new tank still foggy and smelly, help!!

[xander]

i set up a 120gal about a month ago, thing is, being impatient(yes i know i know) i didn't cycle it, and just dumped fish in. obviously i regret it now, but the tank is still foggy and the water smells like filter media, it's running on a 1320gal/hr pump to ohf system, in bioballs in it.

what can be improved? what should i do?!

 

[xander]

forgot to add, the stocklist is
2x spotted gars
2x senegal bichir
1x laparadei bichir
1x african bonytongue
1x fly river turtle

 

[bukster]

lots of water changes until you get a decent culture of bb will help a lot but not remedy the problem. best bet is to find a friend or lfs or something that has an old filter pad or something with bb growing on it already. get that and make sure it doesn't dry out at all. get it home and toss it in u'r tank. that'll greatly reduce the time you need to cycle

 

[bukster]

it's called seeding if you wanted to do a lil researching. but i wouldn't waste the time. get the stuff as soon as possible

 

[Onion01]

see if you find in a store a bottle of beneficial bacteria. I will help a lot!

 

[ziggy2]

As far as the smell goes, do some searching in the substrat. It sounds like you have something dead or excess food in there.

 

[bukster]

bio spira is the only ready made bb i'd recommend. cycle and the like are found to have all the bacteria you don't need (found to not be the bb bacteria wanted in a tank). i used cycle once in a tank of mine jut to see if it was worth all the hype. well it destroyed all my bb i already had and i had a 2 month amonia spike. gl

 

[xander]

uh i really doubt there's anything dead in the substrate...and thanks, i will try the bb