Cloudy water

[josephus]

I have a 75 gallon fresh water tank. Very lightly populated with a pleco, cory catfish, & ten neons plus a few miserable looking plants my wife picked up at Petco. I do a 20 gallon water change (tap water with conditioner added) every two weeks. Temp is 82 degrees. Day before yesterday my wife took a water sample into Petco for testing. She was sold something called PH stabilizer and put the tabs in water, let them fizz away and then put the concoction in the tank. Yesterday afternoon I did the regular water change, changed out some media in the EHIEM filter, replaced the polishing pad and algone pouches (2), and overnight the tank clouded up so it looks like a London fog. The fish appear to be ok but I'm at a loss what would cause the water to cloud up. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

[FishWhisperer]

How long has your tank been set up? Is this a brand new tank? I am taking a wild guess here - bacteria bloom? Anyone else agree?

 

[josephus]

The tank has been set up for over a year. This has never happened before. I purchased some water clarifier yesterday and the tank is still very cloudy although it does appear to be slowly improving.

 

[stoddern]

sounds like the tank never got cycled to begine with, my guess is it's a bactera bloom which is good let it be and it'll clear up on it's own in 3-7 days.

as for your ph, first never list to the LFS they will say anything to sell anything, and petco? what does some high school kid that has a summer jub know, not like he's been trained in the way of fish. Sigh, that said weather you have a well or are on city water aslong as the water coming out of the tap isn't to one extream of the ph scale or the other and isn't make huge ph swings on it's own the tank will be fine the fish don't care aslong as the ph stays stable, it's when the ph starts to change in the tank that fish don't like it, all your gonna do is make it harder to keep your ph in a normal range by trying to control it and your adding unnessecary crap to the water, it's been said many time on this forum site in the past, never liten to the person selling something and do your own research, I recomend you get API's master test kit, test your tap water first to get a baseline on the water your useing then test the tank to see where it's at anything that is out of wack can be fixed with regular water changes even if you have to do a 25-50% change every day for 4-5 days don't use the stuff that takes care of ammonia or ph buffers weather up or down or any of that crap, your just adding more **** to the tank when water changes will take it out oif the tank and slowly let the fish readapt to normal levels, please feel free to private message me if you have anymore question or have a problem, I've been in the hobby foir about 3 years now and had to learn alot of it the hard way but also learned alot on tthis forum from some really nice guys that were very helpful cept they all seem to be silent on here these days.

 

[josephus]

Thanks very much for your advice. It's been clearing up as the day has progressed and at the rate it's going, I suspect it'll be pretty clear by tomorrow. It just seemed pretty odd that all of a sudden, after a year, it did this. Nothing much else changed other than I did the regularly quarterly media change in the EHIEM canister filter and these bloody PH tabs. I'll take your advice and stay away from the Petco fish kids.

 

[stoddern]

keep in mind that at 75gal which is a huge tank and as lightly populated as you have it it could have taken that long for the ammonia levels to get high enough for the bacteria to bloom, stop useing the clearifying tabs, any kind of tabs are bad to use, they will leave a residue behind as they will not fully desolve, clearifying liquid is okay but use it very very sparingly and not when the water is a milky white thats a bacterial bloom and the clearifying stuff works by making the lil particles in the water clump together and sink.

as for the state of your plants I highly recomend getting both of these fertilizer kits they are what I use and it works wonders Freshwater Aquatic Plants in Aquariums: Flourish Liquid Plant Packs

 

[tanks a lot]

I agree that EVERYONE should stay away from the pet store kids! It does sound like a bacterial bloom. Sounds like you are going everything right, I have used Clarity product before with great luck. Let us know how its going.

 

[josephus]

Thanks. Today all is well. The fog has lifted and the water is quite clear. All the fish seem healthy, are eating, and appear happy so I hope no damage was done. I'm going to one of the better LFS in the area tomorrow to see if they have the Flourish Liquid Plant Packs to spruce up the plants.

 

[OrangeCones]

What lighting do you have over the 75 gallon tank (type and total watts)? If you add fertilizer but you don't have the light to balance it out, it will encourage algae growth instead.

Are these plants new to you, or have you had them the year the tank has been set up? Sadly, a lot of aquarium stores will sell non-aquatic plants to unsuspecting fish keepers. Do you know what plants you have?

I disagree that your tank was never cycled, however. Cleaning/replacing the filter media may have started a mini-cycle as you likely killed a good portion of your beneficial bacteria in the process. Be sure to just rinse the media in used tank water.

pH stability products are normally not a good thing to use unless there is a very specific fish you are trying to breed that needs specific parameters. Most fish will adapt to your tap water and live healthy lives with STABLE pH, not a SPECIFIC pH.

 

[josephus]

The lighting is a single 48" AquaGlo 40W T8 flourescent bulb. Grossly inadequate most likely. No idea what the plants are. My wife brought them home and I don't think they even had labels. One looks suspiciously like monkey grass. Two plants immediately distintegrated into small pieces and turned white. Fortunately, I've managed to get all of the pieces out with the EHIEM vacuum.

 

[OrangeCones]

My advice would be not to add fertilizer to the system with only 40 total watts over the 75 gallon tank. The plants (if they are aquatic) can use light as the 'motor' in living and then take up the fertilzer and CO2, but the light you have now would not allow aquatic plants to take it in (they get it from fish food and fish waste too). I think that adding ADDITIONAL fertilzer will only fuel an algae bloom. If you were to upgrade the light to 2watts per gallon, look into fertilzer then.

Sounds like your wife got talked into some of the 'non-aquatic' plants they sell. The 'monkey grass' you described is likely Ophiopogon japonicus, and commonly sold as monkey grass, mondo grass, etc. It is not aquatic. If its still living, take it out and put it in a small pot in the window. Looks lovely!

The only things I've seen for sale in the chain pet stores is Java Fern, Java Moss, and several Anubias species.