# [Wet Thumb Forum]-CaribSea Eco-Complete Substrate makes my water CLOUDY!



## sunkyokim (Mar 12, 2006)

i just put 2 bags of caribsea eco-complete substrate into my 24 gallon cube tank. I have a built in wet/dry filtration system and i was wondering if i needed to run a different kind of filter on this tank to clear up the cloudiness in my water. It has gotten a little more visible as the day passed, but i noticed that all the cloudy crap is settling to the bottom and creating a layer of, what looks like, dust on the top of the substrate. How do i fix this problem?


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## nimmat (Dec 14, 2004)

Eco-complete AFAIR has some buffering capabilities. The white stuff you can see if probably the result of these carbonates/bicarbonates precipitating slightly because of your water parameters. It is good in a way but a Wet Dry is ideal for a biological filter and is not supposed to be a mechanical filter. Infact if you expect it to do mechanical filteration, you will be hampering its biological capability to a large extent. I would ideally have an internal filter to handle the mechanical part and wash away its media in tap water every week. You wont need to use tank water to wash its media because your wet/dry will handle all the bacteria needed.

Nim


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## KRiley (Jun 30, 2005)

It could also be a bad bag of Eco. Last year sometime, Caribsea released some bad eco complete. It had some extra phosphates, and other stuff. I will post a link a little later.


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## KRiley (Jun 30, 2005)

Here ya go:

http://aquabotanicwetthumb.infopop.cc/groupee/forums/a/...681077441#6681077441

http://aquabotanicwetthumb.infopop.cc/groupee/forums/a/...6090712/m/2951045051

These will help you with the background and what to do to remedy it.


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## imported_banderbe (Feb 17, 2006)

> Originally posted by sunkyokim:
> i just put 2 bags of caribsea eco-complete substrate into my 24 gallon cube tank. I have a built in wet/dry filtration system and i was wondering if i needed to run a different kind of filter on this tank to clear up the cloudiness in my water. It has gotten a little more visible as the day passed, but i noticed that all the cloudy crap is settling to the bottom and creating a layer of, what looks like, dust on the top of the substrate. How do i fix this problem?


Just relax.

It will take a day or two to completely clear up. Then all will be fine.

Yes, there were some bad bags of Eco-Complete but that was a long time ago and the chances that you got one are basically zero.


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## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

I just did the same thing, and got the same responses. A week later, my tank is fine. It just took a while for the cloudy water to settle. It seems this is just part of the formula.


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