Well, I dunno if its the water at Chapel Hill but ever since we moved to our rental I have had nothing but trouble with our Aquarium water. At first I noticed I had to add three times as much ph balance just to get the water down to a neutral level. But I keep getting a cloudy tank. I googled and got a lot of info on the Nitric cycle? ect...not to over feed ect..ect...it came good after about a week, but it suddenly has gone cloudy again and I lost another tiger barb. :( Like yesterday its crystal clear tank, last night the wife notices the tanks is smokey and we got a floater! Havent done anything in the last few days to it at all.

I am trying a product called 'clear' that will apprently get the tank back in balance but any other tips from the fish tank gurus would be appreciated.

water change ?

clean filter ?

Could you describe in more detail what you have done?

Did you put in completely new filter substrate? If so how long did you wait to put fish back in the tank?

Couple of questions

What size tank?
What sort of filters do you have? Cleaning your filters regularly and ditto on water changes is important, when did you replace the media last? Media (ceramics, foas etc) do only have a certain working life before they becomes inefficient and practically useless. If you don't have a detailed water test kit, grab a vial of your tank water an rock down to your local aquarium store an ask them to test your water for you. Should only cost a couple of bucks at most and they will then be able to tell you exactly what your water conditions are and how best to fix em.

Next time you do a water change, get a product called "Purigen"
It's the absolute ducks nuts for sparkling clear water and it's recyclable. Previously, within a couple of days of me doing a water change I would still end up with a cloudy tank despite having excellent water filtration.

I'm still stunned at just how good Purigen is and can't believe I never used it before
~ I thought is was a one use treatment and thought it to be cost ineffective based on that
Glad I found out otherwise!

Yes I do a water change about once a fortnight, put in new filters last week and the water was clean as, I use 'CYCLE' in the tank after a water change. The only thing I have done recently is cut back a bit of the plant life in the tank but not a huge amount. Its a 2 foot tank, filter is one with two sections of circular foam ect. in it..

I am not an expert. But in my experience from when I owned a heap (35 or so tanks) Cycle does nothing (I actually found it did more harm then good).

Get a good chorine, cholramine and amonia remover.
(eg. Seachem make several. Prime is awesome and if you are having ph problems they make one that buffers your ph out to 7 as well. eg. http://www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/L_NeutralRegulator.html )

New filters means your tank has to completely cycle again.
Use prime and or lots of water to keep it out of dangerous levels. May also help to get some amonia guard (few brands goes in the filter).

With filters. Never do a complete clean unless you have had TB or some other nasty infection.

YMMV

oh yeah, Seachem make "purigen" as well

Purigen really is a clarifier great for removing colouration out of the water. But it will also help with choraline/ammonia.

And forgot to mention ... unless it neuralizes amonia the only time you need to use any chemical is water change time.

ps. most fish handle a wide range of ph's .. best to let them aclimatise to whatever comes out of the tap. ie. almost no fish shops muck around with the ph's and most breeders I knew only did it for expensive / rare / hard to breed fish and then usually only if they were trying to breed them

thanks chaps...did another water change today and will get me some of the chems you mentioned as well.

if you got live plants growing in your tank psycho, i really wouldn't worry too much about using a balance chemical to lower ph coz plants tend to make the water acidic. i usually only even check ph if something is looking pretty wrong in the tank (fish losing thier colours, low energy, gasping, etc..) & then the solution (for me) is always a 25-30% water change. as obes says most fish can handle a wide range of ph especially for short periods. i have an electric yellow which prefers an alkaline ph of around 7.8-8.0 which i keep with my south american cichlids in a ph that ranges from ~6.0-7.5 & it thrives! asian fish like tiger barbs are also fairly hardy in this regard.

water comes out of my tap pretty alkaline too.. around 7.7... i just stick it in buckets with the right dose of chlorine neutraliser. initially it raises the ph of the tank but by the next day it is usually neutral & then tends towards acidic after a few days.

if you really want to get the low down on stuff like the nitrogen cycle, ammonia breakdown, bacterial filtration & all that sorta good stuff ;) i recommend these aquarium dvds by paul talbot. the dude is a total fishnerd & sounds kinda gay but has all the good info in an easy to absorb format. i downloaded (bit norty) the cichlid dvd & found it very helpful! it made me realise that my old ideas that aquarium filtration was just about forcing water through various materials to 'strain' it, were quite wrong. aquarium filtration is just about having lots of water moving past lots of surface area on which grows the bacteria that breaks down the fish's waste ammonia.

[edit] after just doing a massive filter clean/media/water change i gotta say that the only time i see my tank water cloudy is when i disturb the substrate while gravel cleaning & when i turn my cannister filter back on after re-assembling it. (coz of tiny detritus that is dislodged from the media during cleaning.) the cloudiness only takes about 60mins max to settle/be filtered.

i will also add... though it has nothing to do with the topic... that i now officially h8 cannister style biological filters!@#!$ i can't wait till i get the last few bits to make one of my old 2' tanks into a sump & ditch the horribly designed cannister pos.


last edited by demon at 15:27:43 27/Jan/07

Might be helpful if you work out if the cloudiness is caused by a bacteria bloom or from water changes. Bloom = from too big a water change, new filter media without utilising old bacteria or lots of other reasons. If its just caused by stirring up the sediment than the water clearing products aren't really what you are after (I use plurigen for removing tanins from the water etc, but for bacteria blooms or stirring sediment it wouldn't really do too much), just need to use a gravel vac efficiently on your changes.

If it's caused by a bacteria bloom than you really need to look at what your doing to the tank, as you should only get a bloom on a new tank on its first cycle, not a fair way into its life.
If your replacing filter media/filters, make sure your keeping your original media as well, as thats where all the good bacteria is and forcing your tank to begin its first cycle again is a good way of causing deaths in the tank.

You should be able to google a fair amount of info about what could be causing it, but I strongly recommend not using any chemicals or anything over harsh like heavy water changes until you are sure of whats causing the cloudiness.