Elaine T Spaketh Thusly:

I saw this fab 2 gal planted tank at LFS and it inspired me to yank the
UGF from Squishy's 2 gallon hex and put on a Red Sea nanofilter and
Fluorite substrate. Lighting is a 14 watt 5500K spiral compact
flourescent that seems plenty bright over a tank this tiny.

But OMG - I rinsed and rinsed my fluorite and it never did rinse clear.
I finally gave up and set up the tank and the water is STILL cloudy an
hour later. Will this mess actually filter out? I put a second pad in
the filter, but it only seems to be getting a little bit better.
Squishy is annoyed and I don't blame him.

Also, is this cloud going to reappear every time I move a plant or
replant stem plants? If so, I'm returning the bag of flourite I bought
for the 15 gallon that I have on order and using only Eco Complete.
Fluorite is beautiful, but only when you can see it!
It'll clear up soon enough, but you may find yourself having to clean your
filter more often for a while. You may want to try stirring up a bit a few
hours before you're going to clean the filter to get even more out.

I learned this the *hard* way - the trick to rinsing Flourite is to do just
one handful at a time under lots of water. I found a kitchen colandar works
well for this. As you do each handful, dump it into a bucket with water
running into it. This worked well for me the second time I did a tankful,
after filling and planting, the tank was clear in a few hours.
Seems that the thicker the pile you're trying to rinse, the more dust that
gets trapped inside the pile. Doing small amounts at a time is much more
effective. I suspect a Flourite bed might make a very efficient coarse filter
medium, but would be a pain to clean.

It's not difficult, it just takes time - but it takes less time to do it
thoroughly than to try to clean up afterwards if you don't.



--
Bill H. [my "reply to" address is real]
www.necka.net
Molon Labe!