If I had to guess, I'm going to say that the problem you are experiencing is related to the fact that you capped the dirt with the pea size gravel. This is not a good dirt cap. It has too many gaps between the stones and it allows too much of the dirt to get into the water column. I know you probably don't want to do this but I would suggest taking it back down and capping the dirt with either playground sand, pool filter sand or black diamond sand blasting material. All of these are very small and dense and cap the dirt very well. I've been taking care of dirt tanks for over 10 years now and I have had good experience with the playground sand and the black diamond blasting sand. You can get the playground sand at lowes or home depot and you can get the black diamond at tractor supply.
I capped my 40 long with pea gravel and had no problems, though I only went about an inch deep. It's possible your cap is too thick to allow oxygenated water to get down to the soil layer. How is your flow? Is it enough to wave the plants around without creating a whirlpool? Is the outflow from your canister perhaps disturbing your substrate? As far as your color, is it mud brown or more like tea? Soils will leech tannins into your water for a good long while but if you're getting suspended soil particles that's another matter. Have you tried adding a fine particulate filter (aka polishing pad), and if so did it help?
As far as your cycle, are you showing any nitrates yet? If you only have ammonia and nitrite then I think your cycle is just taking its sweet time. Did you add any starter bacteria?
I've had my soil tank up for oh, probably not even six months yet. I still get tannins in my water and I have to clean the dirt out of my sponge prefilter every other week or so. However I wouldn't say that I really notice my tank being brown at all.
I like what BigMek said about the polishing pad or something similar in your canister filter. If you don't want to spend a bunch of money, I've had good luck with Polyfil. My kids call it teddy bear stuffing. You can get a huge bag of it at walmart for like $7 and just pull some out of there and stuff your canister with some of that. It catches just about everything, and it's so cheap when you get done with it you just throw it away and stuff some more in there.
Nice looking wood in there, what kind is it? Some woods will leech tannins for months or more. I had a chunk of mopani that was still making my tank look like tea even after I boiled it six times. The only way I know to pull tannins out of the water is with activated carbon.
Love your scape by the way, especially that rock with the plant on top. Looks like something from a Ghibli film.
its african driftwood i had in a tank for like 5 year then took it out i dont think it the wood i will grab some polyfill on the way home tonight just to see if that helps
In my experience, dirted tanks (and perhaps all planted tanks) settle faster if you don't change the water. Let the water cloud up. Let the microbial ecology of your tank establish itself.
That makes complete sense to me. The first few weeks of acclimation are honestly a little unsettling (zinger!), but in my experience an established dirted tank is one of the most stable types of aquaria. Then again, you've been keeping aquariums for over two thirds of my entire lifespan, so maybe I'm just blabbing!
i don't have problems with color with smaller gravel. also, if you don't like miracle grow, you could try making your own MTS and that will speed up the cycle way faster with less problems.
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