makes me think that you had a calcium precipitation which can cause the white cloud and a drop in pH. just a guess tho. when you test you calc, if it is low, that is probable what happened.

[gjuarez]

Nitrite being at .15 is what baffles me, and also concerns me. Nitrite should be zero. Hey ANson, how long have you had your tank? Can you see all your fish? Any missing?

[ansonluna]

- i do have a goby, but he has never done anything like this
- will do cal chk when i get home tonight
- tank has been up about 9 months/needs a good water chng :)/all my fish and coral are present and accounted for

sorry at work so posts gotta be quick

[tgray]

Is the tank any better?

[ansonluna]

OK just chkd last of the two levels:

CA - 325 (was at 400 last week)
Akl - 6.3 (hadn't chk it in a while/don't know what it was previously)

all animals, clam and corals look like they are doing fine. water is still cloudy. here is the whole story. ran out of ca so the tank went about 4 days w/o dosing, i usually dose every day. had to buy a diff brand of ca dose as temp until i have the time to track down what i was using previously. i am fixin' to do little less than 50% water chng. anybody have a clue to what the hell happened. this has never happened before.

[Ram_Puppy]

are you sure its cloudy water and not a film on the glass? When I had calcium precipitate out of my 30 hex a while back, I thought the water was cloudy until i took a razor to the glass and found crystal clear water behind it.

[ansonluna]

here are my readings from earlier today:

ph - 8.2
nitrate - 15
nitrite - 0
ca - 390
alk - 1.7 dKh - 0.6 meg/l

Seem to have got things back to normal after about a 40% water change, but now some of my sps corals are acting a little funny. guess I should have done a slower water change >_< . water is crystal clear again so that is great. and yes the water was cloudy and there was no film on the glass. was talking with Luis at AW and he is stumpped also. he also says my alk is a little low, so I will have to get that resolved.

[NaCl_H2O]

ca - 390
alk - 1.7 dKh - 0.6 meg/l

Are you sure about that Alk reading? What test kit are you using? That is WAY WAY LOW, should be 8-9 dKH. I think you had a Ca crash - raised Ca very high in relation to Alk, and Ca precipitated and drug dKH down with it. I would do another WC as soon as possible, and double check your dKH reading, I don't know that 1.7 is even possible?

This is a great article I refer to constantly, read it 100-200 times and it will start to make sense ;)

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

[gjuarez]

Yeah, thats way too low of a alk level. IT could affect the PH big time. It makes it more volatile.

[ansonluna]

ha ha, I'm an idiot!!! I was doing the math wrong for the alk. It is actually it is 3.6 meq/l and 10.3 dKH. :blush . All the alk readings I gave previous to these numbers are not correct. My Red Sea test kit has me subtracting 1 from whats left in the syringe then multiplying by 4, then cross referencing it to meq/l reading, then I am cross referencing it to dKH :wacko .

[NaCl_H2O]

ha ha, I'm an idiot!!! I was doing the math wrong for the alk. It is actually it is 3.6 meq/l and 10.3 dKH. :blush . All the alk readings I gave previous to these numbers are not correct. My Red Sea test kit has me subtracting 1 from whats left in the syringe then multiplying by 4, then cross referencing it to meq/l reading, then I am cross referencing it to dKH :wacko .
Yea, these test kits can get kinda confusing! I want a StartTrek tricorder for Christmas so I can easily "scan" for trace elements 8)

With a dKH of 10.3, plus the above readings, I think your problems are behind you ... except maybe that Nitrate=15 reading, but a water change will fix that too!

Check the Ca additive you used, I'll bet you overdosed and hit 600+ppm of Ca that started everything tumbling.

[thedude]

I agree that it sounds like a calcium fog. Also try to check your magnesium level as it helps to keep calcium into the water colum and out of suspension.