Almost ready to give up

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jagarundi

Feeder Fish
Mar 8, 2006
2
0
1
New York
What's up MFK'ers. Ok, here's the deal....I have a 75 gallon tank. 4 oscars, 2 iridescent sharks, 1 Jack Dempsey. Before I moved to Long Island I had the same tank setup in Brooklyn. Similar fish. When in Brooklyn the water in my tank remained crystal clear and I would only have to do monthly water changes. Since I moved here and started up this tank last April, and gone through the cycle, my water can barely get through a week before it's cloudy and I have to do a water change. I have 2 Marineland 450 filters which is more than enough and no matter how little food I give or skip days, the tank gets cloudy after a few days. Why is this happening and what can be done about it???
 
Post your water test results if you can.

How large are your fish?

How much water are you changing weekly?

What is your filter cleaning frequency?
 
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What's up MFK'ers. Ok, here's the deal....I have a 75 gallon tank. 4 oscars, 2 iridescent sharks, 1 Jack Dempsey. Before I moved to Long Island I had the same tank setup in Brooklyn. Similar fish. When in Brooklyn the water in my tank remained crystal clear and I would only have to do monthly water changes. Since I moved here and started up this tank last April, and gone through the cycle, my water can barely get through a week before it's cloudy and I have to do a water change. I have 2 Marineland 450 filters which is more than enough and no matter how little food I give or skip days, the tank gets cloudy after a few days. Why is this happening and what can be done about it???


Your 75 is way over stocked and the filters can not handle the bioload. That is why you keep getting a mini cycle which is causing cloudiness.
 
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Agree with Tom, you are severely overstocked.
Before the move you had a tenuous equilibrium built up slowly over time, as the fish grew.
Starting over after a new cycle there is no way for the tank to match to such a high bioload. The cloudiness also may be bacterial blooms, due to being so overstocked, and the normal beneficial bacteria species not able to catch up.
The ratings for those filters are not based on such a heavy load, they would be rated for a normal community tank of a dozen neons, an angel or two and a couple cory cats.
For those fish, you should probably triple the tank size, and that would be temporarily.
 
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Yep, as others have said, your tank is severely overstocked. For a 75, you probably wouldn’t want more than one oscar and one jack dempsey, or just two oscars. Even with those, you will probably want to do large weekly water changes of 75% or more, when the fish have gotten larger.

The iridescent sharks are just plain too large for any average aquarium. They need several thousand gallons as they can get very large. duanes duanes has posted a picture of how large they can get, which is obviously too large for your 75 gallon tank.
 
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