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cloudy water help!

1116 Views 9 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  ao, 
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My mom has a 55 gal tank. After she cleanedisit the water clouded up on her an now it wont clear up. What should she do? I believe she got a little to carried away when she cleaned it and stired up the gravel to much. The the fish got sick to top it all off. Probably cause they got stressed out my guess. Fish are all healthy jow but water is still cloudy. She was about to tear down entire tank totally and start all new again but I told her to hold off on that until I could get some input from you guys.

*So far she treated with copper safe to help the fich and they are good now.
*then she treated with with some bio treatment someone at a fish store told her to do and added a water scubber filter to her pump and it cleared a little then nothing.

I told her to start and keep doing 25% water changes every week to see if that helps.

Also I am going over there tomorrow to test the water with my good test kit to get some nubers and see where everything is at so I will post tomorrow that info. She did the test strips and said they wrre fine but gonna restest to double check.

Here some pics to show cloudiness, first 1 is the tank in question the second is a tank with clear water for refrence.

Any ideas guys?

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AbbeysDad
I'm thinking Mom just needs to be patient and the tank will clear as things settle out. Often a cleaning stirs up dissolved organics that causes a (decomposing) bacterial bloom in the water resulting in cloudiness. You might also add some fine polyester fiber in the last stage of the filter to trap fine particles. But whatever you do, don't use chemical clarifiers (that bind small particles so they filter out) as they are very hard on fish gills.
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ao
hmm, what exactly did she clean? was there lots of algae?
a weekly 25% WC should be normal routine for a cycled tank with little or no plants...
what was her WC schedule previously?
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aokashi said:
hmm, what exactly did she clean? was there lots of algae?
a weekly 25% WC should be normal routine for a cycled tank with little or no plants...
what was her WC schedule previously?
Click to expand...
My does not exactly do things on a routine. I love my mom but .........just gonna stop there lol.

She does the monthly syphoning of the gravel method. I have been pressing her to do the weekly water changes. I think shes on board now.

She went to long for the cleaning this time and got over zealous and syphoned out prob 80% of the water when cleaning the gravel. I told her no more than 50% and if its that bad in a week do another 20-30% in a week and do the gravel again.

And yes I agree I believe she stirred up the gravel to much an a caused abacterial problem as she has done before.

Also there sre no livr plants. Only fake.

I will be over there later this apevening to test the water to see where the numbers are.

Keep doing weekly water changes for now to help clear it up?

And should she change out 25% or go more like 50% because of the situation?

Only the little bit of algae that u get on the glass. Nothing crazy.
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Ph level 6.6
Ammonia1.5 close to 2ppm
Nitriite 0ppm
Nitrate 55.oppm

Told her to do a 50% water change now. Those are the numbers I got.

Any other what to do's?
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Byron
There are some problems in those numbers, big problems.

Ammonia must be zero. However, you have a good thing here, with an acidic pH of 6.6 because in acidic water ammonia changes into the much less harmful ammonium. The Nitrosomonas bacteria will use whichever form is present. If you had live plants, they would help as they use ammonia/ammonium as their preferred source of nitrogen. Without plants, you are relying on the Nitrosomonas bacteria to deal with the ammonia, and it takes time for them to build up.

The next issue here is the nitrite that will occur at the second stage of the nitrification. It is zero now, but keep an eye on it, daily, in case it rises above zero. IF it does, a 50% water change daily should be done until it is zero. It may or may not appear.

Now to the nitrates. At 55 ppm these are way too high. This is likely a sign that things were let go for too long. Weekly partial water changes of 1/3 to 1/2 the tank should be done especially when there are no live plants. You have no other way to rid the tank of pollution. Read more here:
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/freshwater-articles/regular-partial-water-changes-117205/

The cloudiness is a bacterial bloom and in itself harmless, though it shows the underlying issues which are not harmless. Provided nitrite does not rise, a weekly partial water change of half the tank will or should keep things better. However, the stocking may affect this; the more fish, or the larger the fish, the more critical are water changes to maintain stability, as that article will show.

Last suggestion, test your tap water for nitrate. This is a possible source, though from what you have told us I suspect here it is the fish load and infrequent water changes. Nitrates in an aquarium must be kept below 20ppm, and preferably not higher than 10ppm.

Byron.
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Byron;14. 351 said:
There are some problems in those numbers, big problems.

Ammonia must be zero. However, you have a good thing here, with an ac. ic pH of 6.6 because in acidic water ammonia changes into the much less harmful ammonium. The Nitrosomonas bacteria will use whichever form is present. If you had live plants, they would help as they use ammonia/ammonium as their preferred source of nitrogen. Without plants, you are relying on the Nitrosomonas bacteria to deal with the ammonia, and it takes time for them to build up.

The next issue here is the nitrite that will occur at the second stage of the nitrification. It is zero now, but keep an eye on it, daily, in case it rises above zero. IF it does, a 50% water change daily should be done until it is zero. It may or may not appear.

Now to the nitrates. At 55 ppm these are way too high. This is likely a sign that things were let go for too long. Weekly partial water changes of 1/3 to 1/2 the tank should be done especially when there are no live plants. You have no other way to rid the tank of pollution. Read more here:
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/freshwater-articles/regular-partial-water-changes-117205/

The cloudiness is a bacterial bloom and in itself harmless, though it shows the underlying issues which are not harmless. Provided nitrite does not rise, a weekly partial water change of half the tank will or should keep things better. However, the stocking may affect this; the more fish, or the larger the fish, the more critical are water changes to maintain stability, as that article will show.

Last suggestion, test your tap water for nitrate. This is a possible source, though from what you have told us I suspect here it is the fish load and infrequent water changes. Nitrates in an aquarium must be kept below 20ppm, and preferably not higher than 10ppm.

Byron.
Click to expand...
Fat finger oops. Nitrates were 5.0

Thanks for the info though. She is doing a 50% change today then a 25% thurs then I am gonna retest the water inbetween to keep an eye on the numbers

I showed her this site also and told her to start doing some reading! Lol
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ao
just thought of something. did she stop the filter for the clean....?
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aokashi said:
just thought of something. did she stop the filter for the clean....?
Click to expand...
Pretty sure she did cause she said she took out like 80% of the water
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ao
she may have killed off some of the bacteria which takes care of the biological filtration.
And hence.. you had an ammonia spike...
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