Cloudy water - what happened?

Came in to work today to find my tank cloudy (white). I did a 15g water change yesterday and also added PhosGuard in a filter bag to my sump. I thoroughly rinsed the phosguard first to get the dust off, but maybe there was still dust on it? Or could this be a precipitation event? (I haven't dosed anything for about 5 days, only did the water change). All of my corals and fish look okay, but for how long? I've ramped up my skimmer to try to pull out what I can. There is a fine white powder on my powerheads, etc., like there would be after a precipitation event. I'm leaning towards this being something to do with the phosguard but have no idea. Will my skimmer be enough to fix this, or should I rush out and buy chemi-clean or a poly filter pad to throw in the sump?

 

r u running carbon? u should get urself a reactor if u dont have one already.

 

check the salinity. if it is to high the water will cloud. Water change with rodi will fix. MAke sure you arent topping off with saltwater.

 

Well, after removing the phosguard and ramping up the skimmer, the water has cleared significantly! I'm thinking it must have been phosguard dust... or else I had too high of flow on it and it was breaking the pellets down into dust (I had the phosguard in a filter bag hung on my skimmer outlet). I still have white powder on the powerheads, walls, and rocks. that I've been trying to periodically blow off into the water column.

I am going to look into getting a reactor so that I have it on hand to run phosban and/or carbon. I need to find one that is not an in-sump reactor as I simply have no room for one inside the sump. I see that BRS makes one that isn't in-sump. Does anyone have recommendations or has anyone used the BRS reactors?

 

yeah i have one. works great. i have the dual reactor but if i could i would get 2 seperate reactors so i can adjust the amount of flow in each one independently. no biggie though. im happy with mine.

 

I use the NextReef MR1 dual reactor. I use it for phosban and carbon, change the carbon once a month and phosban every 2 months. It's extremely easy to use, setup, and also has a hang-on attatchment. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a reactor.