Question Regarding Water Clarity and a new Tank.

[mgrelik]

Hey everyone, I just started my first Reef Tank yesterday and here are the stats:

-Biocube 14g tank.
-10-15 lbs of live rock.
-2-3(?) lbs of sand
-main fan is 137 gph (also a rotating head)
-secondary fan on the side glass, (dont have the gph on hand)
-as far as filtration, I hope that someone is familiar with the biocubes filtration, because I don't know specifically what it is.
-1-24 watt True Actinic 03 blue straight pin
-1-23 watt 10,000K daylight straight pin
-2-.75 watt Lunar Blue Moon Glow LED.

So right now i have the sand and live rocks in. (they were cured already and the sand is from my friends reeftank that he recently emptied so the sand is good so i think my cycle has been relatively fast) I have a couple snails chillin in there and they go around and hang out. some bury under the rocks and there are two tiny babies that i found that like to walk around the glass.

All my levels test out pretty well, my nitrates are slightly high. (a little lower that 20ppm)

What I'm most concerned with right now is how the water is fairly cloudy and not very clear. I can see particles swirling around in the tank as they get blown around by my two fans. Now is this natural? or is something wrong with my water and will it clear up in a few days?

(oh one other question, if anyone knows what the lights are that i've mentioned, do i always keep the two big ones on at the same time? or do i have just the daylight one on, or just the actinic?

Thanks.

 

[braddo]

Don't worry about the cloudiness, when you first add water to the tank it will be cloudy for the first few days. As for the lights you should keep them both on at the same time. Some people prefer to turn the actinics on 30 minutes or more before the daylight lamp and turn them off 30 minutes after the daylights have been turned off. I've heard this is done to prevent light shock and to better simulate natural sunrise and sunset. I have done staggered lighting and all on\off lighting with a similar setup to yours and didn't notice any difference.

 

[mgrelik]

alright, cool. thanks for the help.

 

[Reeferdude]

Take your time. Wait until you go through your cycles, your blooms etc and get that nitrate to zero before adding anything to it. If you have a cube without a protein skimmer you'll want to keep your bio load very low and do steady water changes or....Get a skimmer so you can increase it...But whatever you do-----go slow.

 

[ac7av]

Ya the cloudiness is probably fine. Just let the tank cycle all the way before you do any water changes or you could slow it down. You can still get some die off on the cured rock when you put it in your new tank. You may want to leave the lights off for a few days while the tank is cycling. You could have a algae bloom going on too.