Red Flourite

So I have started converting my tank to a plant tank. I decided it would be a good idea to remove the old substrate and replace it with Flourite. So the LFS had red flourite which I though looked cool. I got two 15.4 lb bags of that and two 10 lb bags of river gravel.

Rinsing this stuff took forever. My gosh I though the red water would never end. I finally just put it all in a bucket and stuck a hose at the bottom and let it perculate for about 40 minutes till it cleared up. Then I took the hose and stirred it up and let it over-flow for about another 15 minutes. Even with all this my tank is really cloudy. I can't see my fish at all.








just kidding

What's a vortex? Just this afternoon I've become able to see the canister filter which sits behind the tank and the entire bottom of the tank. It has been really dirty. I'm going to need some major water changes to get this to clear up. I'm sure my filter is fubar and my bacteria are all but gone/dead/kaput. Going to need to re-cycle the tank probably.

Ugh... this is going to be a lot of work.