why is my fish tank water still cloudy ?
May 20th, 2010 by admin | Filed under Fish Tank Aquariums.Fish Tank Aquariums
i recently purchased a 3ft fish tank and bought some aquarium sand. i washed the sand 6 times before filling the tank. The tank has been running with no fish in it for the last 3 days but is still cloudy. I have a 900 litre per hour internal filter. what have i done wrong ? did i not wash the sand enough ? am i missing something. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ?
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I had that problem with my first tank. I’m not sure if this is the same problem you are having but for me it WAS that I didn’t wash the gravel enough. I tore the tank apart, put the gravel in a never-used bucket, stuck a hose in and ran the water (stirring the gravel all the while) until the water came out crystal clear. I then put the tank back together and it hasn’t had a cloudy day since.
I tried the chemical route (I think I used Aquarel or something like that: I don’t remember as I’ve long since thrown it away). Cloudiness is an indicator that something is either wrong or wasn’t done right. Adding chemicals just masks the issue and usually doesn’t work anyway (at least it didn’t for me).
You state that you don’t have any fish in the tank. Are you doing cycling with pure ammonia or are you using fish food? An excess of fish food can cause cloudiness but you’d have to be using quite a bit of it, far more than is neccessary for cycling. I always use 100% pure ammonium hydroxide to cycle my tanks and have never had a problem with cloudiness during cycling.
there are drops that you can add to it to remove the cloudiness. the particulate that is causing the cloudiness is too small to settle to the bottom in the tank. The additive drops will make the small particles clump together into larger/heavier clumps so they fall to the bottom or get filtered out by the filter more easily. Follow the directions on the bottle though.
it usually takes about 4-10 days for the take to stop being cloudy. But for big tanks it usually goes through two cycles of being cloudy. after it has finished being cloudy i recommend putting tester fish in the tank to make sure the tank is properly cleaned.
Water is already cloudy because it contains chlorine and adding stress coat won’t purify the water. And it will remain cloudy without a filter. The only way the purify your aquarium water is to buy black carbons or high density carbons and insert into your filter, 30 minutes later your water will be purified, high density carbon purifies your tank water for more than 30 days, but every 20 days you should wash your filter and replace carbons.
this is called new tank syndrome , normal stage for full cycling mainly when early adding to many fish that causes bloom of ammonia. unless your fish is not hardy most will not survive it. yahoo search "new tank syndrome" you will get full answer to the problem.