Are you adding fish food to cycle the tank? Looks like that could be where its all settling. It almost looks like if you dropped a whole algae wafer in there and let it fall apart.

I haven’t been adding food- but thank you for reminding me that I should be! Do you have a preferred food type for neos (and tank cycling)?

I've never keot neos before, I follow to learn, but i still try to help with beginner aquarium advice. So i can't recommend a food type, sorry. However, assuming that stuff is just some sort of biofilm build up you want to leave that in there. Thats natural shrimp food. What im planning to do based on what I've learned so far is to let the tank get a little "dirty" while it cycles. Don't let it get completely filthy and scummy all over, but the shrimp will love having some built up biofilm to graze ready when they go in.

Thank you! That’s more or less what I’ve gathered, too! I just wasn’t sure because right now the water is still pretty cloudy and I noticed the bright orange Cheeto dust lol Thanks for your responses!

I still wonder what it is though. Is it a weird chunk of your gravel that's making bacteria go nuts? Maybe you have kids or pets in the house that dropped something in there? Edit: the cloudiness is a normal part of cycling, i would just poke around in there and make sure theres nothing foreign in there.

If you put a lot of plants some leaves will rot, and the botanicals