wet/dry question

[tattoosmitty]

Hi I'm new around here & new to wet/drys. I just set up a 120 FOWLR with a eshopps wet/dry. My qestion is what do you wet/dry guys use/do to help remove tiny floating particals in the water? My water is clear but it seems like I always have a lot of particals floating around. I'm running a 700 gph pump along with a cpr bacpak skimmer and a 15 watt trubo twist. What else is there that I could do? Like I said the water is clear minus the floating particals?

[tony]

i have the same skimmer

any idea what the particles are? food, sand, etc . . . is it pulling good skimmate?

an option on the bakpak is the preskimmer which will pull more crud off of the top of the water which is where it accumulates the most

http://www.cpraquatic.com/pdf/bpps.pdf

[caferacermike]

It may also be tiny microbubbles coming in through the return piping. If it is just "stuff", then it may be time to find a place along the way for some carbon, filter floss, or a filter sock. However since your tank is a FOWLR I'll take the hit for saying you could add a nice canister filter, like an Eheim 2217, to your system as it will trap particulates until you clean it. As a bonus, since you run a wet dry, you can clean it a lot more than normal as it won't be your only biological source.

[tattoosmitty]

I have an overflow box already so I took off the crp one and hung it on the inside of my wet/dry and yes I'm getting a lot of skimmate right now. I can't figure out what it actually is that's floating in the water? don't think it's airbubbles. I know it's not sand. I think it could be the brown algae dying off??? I've doubled up on my filter pads thinking it would help but it didn't change anything... What kills me is before right after I set the tank up the water was crystal clean. For example I set the tank up dumped 8 bags of live sand in the tank and within 24 hours it was crystal clear.

[junkstang]

relax and just give it time. Just remember that thier is no perfect tank really great ones and some okl.

[caferacermike]

Yeah you will hear people talk about cycling the tank for a few weeks. Cycling is the natural process of establishing bacteria to process wastes. Another point of cycling is that it allows your tank to settle in. Everything may settle into place while waiting for the bacteria to colonize.