Clear Water

[kyle0901]

Hello guys, I built my mini-tank for the supershrimp yesterday and there are a few questions I’d like to ask, please help me, thanks in advance.

1. My tank is a 1.5 gallon mini sized jar. I built it from ground up with the help of many walk-throughs on this forum. After I set up all the pebbles, sands, crushed corals, and got the right salinity for the water, which is distilled water from store. And poured all the water into the jar, the water becomes some sort of dirty milky color, it is not clear, is this normal? Do I just need to wait for some time until it gets clear or did I do something wrong?

2. The store staff told me that those macroalgae and snails I showed them from this forum only live in fresh water, they don’t survive in salt water, is that true?

I am a beginner, I really don’t want my shrimps or snails die because of my mistakes. Those poor things deserve better, please help me, thank you.

[SuperProofer]

Hi,

If you didn't rinse the sand and other decor well before putting it in the jar, it could have been "dusty". When you poured the water in the tank, it stirred it all up. Give it a few days, see if it settles down. If not, then we can start looking at the different components to see what might be causing it.

[Vorteil]

Do you have any pics to share? Personally I made the mistake of not cleaning the "live" crushed coral sand that I used and encountered numerous issues because I did not. Mine looked great for a month or so but later started to have issues with excess slime algae which I felt was due to the unclean sand. Took months for me to get it all under control. I purchased my chaeto from this site and it's doing great. This is the only place that I know has a macroalgae that can survive in brakish water. I once made the mistake of using one for full salt water and it broke up and died within a week. The MTS do great as well as nerites. Also pictured is a cerith snail.Keep in mind that I started with a golf ball size of chaeto. I do trim it down but don't want to disturb the tank at this time.

[i<3Opae]

Welcome to the forum!

Totally normal to have cloudy water hours or days after setting up. It could be debris, tiny air bubbles etc. Since there is nothing live in there, it’ll almost always clear up in a few hours or days.

The snails and plants for sale on petshrimp.com are for brackish water tanks. You were misinformed by the store person.

[kyle0901]

Thanks for your answers guys, I am not sure if the water will get clearer in time. Frankly I can’t wait that long because I already purchased the algae and snail in separate bags and the store person told me that they could only last 2 days max in the packages if I don’t put them in the tank. I live in Hong Kong so It’s quite impossible to order anything from outside the region, these living organisms rarely sell internationally.

My tank now has water (gravity of 1.006-1.008) that has a milky color, I am not feeling comfortable to put any living things in yet. For some reason I really feel sorry for those creatures I am about to put inside, their lives depend on me and I don’t want to see them die.

I wish to post some photos from my phone but the website keeps telling me it can’t determine the dimensions of my photos, please help me guys, thanks.

[Varanus]

If you can get a small enough filter to use on this tank, then you could try running it for a few hours or a day or so and that should clear the water up nicely. Then you can remove the filter and hopefully never need it again. Its what I did with my six and a half gallon tank. That said your tank is so small that I don't know if that would work.

The people at the pet store probably got confused because these types of snails do indeed live in freshwater as well as adapting to brackish, and they were probably only familiar with the freshwater ones as those are what they would be likely to encounter (MTS for one are common pest snails in freshwater tanks). Not sure where they got the idea about the macroalgae though, I've never seen a pet store that sells anything like it.

No need to be in a hurry to add things to the tank, since you only just set it up. You shouldn't add shrimp until you see some algae growth anyway.

[Wendy]

Did you clean the sands and corals before putting them in? Suggest to clean it to avoid introducing anything unwanted into the tank. If yes, just let it settle for few days. I didn't cycle my tank due to some nonsense I did (u may refer [url]viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6281/url] for the nonsense I did). The Opae is quite hardy as they can survive my torture.

[jcfrank922]

Make sure you added brackish water. Brackish water has half the salinity as ocean water.

[Fiore de'i Liberi]

The water clarity should clear up in a day or two. If you used "live sand" you might get bacterial blooms or ammonia spikes depending on what is in the sand. Be patient and let the tank do it's thing. Eventually the system will reach an equilibrium, when it does add the shrimp.

Worse case scenario, you can do a water change in a few months. Eventually all the fine particulate will be removed.

[Super Jess]

When I started my tank it was milky for a few days even though I'd washed and rinsed everything really well. I think it was just microparticles of dust from the sand that took time to settle to the bottom. I threw Mustafa's snails in anyway and they did just fine -- they normally burrow into the substrate anyway, so what's a little dust to them? It took maybe 4 days for the water to become crystal clear, iirc.

[Erlina _rusli]

Hi all and
@vorteil
I see larvaes in your tank , can i ask a question how much water to top off in one time when you have babies there?
My shrimps gone crazy when i just put a lil bit water into the tank and trying hard to avoid where the larvaes are.
My tank has evaporate quite a bit should i add it until to the top?

[Vorteil]

I probably let mine drop an inch or so before I top it off. The opae go crazy when I add new water. I try to slowly add it in. Although when I'm cleaning the front glass of algae the opae all come out and go crazy swimming all over the tank. What about adding a glass top to your tank? I had an open 5.5 gallon which evaporated quite a bit. I added a top which cut down on the evaporation to the point where I might top it off every 4-6 weeks. Not much evaporation.

[Erlina _rusli]

I have a cover for the tank, i just let it evaporate too much after long vacation.
I just try to add lil by lil now
Thanks