When does a new tank clear up?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo

quasar

Piranha
MFK Member
Jul 16, 2012
947
142
76
Montreal, Quebec
I have a new 10g tank that i set up about 2 weeks ago. It has an AC 20 for filtration, a marina bubble machine, and a small 10w heater. I used some cycle from nutrifin and the water is still cloudy and sometimes smells bad. The tank is being used for my feeder fish for my snakehead, and an albino bushy nose pleco. Any insights on how long this can take?
 
1) When did you put the nutrafin in? How long ago? 14 days?
2) when did you put fish in the tank? How many days?
3) when did you add food to the tank? How many days?
4) what else have you done to the tank in the last 14 days? (added plants, changed substrate, changed the filter, did a water change, vacuumed the substrate?)
 
The fish went in day 2 cuz i had to give the original fish tank back to my bud. Nothing has died. Nutirfin went in day 4, and iv fed 5 days ago and yesterday

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
So like this?

day 1 start tank....do nothing else
day 2 add fish....no food
day 3 no food
day 4 add nutrafin...no food
day 5 no food
day 6 no food
day 7 no food
day 8 no food
day 9 feed fish
day 10 no food
day 11 no food
day 12 no food
day 13 feed fish
day 14 no food

And 20% WC most days?

And did you shake the Nutrafin bottle really, really well?

Did you add ammonia to the tank and get readings up to 5ppm? When?
 
Its 1 dozen medium sized commets along with the bushy nose (1.5"). Well I gave it a lil shake, but to be honest by day 7 I was worried and pretty much the whole bottle went in the tank

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
I would have seeded the filter w/ media from an established tank. When I do that the tank stays cloudy for a day at most. Then I do a water change on the third day and it stays clear.
 
Its always weird to say but pee in ur tank to cycle it. I told my friend to do it to his 29 and it cycled in a lil less than a week.

Sent from my LGL55C using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
Well, Nutrafin is supposed to be get the cycle started, but there is a process to using it. Based on it being cloudy and what you've said so far, I'm skeptical the process is working. If so, you have an uncycled tank with fish and possibly some BB, but clearly not enough. The bacteria you want are autotrophic that double every 8-24 hours. The cloudy water sounds like bacterial bloom caused by heterotrophic bacteria. Those double quite rapidly when no other bacteria is consuming the food waste in the tank.

The bloom will stay until leftover food is gone. You need to carefully and lightly vacuum the substrate especially if you can see leftover food. Do this gently as some of the BB you have are on the substrate. Key thing is right now the wrong bacteria are eating and these 'wrong' ones will compete with the good ones you do want.

Then, you'll want to let the tank complete the cycle. Feeding the fish very very lightly a couple times a day will work (although adding ammonia directly will work too, but the fish can do that as long as they don't die.) You want to do readings and not let the ammonia get too high since you have fish. Also do a pH reading to see if the pH is low. Water changes I think are not needed at this point, but will be needed once it's cycled.

At some point you'll get lower ammonia readings, higher nitrite readings and no nitrate readings. When you see the nitrate readings start to register you will be in better shape.
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com