Bacterial Bloom/ Cloudy Water

[Rocksor]

Hello; You have as of the first post some ammonia and some nitrite. These are toxic at any level. The WC will dilute these toxins and to my thinking dealing with these toxins while the bb population increases takes priority over water cloudiness.
The part of the cloudy water due to a bacterial bloom will slowly subside.

According to the manufacturer's website of the JBLCombi Test kit, it will test NH4+ and NH3- , which is total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) that is non-toxic ammonium plus toxic ammonia. If you take the un-ionized calculator from Francis-Floyd, et al.

FA16/FA031: Ammonia in Aquatic Systems

Management of ammonia, the primary waste product of fish, is critical to fish health, especially in intensive systems. At low concentrations, ammonia causes stress and damages gills and other tissues. Fish exposed to low levels of ammonia over time are more susceptible to bacterial infections...

edis.ifas.ufl.edu

You will find that on the upper end of PH 7.0 and 26C of the OP's readings, the multiplier to TAN is 0.0060, which produces a result of 0.00015mg/L. This is lower than 0.05mg/L of damaging NH3- ammonia as stated in the article. This means that the test is mostly showing non-toxic ammonium NH4+ in the 0.025ppm measurement.

If the OP, has any concerns about the really low level NH3-, then they can dose with Prime or equivalent everyday, and not have to worry about it.

For those who don't want to do the calculation, there are TAN charts that use this calculation of un-ionized ammonia and TAN readings that show colors indicating when fish are safe at a certain ammonia level relative to PH and temperature. e.g. from

https://ca-en.hagen.com/File/55f0bcb0-7d6e-4da3-8adc-e8869e7a3045

 

[Coryloach]

Hi. Your tank looks great.

On the issue at hand....

Heterotrophic bacteria are facultative anaerobe, meaning that when in the substrate, they do anaerobic decomposition(e.g. organics to ammonia) but once they're released in the water column, they start aerobic activities, mainly consuming ammonia in the presence of oxygen. However, they're not very efficient at that so the water quality is not up to scratch while seeing the actual white bloom. They also multiply in the matter of hours and would bring the oxygen levels down, compromising both fish and the good bacteria.

Removing them mechanically via water changes may not work as in a couple of hours they'd double again. I'd concentrate in increasing oxygen levels by increasing surface agitation as much as possible, make a water fall like conditions for the time being to prevent negative consequences, and add any other "oxygen" device you've got laying around like a power head or air pump.

Adding Prime maybe counteractive as it will further decrease oxygen levels down. The anaerobs will not suffer but the nitrifying bacteria and fish will, so as long as the readings turn out ok and the fish act fine, I'd wait it out.

Other than that, keep in mind that when dosing certain nutrients, they can react with water and make the water look cloudy but the effect is only a couple of hours. Iron dosing is such example. Iron dosing can actually promote heterotrophic bacteria so for the time being, while the bloom is on, I'd skip it but would resume after that as iron is one of the most essential micronutrients for plants. It is scarcely available in tanks with hard water as well. Iron deficiency manifests in new growth being pale/bleached out and stunted.

On a side note, I'd add way more plants than you currently have...I'd consider your tank non-planted...as a couple of plants don't make any difference to anything, especially slow growers like anubias and java fern.Floating and emersed plants are actually the most efficient at maintaining water quality as they have access to aerial CO2, which is a limitation to underwater plants.