Brackish - Brownish Cloudy Water? Filter Problem?

[Celine]

Hello all!!
Well I have good news and bad news..... we finally got 2 figure 8 puffers...... they are in perfect helth, eating like puffers love to eat!!

The bad news is that we left for Mexico for a week and we had a friend take care of our little fishies. When we got home, the water was a brownish cloudy color. The PH was a bit low so we fixed that problem, the salt level and nitrate level are good.

We are now wondering if we are not using a proper filter? We use Charcoal. Our filter seems fine. We rince it out each time we do a water change (once a week). We only had that filter for about 1 1/2 months.
Any suggestions? Is this another problem than the filter?
Thanks!

[ambushman2j]

did you buy any driftwood? brown water is usually caused by putting wood in your tank which has not been soaked or boiled

[bren]

Are you using peat in your filter?  Sometimes this will cause your water to turn brown.  Although it didn't happen to my tanks and I'm using peat plates (for the plants) and peat moss in my filter (to soften the water).  I did pre-soak it though.

[luvfishies]

If the charcoal is more than a week old, it could be leaching out what it's already filtered. Activatated Carbon is only good for a few days, usually.

I just double up on the sponges in my filters, and don't use carbon at all, except for medication removal (which has been 2 years )