Need help with murky/greenish water

[Slick Fork]

Hi there,

I'm having a bit of a water clarity issue with my tank and would like some suggestions. First I'll give you the tank spec's.

100 gallon tank with no sump as of yet
~70lbs Live Rock
Average 1" sand bed some places deeper, some places shallower
1 Seio 820, 1 Seio 620 Powerheads
Fluval 405 running carbon, filter floss, and rowaphos
Tunze 9010 skimmer
HO T-5 Lighting
Using RO water and IO Reef Crystal salt

Tank occupants:
2 False Perc clownfish, 2 peppermint shrimp, 1 skunk cleaner shrimp, 4 hermit crabs, Green star polyps, several zoanthid colonies, toadstool, hairy/frilly mushrooms, and some feather dusters.

The tank has been up running since the end of November so only about 2.5 months. I started it out by moving about 20lbs LR and 1 clownfish from my Nano tank (which had been running for about 6-7 months). Since then, I've been adding LR 15lbs here and there when I can afford it, also trying to keep the amounts small as most of it is uncured and I want to avoid ammonia spikes!

Throughout January I had been battling a hair algae/bryopsis outbreak, I had added a new clown to pair up with my existing female (so far so good) and in order to make sure there was enough food left to get him eating, I had to feed much more than usual (She would go into a frenzy and devour everything coming in!) I know that this overfeeding contributed to the hair algae outbreak but I didn't want the poor little guy to starve to death!

Anyways, I decided that I needed to starve the Hair Algae out, so I threw some Rowaphos into the cannister filter about a week and a half ago, the same day I did this, I added another 17lbs of Live Rock. The next day the water was cloudy with a greenish tinge. It has progressively gotten worse, this morning I couldn't see much of anything inside the tank.
My levels as of last night:
Ph 8.2
Salinity 1.0235
Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 0-10 (lowest reading)
Alk read on the "normal-high" side of the scale (Red Sea testing kit)

Whatever is causing the murkiness, I'm not terribly concerned about my critters, they all look happy... In fact, the Zoa's, Toadstool, and polyps all seem to be enjoying this immensely as there is phenomenal polyp extension on everything. That being said, I'm sure they're losing out on light as the water is obstructing it.

Now, since adding the rowaphos I have noticed the Hair algae deteriorating, so that worked and this brings me to my theory... I think that the hair algae was sucking up all the nutrients that the skimmer didn't get as I was overfeeding the clowns. Adding the rowaphos stopped the growth/nutrient absorbtion by the hair algae leaving the door open for a water borne algae to step in and take up the slack. Does that make any sense?

Beneficial or not, the tank looks terrible so if anybody has any suggestions as to how I can get rid of this soup I would sure appreciate it. I know patience is a virtue, but I feel like I'm caring for a giant bowl of pea soup and not a reef tank!

[Sushiman]

time for some water changes, start a series of them, maybe a 3rd of your volume at a time with fresh saltwater. Watch that !@#$! Fluval & filter floss doesn't become a nutrient sump. How cured was that new live rock anyways? Everything in your tank should ride this out without difficulty.
What kind of clean up crew do you have? Refugium?

[Slick Fork]

LR was fairly fresh from the LFS so I would assume it to be uncured, which is one of the reasons I wasn't adding huge amounts at once. Clean-up crew is a whole pile of margarita and nassarius snails. I do try to change about 15% of the water weekly.

[honkey sauce]

i think you just added 17lbs off amoniauncured liverock

[Slick Fork]

The rock was really quite clean, and would it've caused the "murk" to start almost as soon as it got put in?

[Richard_Dicosimo]

what did the rock smell like before you added it? if it smelt skanky at all it probably had a bunch of die off on it. as for the algea bloom i have never had this problem but i bet a uv sterilizer would help alot or even ozone.


Richard

[kwirky]

having lights on while curing liverock is asking for trouble. learned that myself. try running it for a while with no lights, do some weekly water changes to export the ammonia, and run a phosphate reactor to make sure any ammonia being converted to phosphates by dieing algae is removed. some algae can thrive off ammonia or phosphates, or nitrates, only neednig one of the three.
killing the algae will only provide nutrients, causing another bloom shortly afterwards. you gotta fix the nutrient conversion, and export the nutrients, so lower your lighting cycle, do water changes, and run a phosphate reactor. also if you have a substrate, remove as much as you can for now. it'll only hold dieoff in it until it gets disturbed to cause another bloom later. when it's all fixed, you can put the sand back in again.

your snails will probably starve, though, cuz they'll have nothing to eat.

next time i start a tank from fresh, i'm going to cure all my rock at once in rubbermaid bins, making it easy to dump the water and rinse the rock, and NOT light it for about 2 months. would have saved me so much grief if i did that.

[Slick Fork]

Well, the good news is that the tank is looking MUCH better, I can see the back wall!

I had thought I was being smart and avoiding problems by buying my rock in smaller amounts as I went along. I think the next rock I get will go straight into the rubbermaid bin for a while!