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I have a tank that I did a 30% water change on and it is still cloudy. Anyone know of a good way to get it crystal clear?
Nitrate: 40ppm (mg/L)
Nitrite: .5ppm
Hardness: 150 ppm
Alkalinity: 120 ppm
pH: 7.2

Also added one teaspoon of StressZyme...

How old is the tank? You have have nitrites, which means the tank is cycling, but you also have high nitrates, which are not normally found in cycling tanks.

What is your stock, and what is your weekly maintenance schedule?

It definitely sounds like a bacterial bloom to me, judging by the high nitrites. But now the question is what's causing the nitrites to be so high? An established aquarium should have no detectable nitrites.




Last edited by Cory Addict at 06-Nov-2005 22:14

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

From your test results, you are in the middle of "new tank syndrome". This happens on occassion to many people. Your tank is still cycling and thus you have a bacteria or an algae bloom.

Fortunately, the cure is easy, but does take a little bit. Your tank will clear up normally, as the cycle completes. Just continue to do regular water changes of about 25% weekly. Do not over feed your tank, and in fact, you can decrease your feedings for a while (couple days to couple weeks), like only feed 2 out of 3 days, and even every other day will not harm your fish. This will cut down on the waste in the tank, both from the fish, and the uneaten foods. So in the end, it decreases the foods of what is causing your problem.

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There is always a bigger fish...

It is a 10 gal tank that I have had for about a year. I just cleaned out the filter (everything) and it is stocked with 3 balloon mollies (that are only juvinile), 2 ottos, 3 panda corys, 1 armored cory, 1 mystery snail. It is planted well. I do a water change every week (about 30%). I feed the corys one small tablet a night and a pinch of flakes for the mollies every morning. Does this help in the solution. Oh and I am not sure if it makes any difference but my two big rocks are covered in neon green alge.

The complete cleaning of your filter is what has probably caused this. You have killed off the majority of your beneficial bacteria that were living in the filter. So now, with your fish load, you have caused a new cycle to start up again, and it will take time to re-grow back to a good working level. This is the same as setting up a new tank and adding fish too soon. And is considered "new tank syndrome" even though it is not newly set up. It is just acting like it is.

It will clear up soon, just keep watching the parameters of your tank so that they do not get dangerously high (ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates). Your nitrates are actually high. With the 30% water changes you do, they should be well below 20. Do you have them in your tap water? Test your tap water and see what the parameters are in it. Let it stand for a couple hours before testing it though. If your tap water if free of nitrates, or low when you test it, then there is something else causing this.

The large amount of algae is a sign of high nitrates as well. What may be the problem, is your large amount of algae is holding in detritus. Thus causing an increase in rotting "stuff" in the tank. You may want to clean the algae good. And get some kind of algae eater, like ottos, or a bushnose pleco. The one snail is way not enough to keep the algae under control.

When you do water changes, do you clean the substrate (gravel or sand)? If not, this could also be the answer as to the high nitrates, as the substrate could be holding in loads of detritus.

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There is always a bigger fish...

Greetings,

I have never thought about testing the tap water! I will do that tonight...I wonder what is in my water anyway

I had to do a maintance on my penguin filter cause it was really clogged up and didnt filter very strong. Next time I will just clean the the moveable parts.

I will scrub my rocks as well to get the alge off that. Would boiling the rocks work as well? Or should I just scrub? I have two ottos but they take to the sides of the tank instead of the rocks.

I vaccume the substrate (gravel) every time I change my water. Thanks for all the help!

I had to do a maintance on my penguin filter cause it was really clogged up and didnt filter very strong. Next time I will just clean the the moveable parts.

Try just cleaning one part at a time, about every couple months. Clean the intake one time, then a couple weeks later clean the impellor, and such like this. Never clean other parts when you change the filter media, as the changing of the filter media takes the largest amount of the living biological bacteria out.

If you have a bio-wheel, it should never be cleaned. It will eventually get the look of a gunky thing, but only rinse it off in some of the tank water, and place it back into place, never thouroughly clean a bio-wheel.

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There is always a bigger fish...