cloudy water

[alan]

hi guys,

i need assistance, i seem to behaving trouble with me water, it is slightly clowdy,i have just installed a new external filter, to run along side my internal until the external has aged in the tank, i have tried acu clear to no avail. any ideas please.

alan

[MTS]

This is a good page to look at:
http://www.firsttankguide.net/cloudywater.php

[Scootdj79]

Need to figure out what the cloudiness is. Is it a Bacteria Blood or Algae bloom. In my 150 gallon tank I had trouble with cloudiness and it did not look green at all as an algae bloom you would think would but when i took a filter out of my overflow and rung it out in the sink the water was green. Turned out I had to much lighting going for the tank.

If its a bacteria bloom then there could be so many things going on and I am not the best for answering that. Did you do some big change or chemical add that could have affected the bacteria you have in the tank?

[Diana]

Altering the pH can cause cloudiness, too.

Perhaps you could post the test results of all the water tests you have, and also describe what has been going on lately with the tank.

Any new fish? New decorations? Other changes?

How long has the tank been set up?

Did the cloudiness show up within a few days of adding the second filter?

[helen nightingale]

http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=12444

Alan has already given some info here

Alan, did you re-test the water using new test kits?

[Diana]

Thanks, Helen for linking that. The first thing that jumps out to me is that there are a lot of fish in this tank.
Alan, did you get a nitrate test?
Are the numbers remaining at ammonia 0 ppm and nitrite 0 ppm? Adding that many fish can, as already pointed out, overwhelm the biofilter until the bacteria can grow to handle that much more waste.

[alan]

many thanks for the replies, i have tested water with new kit and nitrates at 05 nitries at 0 and amonia at <0.3. ph at 7.2.

regards

alan

[Diana]

Ammonia is worrisome. Keep up the water changes to keep the ammonia under .25 ppm, and watch out for a nitrite spike following the ammonia. When the nitrites show up do enough water changes to keep the nitrites under 1 ppm.