55g Water Wont Stay Clear, NEW FILTER!
 

Ok, ive had my 55g running at my new apt for 3 months now and i cant get the water to stay clear. It used to be if i did a water change, the water would be cystal clear for a few days, then start to fog up a bit, now it goes back to a foggy/green hue within 24hrs. I have a Marineland Penguin 350 HOB filter, and just installed a Eheim 2217 on wensday along with the 350 and it still isnt clear.

It doesnt look like algea, my walls are clean, and not sure if its greenish looking cuz of bact, or it might been that all the decor, piping, and air stone are green, but the water isnt clear, thats for sure.

I bought the 2217 to replace my 350, which im going to take off today since its so damn noisy. My question is, why is my water not staying clear? Could it be something to do with the new 2217 filter?

My tank stock now is :

1 pleco
2 small cory cats
1 medium blood parrot
2 smallish electric chiclids
1 medium size goldfish
1 medium to large shrimo

The ph is 7.6 and the ammn is at 0. Thats all i know. Im prob going to do a good tank cleaning when i get gome, remove all the decor, clean the sand good, and see what happens.

i would definately not clean the sand and decor other than removing detritus from the surface of the sand. A lot of the helpful nitrogen cycle bacteria live there and cleaning it may remove them causing an ammonia spike

how did you test for ammonia? did you use a liquid test kit? what are your nitrite and nitrate readings? I'd recommend an API test kit if you don't already have one

also, how frequently and how much water do you change?

Goldfish are big producers of waste and are also cold water fish that shouldn't be kept with tropicals. You might want to consider rehoming them

Did you rinse all of the media that comes with the Eheim 2217 before operating it?
Green water may be indication of too much light for too long.

I use a liquid test kit. Im not going to clean the decor, but the sand has some debri on one side of the tank where the corys dont go, i cant tell if there long poop, or the pellets i give them, either way, the blood parrot wont let them over there to clean.
I did rinse all the media that came with the filter. The light it one from 7:30 in the morn until 9:45 at night.

thats too much light. 7 to 8 hours should be enough. With the light being on so long it will encourage the groth of algie.

So from what time to what time then? I have it on a timer.

I have a timer on mine. it runs from 8am to 5 pm. The timers are very helpfull and you can find them farily cheep.

I wold never get to see them, i work 8-5, lol. Maybe ill have the lights come on at 11:30 and off at 9?

heh yeah its my work tank so 8 to 5 works great for me.

I'm going on the assumption that there are no live plants in this tank. This being so, algae will always occur in the presence of light, using the nutrients available from fish waste, fish food, minerals in the water (the harder/more basic the water, the more algae), etc.

Some of the fish mentioned are large waste producers; goldfish, parrot, pleco (if the common or another largish species). All this waste means "food" for algae. And waste not only includes the solid waste that gets broken down into organics, but the ammonia you can't see; algae is a plant, and all plants need nitrogen and ammonia/ammonium is a preferred source of nitrogen. Plus there is all the bacteria normally present in the aquarium, it also produces CO2 and waste to feed the algae. If you test your nitrates, I suspect they will be high.

If there are no plants, fish do not need lights if the room is naturally lit by daylight, so you could reduce the lights to only those hours when you are home to view the aquarium. The principle here is, the less light, the less algae. And I assume the cloudiness is greenish which is algae.

Byron.