# Uh oh... Cloudy water!



## TonyN (Dec 28, 2005)

Well here is what happened:

My tank has been up for a month and has been cycled for about 3 weeks or so now. Nice, clear water, healthy and happy P's!

Well I read on here somewhere that the carbon in the filter dies out after about 4 weeks (is that correct?).

So I reused the plastic filter frame, put it in a new filter and poured 1 baggy of carbon in (this is a TopFin 30). I also did a 15% water change at the same time and rinsed the filter with the water that I sucked out of the tank so I didn't kill the bacteria with tap water.

Put the filter in and filled the tank back up. Turned it on.

Next day the water is cloudy (whiteish). So I panic and do a water test. All good: 6.6 pH, 0 amonia, 0 nitrites and the nitrates are at 20ppm. Cool so I relax and decide that I will do a 40% water change and see if that gets rid of the "cloudyness".

Didn't help at all! Do another water test the next day and YIKES: 6.6 pH, .50ppm Ammonia, .25ppm Nitrites and 40ppm Nitrates!

So I guess my tank needs to be cycled again. Questions:

Now what should I do? Should I do frequent water changes?

Did I kill all the media with the "big" water change or was it the filter?

Why is my water cloudy?

And what the heck did I do wrong???

Help please! And as of this moment the cloudiness has went away a bit but the ammonia/nitrites/nitrates are still up!


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## timmy (Mar 29, 2004)

You wont kill too much during water changes. It sounds like you have an ammonia build up casuing the cloudiness. I would get some bio spira.


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## boontje (Mar 27, 2005)

add a bit of salt to help with the nitrite poisoning

you don't need carbon (unless when you want to remove medication for example). so remove it an replace the carbon by biomedia. What did you rinse in the tank water? Sponges or the biomedia? Biomedia you should almost never touch. Sponges you can clean every 1-2 weeks in tank water (but not all at the same time). If you rinsed the biomedia it could be that you killed some of the bacteria and they will need to recover.

For the moment I wouldn't do anything (except the salt) but keep a close eye on the parameters

and go easy on the feedings

large water changes are no problem if the water is dechlorinated and has more or less the right temp


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## TonyN (Dec 28, 2005)

boontje said:


> add a bit of salt to help with the nitrite poisoning
> 
> you don't need carbon (unless when you want to remove medication for example). so remove it an replace the carbon by biomedia. What did you rinse in the tank water? Sponges or the biomedia? Biomedia you should almost never touch. Sponges you can clean every 1-2 weeks in tank water (but not all at the same time). If you rinsed the biomedia it could be that you killed some of the bacteria and they will need to recover.
> 
> ...


What I did was re-use the plastic frame with a new "sponge" and added one of the carbon packs (it is a filter cartridge for the Top Fin 30). Then rinsed it with the water I removed from the tank (i just poured it from the bucket onto the filter). And installed the filter. The levels have droped back down to 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and 20ppm nitrates. The water is STILL cloudy and has a slightly tanish/greenish color to it. I did a small water change last night without much results.

So I don't really need to add the carbon to the filter or what???


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## joey'd (Oct 26, 2005)

the carbon helps with oders and things like that it helps but its not totally needed


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## TonyN (Dec 28, 2005)

joey said:


> the carbon helps with oders and things like that it helps but its not totally needed


Here is a photo of it from side view. Doesn't look quite that bad when looking from the front. This just gives you guys an idea of what i'm talking about:


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## joey'd (Oct 26, 2005)

looks pretty good to me, could be better but that about how mine is


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## TonyN (Dec 28, 2005)

joey said:


> looks pretty good to me, could be better but that about how mine is


Really?? Well this is the best it has looked in the past few days. Got so bad i could barely see the P's!

All my aquariums in the past were always crstal clear. Back then I never did water changes, gravel vacuming, water tests or even allowed the tank to cycle before I put the fish in! (I was unaware of all this stuff until I found this place







) All I ever did was put a new filter in once a month or when it was starting to clog up. Fish were healthy/very active and water was always clean and crystal clear. I had 2 black convicts and a pleco in a 20 Gallon for 2 years with no problems! They got to big had like 50 babies twice, so I ended up giving them to a friend with a 200g tank. And donated most of the babies to a local pet shop.

Seems like now that I have learned to properly take care of a tank, I always worry and run into problems...LOL! Just weird how everything went nicely without me doing any kind of maintanence to my old tank. Now I try to do everything perfect and it goes to hell...LOL


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## boontje (Mar 27, 2005)

these params are good, try to keep em like that and you'll have some happy fish

you don't need carbon. It might help against odors, but if your tank is fine, it shouldn't smell, so odor is some kind of an alarm that something's wrong.
Remove the carbond and replace it with some biomedia.

Sponges you don't need to replace either. When these are very dirty just rinse them in a bit of tank water.

Make sure you're not overfeeding. It's very tempting to overfeed piranhas. Also make sure you vacuum the gravel regularly and the cloudy water will go away


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## rubinm (Jan 24, 2006)

hey the same thing just happened to me... not sure why. ... i established my tank, water params looked awesome, then within 24hrs.... BAM! water looks like haze, with smoke in it.....

i added a water clarifier, but it didnt do anything...... what gives????


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## rubinm (Jan 24, 2006)

MY WATER IS CLEAR!!!!! overnight, my water went clear!!!!! its amazing i cant believe it. one day, my water looks like milk, the next, its clear!!! YES!

last night, i added a Pleco, and a bit of established H20 from a friends tank, and WAM!!! clear H2O!! i guess all it took was some good bacteria and my tank sorted itself out.

i'm so happy i cant tell you!


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## Piranha Guru (Nov 24, 2005)

Milo said:


> MY WATER IS CLEAR!!!!! overnight, my water went clear!!!!! its amazing i cant believe it. one day, my water looks like milk, the next, its clear!!! YES!
> 
> last night, i added a Pleco, and a bit of established H20 from a friends tank, and WAM!!! clear H2O!! i guess all it took was some good bacteria and my tank sorted itself out.
> 
> i'm so happy i cant tell you!


When the water gets white and cloudy or "smokey", it is usually due to a bacterial explosion in the water. This was probably triggered by replacing all of your media at once with a new tank (that's one reason why I'm a fan of biowheels). What size of tank and filter do you have?


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## whitetrash88 (Jan 31, 2006)

yeah the same problem happened to me i have a 60g tank and i was establishing it so i put a little bit of water from a tank and the next day it was really cloudy can i still put my fish i there or will it hurt them and how do i get it back to normal


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## TonyN (Dec 28, 2005)

My problem turned out to be algae! All I did was put the directed amount of "Algae Destroyer Advanced" and turn off the lights. A few hours later it was cystal clear, I couldn't beleive it!

I'm happy now!


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## rubinm (Jan 24, 2006)

BioTeach said:


> MY WATER IS CLEAR!!!!! overnight, my water went clear!!!!! its amazing i cant believe it. one day, my water looks like milk, the next, its clear!!! YES!
> 
> last night, i added a Pleco, and a bit of established H20 from a friends tank, and WAM!!! clear H2O!! i guess all it took was some good bacteria and my tank sorted itself out.
> 
> i'm so happy i cant tell you!


When the water gets white and cloudy or "smokey", it is usually due to a bacterial explosion in the water. This was probably triggered by replacing all of your media at once with a new tank (that's one reason why I'm a fan of biowheels). What size of tank and filter do you have?
[/quote]

Hey the tank in question is a 20 gal long with a Penguin Bio wheel 170.

its been crystal clear eversince that first "bloom"... i was really upset at first, but now im happy as can be!


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## Piranha Guru (Nov 24, 2005)

Milo said:


> MY WATER IS CLEAR!!!!! overnight, my water went clear!!!!! its amazing i cant believe it. one day, my water looks like milk, the next, its clear!!! YES!
> 
> last night, i added a Pleco, and a bit of established H20 from a friends tank, and WAM!!! clear H2O!! i guess all it took was some good bacteria and my tank sorted itself out.
> 
> i'm so happy i cant tell you!


When the water gets white and cloudy or "smokey", it is usually due to a bacterial explosion in the water. This was probably triggered by replacing all of your media at once with a new tank (that's one reason why I'm a fan of biowheels). What size of tank and filter do you have?
[/quote]

Hey the tank in question is a 20 gal long with a Penguin Bio wheel 170.

its been crystal clear eversince that first "bloom"... i was really upset at first, but now im happy as can be!
[/quote]

Glad it cleared up! Keep up with your water and filter changes, and keep an eye on that biowheel. The older style of Penguin biowheels are notarious for locking up when the filterpads get too full. I'd slap on one of the newer Pengiun 100s or 150s as a second filter just to be safe.


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