I Dont Understand (Cloudy Water)

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troublesum

Aimara
MFK Member
Dec 28, 2007
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Astoria, NY
I have 125-gallon tank with 2 FX6 and I do 3 WC a week tank has been set up almost 2 years i have a 10in male Midas and a 5in female for the last month my water has been cloudy my parameters are 0, 0, 10

Yesterday I rinsed out one of my FX6 only with the tank water nothing its still cloudy.

Please explain why my water is cloudy and how i can fix it.

Thanks
 
Possibly a bacterial bloom, that's the most common thing I think of when tanks stay cloudy. Heterotrophic bacterial usually eats fish waste, and the blooms can occur when there are excess nitrates and/or phosphates. Sounds like you take good care of the tank, probably not too much waste in the tank, but maybe there are lots of phosphates in your tap. This can change seasonally, or depending on what the city adds. I have used phosphate removal pads in my filter which worked well for me when my tap water was full of the stuff, it seemed to work for me.
 
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Gourami Swami said:
Possibly a bacterial bloom, that's the most common thing I think of when tanks stay cloudy. Heterotrophic bacterial usually eats fish waste, and the blooms can occur when there are excess nitrates and/or phosphates. Sounds like you take good care of the tank, probably not too much waste in the tank, but maybe there are lots of phosphates in your tap. This can change seasonally, or depending on what the city adds. I have used phosphate removal pads in my filter which worked well for me when my tap water was full of the stuff, it seemed to work for me.
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There is barely any waste in my tank the 3 WC a week helps.
How could i find out if the city added something new to the tap water i'm in NYC and the cloudiness did seem to start when it got warmer here.
 
In addition to what swami said-

Do you prefilter the intakes on your fx6s? If so they may be clogging more rapidly than you expected. I had this very problem when i tried to put filter floss over my intakes and they clogged after a couple days, somewhat hindering the efficiency of the filter. For whatever reason the whole tank was blanketed for a few days until i figured out the problem.

Also, how much substrate and what kind is in the tank? When you added the female you shouldve seen a sharp uptake in digging activity by both fish. Piling up sand, digging pits, that sort of thing. If you have a relatively large amount of dirty substrate all of the activity could be easily clouding your water.
 
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City of Astoria Water Quality Report
I doubt they are adding something new (having worked at a drinking water facility myself)
but seasonal changes can effect the mineral, or other components of the natural water.
If lead pipes are predominant in your area, phosphates are sometimes added to keep lead from leaching into drinking water (phosphate coats the inside of pipes providing a barrier to lead leaching out)
If the fish you added, are larger than you normally kept, their extra bio load may have instigated a bacterial bloom, and it would be temporary.
Your filters would not have an effect, because e bacteria is too small to be filtered out, and you just need to let the tank come to equilibrium, could take a month.
What is the volume of your water you remove with each water change?
 
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Backfromthedead said:
In addition to what swami said-

Do you prefilter the intakes on your fx6s? If so they may be clogging more rapidly than you expected. I had this very problem when i tried to put filter floss over my intakes and they clogged after a couple days, somewhat hindering the efficiency of the filter. For whatever reason the whole tank was blanketed for a few days until i figured out the problem.

Also, how much substrate and what kind is in the tank? When you added the female you shouldve seen a sharp uptake in digging activity by both fish. Piling up sand, digging pits, that sort of thing. If you have a relatively large amount of dirty substrate all of the activity could be easily clouding your water.
Click to expand...
Ive been thinking about the hoses being clogged. i have small gravel rocks, the male was moving the gravel before the female got there... lol. When i do my WCs i actually gravel vac so basically 3 gravel vacs a week of 50%
 
troublesum said:
Ive been thinking about the hoses being clogged. i have small gravel rocks, the male was moving the gravel before the female got there... lol. When i do my WCs i actually gravel vac so basically 3 gravel vacs a week of 50%
Click to expand...

Yes i actually thought of that right after i posted. Those intake hoses get clogged after a while. Ive actually been backwashing my fx6 hoses every time i clean it out by switching the intake/output and draining it into a bucket. First time i did it all sorts of gunk came out of there.

And yeah if you gravelvav regular than that rules out the substrate.
 
Backfromthedead said:
Yes i actually thought of that right after i posted. Those intake hoses get clogged after a while. Ive actually been backwashing my fx6 hoses every time i clean it out by switching the intake/output and draining it into a bucket. First time i did it all sorts of gunk came out of there.

And yeah if you gravelvav regular than that rules out the substrate.
Click to expand...
Can i just disconnect the hoses and run regular water thru them to clean them out?
 
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