I see tiny dust like particles in my aquarium. All I have 3 tang fish, live rock, a few?
by Aquaboy on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 | 4 Comments
hermit crabs, 4″ deep of live sand in a 90 gallon tank. What can be causing the dust like particles I see in the tank? I have a sump and protein skimmer running but I cannot seem to figure out what this can be and is this normal?
Could be the live rock and live sand.
If it is, it will be just normal-especially if your fish play in the sand a lot
My african cichlid tank gets like that. I get those really thick plush pads from petsmart and stick them in the filter, and it traps all the floating debris. I don’t know whay they are called but they look like big white cotton pads
EDIT: Hey, what do you know, they just call them filter pads, lol
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://pondusa.com/pm12204l.jpg&imgrefurl=http://pondusa.com/filter3n.htm&usg=__nwlJ9OAQNymramGfeutZvaHmQr0=&h=576&w=600&sz=66&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=gJ7sk4q44OMHVM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfilter%2Bpad%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
Normally in a Berlin type of reef setup with LR and LS, after it has stabilized, the water column will tend to stay crystal clear. There are only a couple of times when it may not be so, that I can think of :
1) you just did a water change or tank maintenance, and kicked up a sandstorm
2) some fish went burrowing in the sand which caused the same thing
3) you might have a rare (happened to me before) invertebrate spawn where the particles are the eggs
For 1) and 2) it’s nothing to worry about cos the sand particles will re-settle. For 3), just keep an eye on your skimmer going haywire and overflowing, cos of organic overload
More than likely bits from the sand floating around, no problems. They also could be plankton and other zoo’s from your live rock as well. These could actually be live creatures a good thing here.
When you turn your tank lights off for the evening, wait about 1/2 hour and use a flash light and look in your tank. You may be suprised at what else is living in your tank you don’t know about!