Large white flakes in tank

[crate]

Hi, I'm VERY new to saltwater tanks and I am having a bit of a problem. I have white on the inside of the tank glass and some large white flakes on the bottom of the tank. I used baking soda to lower the ph level and I think this might have caused the flakes (it's either that or salt but my salinity is at 1.022). Does anyone know if this would hurt my fish? I want to scrape it off the tank and somehow remove it but I'm afraid that getting rid of it might be hazardous to the fish. We have a yellow tang, a boxfish and a longhorn cowfish. I have a 46 gallon tank, a skimmer and a penguin filter. All of my tests are good (no2, no3, ph, salinity, etc.).

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[jaws2]

well welcome to the board crate i think it might be the baking soda how much did yuo put in??

 

[crate]

Probably 2 cups. I just added some then waited and checked the ph then added somemore. I guess that'll teach me to use ph down from now on.

Should I just vaccum out the flakes and scrape the sides of the tank?

 

[jaws2]

i dont know how big is this tank??????

 

[BrianH]

How high was your pH? I believe that baking soda actually acts as a pH buffer which means that it helps keep the pH stable in your tank. In the future I would suggest not adding chemicals without having a handle on your tank parameters.

Brian

 

[catfishmike]

these "flakes may have been all the different salts and calciums and other minerals precipitating,which from my understanding is disolved elements re-solidifying in your tank.now i could be way off too so don't take my anwser for the gospel.wait for some more opinions.

 

[crate]

It's a 46 gallon tank and the ph was over 8.6 (that's as high as my test kit measures). I'm gonna try cleaning it off some of it then I'll re-check my salinity to see if that goes up. I used baking soda in freshwater to lower the ph level with great results so I figured it would work in saltwater - which it did just with the unwanted result of white flakes.

 

[crate]

OK, I got most of the flakes up but I was unable to scrape off the back of the tank which has a lot of white on it. The front didn't have much and I was able to get rid of it (at least for now).

Any ideas on scraping off the back? I really don't want to remove the fish.

Thanks.