# Cloudy Water....Problems, Problems



## deeboi (Mar 7, 2003)

This is totally ridiculous. My water is so cloudy. Been like this for a little while. I don't know if you remember I had a problem a little while back with the sick P's, I used the Neomicyn Super Sulfa fix and it healed them great. But one thing that I was aware of but counted out was that I had to re-cycle the tank.

So what I did was get some squeezings from a sponge filter and a couple days later from the same lfs a friend tossed me some Bio-Spira, in goes two packs in the tank. Before this that I realized I had to re-cycle the tank I ended up losing another Caribe and my others are getting bad Ammonia Burn.

So I do the Bio-Spira and sponge bacteria in the tank and separate the three P's I have left, 2 Caribe and 1 RBP. I put the biggest Caribe on one side of the divider and the other Caribe and Red on the other side. The biggest Caribe looks the worst, even to this day it's still dark and it's condition isn't getting better. On the other side of the divider the dominant Caribe heals to perfect condition at the RB's expense, chewed up tail.

So now I have all three divided. And the water is so cloudy I did a water change today and it was so ridiculous that I had to take out the dividers to do a gravel vac of the tank and I couldn't see through the water to see the fish to put the dividers back in the tank! I managed and got lucky somehow, they're all separated again but the water is still so cloudy.

I've even tried to do a 75% water change and it cleared up pretty good but it eventually got cloudy again. Lately I haven't been feeding them that much and the water params are actually good. Ammonia - 0, Nitrite - 0, PH - 7.4 - 7.6, Nitrate - 20 - 40 PPM.

Sorry I've typed so much but I've been waiting a while for the conditions to get better and it's been a WHILE and things aren't looking better. Thanks for reading.


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## DonH (Jan 25, 2003)

Cloudy water is not an indication of poor water quality (just like crystal clear water is not an indication of pristine water). The cloudiness is due to a bacteria bloom. When you do a gravel vac, detritus is stirred up and the excess nutrients encourages the rapid multiplication of heterotrophic bacteria. If your ammonia/nitrites are consistently at zero, I would just leave your tank alone for a while and let the system stabilize.


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## deeboi (Mar 7, 2003)

I'd say it's been about 3-4 weeks since I've done the Bio Spira and added the sponge bacteria. Today is the first time that I've done the gravel vac when I've cleaned the water. Since then I've been only taking the water directly from the tank and not doing gravel vacs.

I will give it more time. The water is testing O.K.


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