Help..Extremely cloudy water

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
DO NOT CLEAN ANY FILTERS!!! you will kill off more bacteria and make the bloom worse!!! use a ammonia and nitrite detoxifier and change water every couple days until the bacteria starts to grow
 
Ok. I think I'll wait till tomorrow to do another water change.
 
Owain4 said:
DO NOT CLEAN ANY FILTERS!!! you will kill off more bacteria and make the bloom worse!!! use a ammonia and nitrite detoxifier and change water every couple days until the bacteria starts to grow
Click to expand...

No. Dont due that. If you neutralize all if the ammonia and nitrite in your water you will potentially crash your tank. The bacteria will no longer have any food and start to die off.
 
yup.. if i remember right, fish waste = more ammonia. ammonia is what the beneficial (good) bacteria thriving off of. I think your fish would be fine in the mean time.

Personally, if I were you I'd stop with all the water changes.. as someone said before, it kind of contradicts itself but cleaning more (or too much), is bad for your tank. TIME is the key to cycling a tank.

If you go to the pet store, there is something called "bacteria supplement" by Topfin that helps speed up the cycling process. There are other similar products. I'd rather add some of that stuff than do more water changes.
 
yup, what he said, let the tank do the work... unless anything drastic happens .. just let it be ...skip a few water changes.... then go back to minimal water changes on your regular schedule.. tank needs to reestablish itself..... I learned this the hard way many times.. before the internet.. by cleaning my tank TOO good..
 
UPDATE_ Still cloudy

Ammonia is still high at .25 or slighty less
PH is a bit high 7.8 plus
nitrates are good
I added some Ammonia detoxifier last night enough to treat 180gal.
Should I still be skipping the water changes??
 
fishtician said:
Just test the water
PH is high 7.8 plus
Ammonia .25
Nitrates are good
Any thoughts?? Recommendations??


7.8 ph is fine. My 300 sits at 7.8 all the time. As long as it stays fairly stable it's fine.

The presence of ammonia is a bit of a problem though. You also say nitrates are fine, Whats fine? A healthy established system can have 30-40ppm before a water change and technically be fine. If you have 0 nitrates it could be because of several things. 1) all the water changes, which is really not a bad thing or 2) you r going through a mini cycle or possibly a crash. Nitrates should be present even if they are low

If your changing water and adding dechlorinator(which most will also neutralize ammonia) you could be starving your biofilter of the food it needs, but .25 is ultimately unhealthy for the fish. If it were me, id try to get some established filter media or gravel from a healthy tank (lfs, friend, another tank) to put in your system somewhere and I'd spend the 10 bucks on a bottle of Stability and dose for the next week.

Keep up on the water changes until you can get one or both of the above though. Aquariums are a bit of a balancing act and too much of most things that may seem right, may knock the system out of whack
Click to expand...
 
Both nitrate test show zero. I do have a well est. 55 g that im gonna take some water out of and put in the 180g. I was suprised that after treating the tank with detoxifier that there really wasn't much change. The water changing is what Im unsure on. Some people say don't change any, the others say do som changes. But if I do, How often and how much is safe at this point?
 
i had filter issues and my tank turned real cloudy....my ammonia was 4ppm after almost a week of running. now its cleared up alot and my amonia has dropped to 2ppm and all i did was leave it alone and let it do its thing...i fed 1 time aday instead of 2 or 3 and havent added any chemicals or done any WC.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom