You made one big mistake.

You don't put in fish ten days after you start the tank. You have to wait
three weeks for the bacterial cycle to be in effect. After the first week
you put in some starter fish like danios or something, then after three you
can slowly start to introduce fish.

Also when you put the water in the tank, you are supposed to pour it on the
plate in order not to disturb the gravel and cause sediment and gravel dust
to be released in the water.

Seems like you made the common mistake of jumping the gun.

The water's gonna be cloudy for a while nothing you can do.

"kush" wrote in message
om...
I don't know if anyone remembers me at this list, I've been offline
for a year or so. At any rate, after many, many years of vociferously
advocating the UGF-school of natural planted aquaria, I've decided to
cross-over and TRY a high-tech tank for myself.

The tank's been up for ten days and BOY, IS IT MURKY IN THERE! Should
I expect the milky bloom to clear on it's own? I tried Acurel F even
though I was pretty sure it wasn't going to do anything which, in
fact, it didn't.

Here's my tank...

SETUP - - -
Perfecto 125 60"L x 18"W x 26"H
100% Caribsea Eco-Complete substrate
Tunze Substrate Heating Cable
Hamilton 6 x 55W 6700k Compact Flourescent @ 11 hours
EHEIM Professional II Thermofilter 2128
Pressurised CO2 @ 65 bubbles/minute
Aqualine Bushke Aquamedic External Reactor 1000, inline

WATER - - -
Temp = 78.3°F
pH = 7.0
gH = 75
kH = 120
Fe = 0.1 ppm
NO2 = 0
NO3 = 5.0 ppm

(didn't test for ammonia, seemed pointless, what with all the plants
and apparently healthy fish)

CRITTERS - - -
3 German Rams (juveniles, just over 1")
11 Harlequin Rasbora
2 Kribensis (about 2")
15 Ottos
4 Corydora ( 1")
20 Cardina Japonica (more or less)

(adding golden clams, nerite snails and wood shrimp at the end of the
week, which may make things better or may make things worse.)

PLANTS - - -
2 bunches Limnophilia sessiliflora
3 bunches Heteranthera zosterifolia
2 bunches Rotala indica
3 bunches Rotala wallichii
2 bunches Alternathera reinekii 'Rosaefolia'
2 bunches Glossostigma elatinoides
4 bunches Hygrophilia difformis
10 pots Crypt petchi
4 pots Crypt Wendti
5 pots Eleocharis acicularis
14 pots Echinodorus tennellus
1 pot Eleocharis montevidensis
1 Unidentified Tiger Lotus
8 Echinodorus parviflorus 'Tropica'

Any suggestions will be appreciated. Alternatively, if you just want
to tell me that everything will clear up on it's own with a few days,
that's even better.

Also, using Chuck's CO2 table, and the pH and kH parameters noted
above, my CO2 should be about 20 ppm. Using the RedSea test kit,
however, yields a result of about 10ppm. Do I care or do I just toss
the tests and watch the pretty O bubbles?

Thanks,
kush