cycling/green,cloudy water question

#1
I've been out of the hobby for some time. A lot has changed, especially in cycling methods. I have a 40 gallon with 20 pounds of dry rock and 25 pounds of Florida live rock. I dosed MiroBacter quikcycl and everything went as expected. The ammonia went to 2ppm, the Nitrites eventually went to 5ppm. Tank became a bit cloudy, so I turned on my skimmer. Now Ammonia is 0, Nitrites are 0 and Nitrates are 5pp. Basically overnight the cloudy water is now green cloudy water. I believe the cycle is complete, but I don't know how to rectify the green cloudy water. My suspicions is some kind of bacteria bloom causing cloudy water and Nitrates feeding the green water. I did a 30% water change, but still pretty cloudy and green. Any advice would be appreciated.
 

SynDen

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#2
Have you been running lights during the cycle? If so I would turn them off for a while. The dry rock is very likely a big part of the issue as dry rock always has a ton of excess nutrients bound up in it and it will take it quite a while to burn it all out. Even if the first part of the cycle looks about complete, it will take the better part of 6m-1y for the dry rock to stabilize and burn through much of that excess. During this time it will be highly prone to a variety of different algae blooms, but if you keep up with weekly water changes and do your best to keep the bio load low during this time, it will eventually pass.
For now I would leave the lights off for a few weeks, and just keep doing a weekly water change. If its still cloudy after a few weeks, then think about running some carbon and GFO. Carbon to help clear it up and GFO to help pull out the bound up phosphates in the rock
 
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SynDen

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#4
It wouldn't hurt, but it won't solve the problem
 
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