My tank its insanly cloudy !!!!! Help ASAP

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Pataphysicist

Gambusia
MFK Member
Apr 29, 2014
191
6
18
Boynton Beach
I recently checked my tap water and my tap water is coming out with 2.0-2.5ppm Ammonia , i started aging the water before it went in the tank with a 55G brute can. During this past week i keep doing 10-15% water changes and tank still cloudy. Today i did a water change after coming home from work, another 10-15% and the tank got so cloudy i can barely see my fish in it. What the heck is going on, yes i use prime, yes i use seachem stability before water goes in the tank. Is there anything i can do to stop this high ammonia fast and stop getting tank from getting cloudy.
 
You either don't have enough filtration, tank not fully cycled, over stocked your tank bio load or you're destroyed your BB if you're recently clean up your filter media. For now just keep up with daily water change until your BB catching up.
 
Sounds like a bacteria bloom, keep up with water changes, double check you're dosing correctly also.
 
Bacterial blooms are not caused by ammonia. They are typically the result of feeding too much food to a tank where other bacteria (not the BB) are thriving on excess uneaten food. Feeding too much food which the fish are not eating.

Vacuum the tank bottom and search for leftover food, reduce the feeding and let the tank stabilize. The bloom (if it's caused by excess nutrients) is not fixed by reducing ammonia, adding prime or stability, but by removing the surplus food.
 
I feed my fish once a day and i dont feed them on the weekends, only feed them enough to satisfy their hunger, never been a fan of over feeding. What's got me thinking is, ive had a 55 gallon setup in my room for 2 years now, it currently has my grow outs . 3 x 5" Azul peacock bass, 10 x 3" clown loaches and a 14" fire eel. I do water changes on that tank maybe every 2-3 weeks, only 25-30% when i do it, and the tank never been cloudy, matter of fact its a mirror , water clarity its great and my readings on that tank are 0-0-7.5. i over feed on that tank also to bulk the grow outs and never had a problem like this. It's driving me crazy, maybe its because am always on top of my show tank? like every 2-3 days i do a 10% water change, double the dose of prime, stability once a week. Should i just leave the tank the heck alone and do what i do on the 55 and do just 1 water change every 2 weeks ? My 220 runs an eheim 2262 with $300 worth of Bio media and 2 x SunSun's 402B for mechanical filtration on the other hand my 55 runs a Marineland c-360 and a cheap Tetra whisperer i bought at walmart rated for 55 gallon ( my first filter ever ) i never cleaned the darn HOB filter, just replaced original carbon pads and stuffed the spaces with bio media and chemi pure elite. Its driving me nuts...
 
What did you do with your 220 recently? Is it a newly setup? I'm pretty sure something wrong with your filtration. Also, water change don't cause cloudiness...here are few thing possible for the cloudy water:
*Gravel Residue - If the water is cloudy immediately, or within an hour or two of filling the tank, it's probably due to insufficiently washed gravel. Drain the tank and rinse the gravel until the water runs clear. That should resolve the problem.
*Dissolved Constituents - If washing the gravel doesn't solve the problem, the next most likely cause of cloudy water in a newly filled tank is a high level of dissolved constituents such as phosphates, silicates, or heavy metals. If you test the water, you'll no doubt find the pH is high (alkaline). In these cases, treating the water with conditioners will often resolve the problem.
*Bacterial Blossom - Often cloudy water doesn't appear the instant an aquarium is set up. Instead it appears days, weeks, or even months later. In these cases the cause is usually due to bacterial bloom. As the new aquarium goes through the initial break in cycle, it is not unusual for the water to become cloudy, or at least a little hazy. It will take several weeks to several months to establish bacterial colonies that are able to clear wastes from the water. Over time that cloudiness will resolve itself.

Decaying plants or excess food that remains uneaten can also cause the milky water seen in bacterial bloom. Regardless of the cause, don't panic over bacterial blooms. Keeping the aquarium very clean by removing debris such as decaying plants and uneaten food, vacuuming the gravel regularly, and performing partial water changes, will quickly resolve most cases of bacterial bloom. Cut back feeding to every second or third day, which will cut down on excess food decay.

If there are particles of debris in the water that you are unable to remove via water changes and vacuuming, a flocculent may be used to clear them away. Flocculates cause particles of debris to clump together so they can easily be removed by the filter (be sure to clean your filter so it's working at peak efficiency). Flocculates are generally marketed as water clarifiers, and may be found at your fish shop.

Most members here will try to help you out but they are limited base on your information you provided. If you still not get the answer from members then google is your best tool...within few seconds search you would get a right answer to your problems.
 
After spending hours looking for my answer online I learned something new today.

My readings on my tank are 6.0ppm PH - Ammonia 2.0ppm - Nitrate - 0 - Nitrite - 0 , Now here is a thing or two I learned by just looking around in water chemistry site . Test kits test for ammonia but you can be easily misinformed by them since chlorine can be detected as chloramine. So maybe my ammonia is not as high as I think. Now here is the choker, ive been blaming the wrong guy. Ammonia is not my problem, My low PH is, 5.5 reading which can possibly be a bit lower its actually starving my beneficial bacteria, which results in them dying. That is why my water is cloudy, my tank its cycling all over again . Which does it very often, always kind of cloudy. I need to raise my PH ( do bigger water changes ) so my bacteria don't starve. I just finished a 50% water change, poured water straight from tap into the tank. I made sure to condition the tank before water started pouring in. Results? 7.0- 7.2 PH , 1-1.5 Ammonia, 0 Nitrate , 0 Nitrite . ill test water in 3 days to check if the test is just detecting Chloramine . A guess a bit of water chemistry schooling could of fixed my headache long time ago. Fish seem to be more active in just under an hour, they are cruising around looking for food, as if their appetite suddenly increased.
 
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