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Mud Pie Mama · 09-19-2006, 07:47 AM

You sure do have a mystery on your hands. I see you mentioned adding pressurized CO2 a few months ago.

I don't know if this will pertain to your situation but, when I first started upgrading my 75g tank towards a fast growing, high light set up (second filter, second bank of lights, pressurized CO2, etc); I had a great mystery on my hands too. My water started getting murky and cloudy, and it always came back after water changes. After much head bashing, etc.... I discovered that the lower Ph levels from the carbonic acids in the CO2 was causing the limestone contaminates in my pea gravel to dissolve at a phenomenal rate. My Kh was climbing thru the roof in just days and the tank kept going cloudy. I ended up overhauling the tank and changing out all the substrate. It was agonizing (pitched out over $100.00 worth of substrate), back-breaking work, but now the tank has been running great.

I'm not saying its your substrate but maybe something is dissolving, which feeds those diatoms. I think its pretty cool that you can get a microscopic photo of these! I wish you luck getting to the bottom of this.

09-19-2006, 07:47 AM	#8 (permalink)
Mud Pie Mama Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: The boonies, outside Pittsburgh, PA - USA Posts: 335 iTrader Ratings: 3 iTrader Positive Rating: 100% Plant Points: 53320	You sure do have a mystery on your hands. I see you mentioned adding pressurized CO2 a few months ago. I don't know if this will pertain to your situation but, when I first started upgrading my 75g tank towards a fast growing, high light set up (second filter, second bank of lights, pressurized CO2, etc); I had a great mystery on my hands too. My water started getting murky and cloudy, and it always came back after water changes. After much head bashing, etc.... I discovered that the lower Ph levels from the carbonic acids in the CO2 was causing the limestone contaminates in my pea gravel to dissolve at a phenomenal rate. My Kh was climbing thru the roof in just days and the tank kept going cloudy. I ended up overhauling the tank and changing out all the substrate. It was agonizing (pitched out over $100.00 worth of substrate), back-breaking work, but now the tank has been running great. I'm not saying its your substrate but maybe something is dissolving, which feeds those diatoms. I think its pretty cool that you can get a microscopic photo of these! I wish you luck getting to the bottom of this.