Substrate

I hate cloudy aquarium, and bad substrate does it all the time 🙁

The most common substrate problem is a presence of different smaller sand fractions, other than the main one. When you acquire quartz sand  of certain size, you get about 10% of smaller particles (dust). This is not a problem in a planted tank, but in a African cichlid tanks, this is a huge issue. Our beloved cichlids love to dig, to pile up and just spit sand all over the tank, which is nice, but clouds the water by releasing the buried dust. This is a huge issue in a well circulated aquarium, which does this all the, time since it moves substrate constantly. Simple solution for this problem is fractioning, hence removing any smaller particles. This is something I’ve always ignored and even tonight I’m having this issues in my small shell dweller aquarium. I’ll stick to my plan this time and remove anything that should not be there :). Quartz sand is coarse and its particles are very sharp, moving and pushing it, makes it grind it self, and in the end you get your dust, no matter what 🙁