You can theorize all you want, but if you don't do a simple water test then you're just flingin pooh. Everyone who ownes a tank should have a water test kit. It's the first step in diagnosing cloudy water situations and many other situations.
Why is my 180 cloudy
- Thread starter scott g
- Start date
If it is a bacterial bloom the tank should smell slightly.... not like they normaly do. But of ammonia and what not. If it's a white cloudy, constant partial water changes with treated water can solve the problem. However this depends on your access to useable water.
Cheer Dave.
Cheer Dave.
Jason_S said:on the first page he specified that he added some type of "liquified bacteria" which I'm assuming to be either Cycle or something like Bio Spira. either way the cycle would have been greatly sped up and I'd venture to say has been completed by now.
SphericalCube, doing too many water changes or a big water change will not cause the tank to go cloudy provided the tank has proper filtration and a bunch of gunk isn't stirred up when doing the water change. Even if a bunch of gunk is stirred up, with enough filtration the water will clear within an hour. I used to do 75-80% water changes on all my tanks and I only stopped because it got too time consuming once I got up to having 16 tanks up and running. None of the tanks ever got cloudy from doing those large water changes. I cut back to doing 40-50% water changes and they still didn't get cloudy. the 150 was the only one that ever got a little cloudy and that was usually if I stirred up a bunch of gunk when doing the water change. after I added the fourth AC 110 it never got cloudy.
oh, and the majority of the beneficial bacteria are in the filter media (again a good reason to overfilter), the gravel and on the tank decorations. very little is actually free floating in the water so even doing a 95% water change will not cause the tank to recycle.
I didn't say he couldn't change the water, I just said not to overdo it. The problem most people have is that they don't leave well enough alone, and I'm guilty of it too. You have to realize that in the wild there is nothing like all these chemicals, no filtration, and the ponds/lakes do fine, why? Because there is nobody dumping chems in them constantly or changing out the water all the time in order to "fix the water." The point I was trying to put across that I might not have is that he should never do more than 1/2 the gravel at a time and never clean all the gravel in the same month. That's a great place for benificial bactreria to grow, so don't suck it all out.
On the other hand, I agree that overfiltering is never a problem unless the current from those filters is too strong, that's the only way I've ever seen it a problem.
--Jimmy
Ok, I agree about the chemicals. I don't use any more chemicals than I have to which usually only consists of Prime water conditioner. Other than that I try to go as chemical-free as possible.
Now, fish in the wild doing fine without chemicals, filtration and ponds/lakes has nothing to do with "nobody dumping chems" or "changing out the water all the time in order to "fix the water" ". for one thing, lakes/ponds/rivers/streams do get water changes due to evaporation and rainfall. not to mention the sizes of the waters in the wild. we're not talking about a 1000 gallon ponds, we're talking 10's of thousands or hundreds of thousands of gallons or more. can you imagine how much fish waste would have to be produced to even come close to raising the levels in a body of water that size. now, if you had a small, unfiltered pond and covered it so that no rain could get in and stocked it full of fish and never changed the water, then eventually the levels would rise and kill the fish I would imagine.
just to sum up, I do see what you were saying but essentially I disagree, except for the part about excess chemicals as I said before. I don't think you can "overdo it" with water changes or gravel vacs with proper filtration. back when I was doing 75% water changes I would do gravel vacs over the whole tank and never had a problem with mini-cycles killing or even stressing fish out. the one thing to remember when doing large scale water changes is to make sure the parameters (hardness, ph, temp etc) of the water going into the tank exactly match the water going out. if the ph in the tank has dropped and you do a big scale water change with ph higher then that may cause ph shock to the fish. if the temp of the water you're putting back in is several degrees lower then again this can stress or kill the fish. so long as you keep these things in mind though and have enough filtration, you can 75% water changes every other day with no problems.
oh, one more note about gravel vac'ing...there are many people who believe that using a gravel vac will not suck the beneficial bacteria out of the gravel. I don't know if it would even be possible to prove one way or another, but these people theorize that the bacteria has a strong enough hold on the gravel that the suction from the gravel vac can't detach it.
Again you are misinterpreting what I'm meaning.
1. Any person who doesn't realize that evaporation and rain replenishment plays an important role in the stability of natural aquatic environments. . . is a moron.
2. I am not saying you CAN'T do that dramatic of a water change. . . just that someone new and not knowing about the finer details SHOULDN'T, it's easier to just leave well enough alone. Some people just get too overzealous when it comes to their tank and they mess with it more than they should. With good filtration and a normal/moderate bioload they shouldn't need a weekly water change.
3. I do water changes and add water that's evaporated without even adding anything to neutralize the chlorine in my african tank, they can handle it and it takes care of most of the algae and whatnot, but you mention the temp/ph/hardness need to be the same when water changing and then you can do it fine. . . that's great for someone who has been keeping fish for a long time but I would say that anyone who is new to the hobby or still hasn't experienced all this stuff on their own has a better chance to just leave them alone and observe, learning all the while. . .
So don't be so judgemental, I'm just trying to help the guy/girl out. The advice I give is not right in every situation, only in the right situations for which I give advice. Otherwise I wouldn't give it. . .
--Jimmy
1. Any person who doesn't realize that evaporation and rain replenishment plays an important role in the stability of natural aquatic environments. . . is a moron.
2. I am not saying you CAN'T do that dramatic of a water change. . . just that someone new and not knowing about the finer details SHOULDN'T, it's easier to just leave well enough alone. Some people just get too overzealous when it comes to their tank and they mess with it more than they should. With good filtration and a normal/moderate bioload they shouldn't need a weekly water change.
3. I do water changes and add water that's evaporated without even adding anything to neutralize the chlorine in my african tank, they can handle it and it takes care of most of the algae and whatnot, but you mention the temp/ph/hardness need to be the same when water changing and then you can do it fine. . . that's great for someone who has been keeping fish for a long time but I would say that anyone who is new to the hobby or still hasn't experienced all this stuff on their own has a better chance to just leave them alone and observe, learning all the while. . .
So don't be so judgemental, I'm just trying to help the guy/girl out. The advice I give is not right in every situation, only in the right situations for which I give advice. Otherwise I wouldn't give it. . .
--Jimmy
I'm not being judgemental, I'm merely sharing my opinions and experiences. If you look back, I never recommended that scott g increase or decrease the amount of water he was changing. My original recommendation was to add more filtration. the only reason I started talking about water changes was because you said
oh, and as for the evaporation/rain thing, that was because in your previous post you asked
and then answered
Your answer was that fish in the wild are fine because there's no one dumping chemicals in the water and doing constant water changes. That's simply not true...fish in the wild do fine because the water doesn't need to be tampered with because it is always clean, assuming there is no pollution.
which I don't agree with. a 25% water change once a month is, imo, not sufficient for a normally stocked tank no matter what the filtration.
oh, and as for the evaporation/rain thing, that was because in your previous post you asked
and then answered
Your answer was that fish in the wild are fine because there's no one dumping chemicals in the water and doing constant water changes. That's simply not true...fish in the wild do fine because the water doesn't need to be tampered with because it is always clean, assuming there is no pollution.
Ok, as far as the water change of 25% being not enough for a normal stocked tank, go find my posts about what I have in my 110, about twice the normal bioload, and all of it running off a Fluval 404.
MY original comment was to add plants. . . it's all relative. . .
--Jimmy
MY original comment was to add plants. . . it's all relative. . .
--Jimmy
Man, that's some funny stuff...
After all of the debate.... it turns out to be gravel dirt. LOL.
I got a kick out of all that.
After all of the debate.... it turns out to be gravel dirt. LOL.
I got a kick out of all that.
Do water treatment chemicals that you use to treat water cloud up the water? I've never had this happen before but I have it now in my 180 set up. It's been up about 2 1/2 weeks now and it seems to be getting cloudy, fish seem fine and I've done a few water changes but it's cloudy. Filters are running and clean and they have activated charcoal in them. I don't overfeed so it can't be that and I alway's use aged and treated water so what give's?:WTF:
Your tank looks grayish white and you can see the fish and the fish are healthy. Ok first ditch the activated charcoal and find another filter media. I had the same problem that you did. I re-moved the activated charcoal and carbon. and did a 50% water change the next day and bam that same day crystal clear water ever since.
