really cloudy tank, plz help its getting me down

[oscars mum]

hi,
it dosent matter how many water changes i do ( have done the equiv of 475% over 2 days) i cant get the water cleared,its my oscar tank and im getting fed up of not being able to veiw them properly, i have had problems with high nitrites over the past few days( hence massive water changes) and they are now back to 0, i will be doing more water changes today to keep them there,as i have had a problem with my filters and its going thru a cycle again, i have got a tetratec ex1200 running now, and honestly though this would clear it but nope, its not. i feed them tetra doromin pellets, and prawns and peas,bloodworm,tho do do a vac everytime i do a wc. do you think i should get rid of the sand, and add some slate chippings, or just have a "bare bottom" , i appreciate its quite near to a window, but it used to be a smaller fishes tank and i never had this problem till i changed over to sand about 8 weeks ago ( has been clear since then), would really appreciate advice on this
the large particles on the left of the pic are food,not muck

 

[redturq]

Looks like the sand is the culprit. Maybe you have too much water movement coming from the filter outlet? The worst scenario is to replace the sand with Gravel or Pool Filter sand. I would start with the filter first.

 

[bigspizz]

Your tank is cycling....Having it by the window will cause problems down the road, and may be adding to the trouble now...The best thing you can do is try to find some established media from somewhere. I would chill out on the water changes, as that is prolonging your cycle. If you are taking your nitrates down to 0, that is too much....Keep them at 10 if you can and just never let them get to 40 ppm...All that is after the cycle though...High nitrates tells me it was at least in the advanced stages of cycling, and like I said, you have started that whole process over again...If you plan o keeping the fish in, change the water when it gets to 40 ppm, down to 10 or 15...do this until the water clears and your tests indicate less changes are neccesarry....I would have paid 1,000,000 for someone to tell me all of this when I was new....There you go for free......And welcome to MFK!!!

 

[bigspizz]

And stop doing gravel vacs for about 3 months.....

 

[Plecos_Ftw]

I agree kinda sounds like the tank is cycling. With all the water changes its kinda seeming like the tank doesnt have a chance to cycle or somethin. I did the same thing recently with one of my tanks that I just moved. I had just a 60 that I had to move about an hour from my house and after setting it up it looked exactly the same as your picture. I did water changes and started flippin out thinking all my fish were gonna kick the bucket. My nitrites were sky high as well. So what I did was read up a little more and was like.. duh my tank needs to completely cycle. Sure enough few days later cleared right up. to this day nitrites are still high but they are slowly going down. Another bit of advice someone told me in a fish store was if your water params are messed up by adding a whole crap load of chemicals it just makes things worse. But heres a question, how long have you had that tank set up? did it just suddenly get cloudy or what? I had cloudy water with sand a while back thought it was just the sand but I duno. I think Id need to know a lil bit more about the tank first. Hope some of this huge thing can help haha.

 

[Spankbelly]

Did you change to sand just recently?
And the tank was cloudy as soon as this was done?
You do know that all substrate needs to be rinsed before it goes in the tank.
As even epoxied rocks have some dust.
This is more true for sand. That has lots of small partials that stay suspended forever.
Especially with big pumps keeping it stirred up.
If you had no fish in the tank you could turn off the pumps. The dust would settle in a day or so with no water movement. Then you vacuum the layer off the sand. You have to do it a few times because you stir some up and must wait for it to settle again.
Then you would be sure that was the cause. Then you can relax. Dusty water wont hurt fish. Have you seen the water these things came from?

If it is dust the standard filter will not clean it. The partials are too small. But you can but a "polishing media" an extra fine filter insert. This will get the water crystal clear pronto.
Or you can just cover the intake with stuff like cotton or pillow stuffing or whatever. I used cotton hair nets. A few dozen at a time worked ok. Anything that will catch the fine particles.
Or just leave it.
With normal water changes it will eventually get taken out. After a few months.
The easiest way is to filter it.
Oh, I have also stuffed the canister with coffee filters. Works.
But there is more dust than you think and will have to change out whatever you are using as a polisher.
If it's not sand dust...good luck with that.

 

[kiLLz kC]

when this happens i load my canisters full of carbon and it clears itself up usually within 18-24 hours.

 

[tunerX]

sounds like cycling to me as well. Instead of changing the water constantly, get some bio spira. The tank will still be cloudy for a bit but will be cycled quickly.

For the sand all you can do is wait and polish the water. Once all of the tiny sand particles are out It should be good. It just takes time. What size sand did you use, I use coarse pool filter sand which only requires a quick rinse and has large granules.

 

[oscars mum]

i will try to answer you all at once, the tank has been set up about 10 weeks, firts i had small fish then changed the substrate( very well rinsed) then i changed the fish, only having the oscars in there has made it cloudy.
i had nitrate and nitrite so i had to change to take the no2 down, hence the no3 went with it.
i have a polishing pad in there,for 2 days and its not making any diffrence, i havent got the carbon in there tho, so maybe i should addit???. ill try the carbon then, if no joy, ill remove the sand,everytime i add food its getting worse, so im on a short fuse at the moment and im sure my boyz are too, anything ive missed???

~s~ xxx

 

[tunerX]

If you are having nitrite problems then it is a definite cycle. Adding bacteria from an established tank will help speed it up, or adding bio spira will cycle it almost instantly (you just need to wait for the bacteria to choose a spot to cling to).

Changing the substrate shouldn't have affected the cycle too bad, and it seems that with the small load it wasn't really cycled for even the smaller fish.

Compound problem, silty sand and a cycle. doing too much of a WC will increase the length of time for a cycle to complete.


Lastly, with a fully cycyled tank, introducing a new, moderate, bioload will not cause this cloudiness, since the bacteria can double in 24 hours.