Well, what was supposed to be a great day turned out to be a nightmare.:( I started adding water to my new system and when the tank was half way full, I noticed a dark haze on the corner of the glass. I rubbed it with my hand and it came off. I realized that when I had painted the back of my tank black, some of it mush have fallen on the inside front piece of glass. So, no I am sitting here at 1 a.m. trying to deal with the problem. I am going to have to empty the water tomorrow and completely clean out the sytem to try and get rid of an traces of the paint dust. does anyone have any suggestions for me? Has this ever happened to anyone else before? Is there any way to get around having to empty the system and start over. I don't see how there could be, I just dont want to pay for a bunch of new salt.

tragic stuff, firstly was the paint marine safe?if not find out whats in, so u know what to test for.
second, take out as much live media into a circulating container or qt as possible,
third, place as much activated carbon in it the water flow as possible, run this 24/7, pepending on whats in the paint it might even be wise to get an all round absorbive material from the LFS.
forth take note of any settling material on the bottom, suck it up as soon as u notice any.
u should be able to save the water, just before u put in any live stock test and recheck your sand bed.
if u have a propper qt tank, u are laughing at this point.
good luck, if i can think of anything else i'll chime again

well, I am lucky in that there is nothing in the tak right now except the water. I havent added sand or anything yet. So. do you think that I can use chemical filtration to suck teh harmful stuff out or shourl I start over. The paint isn't marine safe. Its just a plain old can of lack spray paint that I bought at Home Depot. I wouldn't know how to test for the chemicals in the water. I think my best bet is to just suck all that water out and start over. Thanks for your help.

to be honest, its proberly a more simple op to dump & clean, but in saying that, i cant remember how many lt/gal ur tank is. salt is not cheap in most cases. the bright side is it is another pitfall u are aware of this time round, before u continue in the future, im sure u will tripple check everything. to be honest, 2 components u should always have, activated carbon, and a decent QT tank. because when the s%^t hits the fan, it can splatter all over the place, u have to be prepared for a worst case sitch ok.
it would not be much of a spill, or u would have really noticed it major, so im taking the punt & saying AC will fix most of your problem.
i wish u luck anyways

sry, bummer

Gosh Eddy,

This stinks. There are probably people here who know more about this than me but IMO I'd probably dump and start over. Otherwise, every time I encountered a problem I would blame it on the paint. And there are already enough unexplained problems in this hobby!

water and salt are the 2 cheapest items in the hobby. take no chance. dump it all and run fresh water with carbon.

I agree - dump it, clean out and start over. Veriann's suggestion about the activated carbon is also good and I would continue to do that for awhile, just in case there are any trace chemicals left in the tank...

Good luck!

Thanks all, I have dumped it and started over. I feel good now knowing that I will have a good start to things.

Eddy,

I love your site!

Thanks Carmie. I appreciate it. I am having a bit of trouble with my water right now in my tank though. I posted a thread about the sandstorm I am having. How do you get rid of the coral dust in there? I noticed on your tank journal, that oyur water was as milky as mine is right now? How did you fix it?

Hi Eddy,

I just waited it out. Sure didn't fit in with my idea of a beautiful addition to my living room. :( But, I am happy to say, it is looking much better these days.

Thanks Carmie. I appreciate it. I am having a bit of trouble with my water right now in my tank though. I posted a thread about the sandstorm I am having. How do you get rid of the coral dust in there? I noticed on your tank journal, that oyur water was as milky as mine is right now? How did you fix it?


cut 90% of your pumps off for awhile, let the silt drop, vacume the top surface of your base, your right to go! or have a coke & a smile & wait awhile!

Carmie and Veriann:

My live rock is coming on Thursday, Should I just leave my water stagnant by keeping all pumps off unti then or should I have one powerhead going. I am hoping that the bacteriac caused by the die off of the LR will set up the bacteria needed to calm the stor down. However I don't want to ruin one of my power heads. WIll it hurt anything water wise if I leave all pumps off? All I have in there right now is a heater, sand, and water.

Eddy,

I'm not an engineer or anything but to me the dust is so fine that you probably aren't running a great risk to your pumps for the few days it will take to settle out. I got my LR & LS from a guy who was taking down his tank so I didn't have a lot of die off but I should have had a lot of bacteria and it still took all that time to clear. On the other hand, you are going to stir it up again when you aquascape. You are going to stir it up again when you aquascape but if it works like my tank it should settle out in a couple of hours. I don't know about the ramifications of not having any circulation. I think if it was me I would at least keep one powerhead going.

I have one final idea that I didn't think of when I was going through this, you could use filter floss to trap some of the dust. This wouldn't clog up really quick like the micron filter in a canister filter but if you packed it pretty tightly should help catch some of the debris. Run your overflow pipe into a bag of the floss so all the water goes through it. You would have to be careful when removing the bag with the dirty floss, I'd scoop something under it (like the bottom half of a 2 liter bottle) and take it out water and all so it doesn't drain back into your tank water. I didn't try this but it makes sense to me and I would have done it if I'd thought of it at the time. :)

Thanks Carmie. I don't know why I didn;t think of it before, but I am going to use my powerfilter that I have on my quarantine tank and see if I can use it to filter some stuff out. That way a can atleast break the surface of the water and run some of that dust into the filter floss. Thanks for the idea.

Eddy,

It is probably the same reason why I didn't think of it when I needed to!