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My water is still cloudy, but the fish are doing well


KittenFishMom
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My cloudy bacteria bloom is still clouding the water. I took out a clogged sheet of filter media from the HOB and added half a sheet of filter from a cycled tank.  I also added an IAL. I tested the water this morning after move a plant and the Ammonia looked like 0, nitrates were about 10 and nitrites were close to one.  

The fish are acting very normal. The trap door snails had closed their doors (might have been due to water or yoyo loaches).  I will test the water again in a few hours. I am feeding the fish and hoping the cycle with clear the water soon.

I have 3 cycled, over stocked guppy tanks. I could move some fish from the cloudy tank to an over stocked tank, but that feels like it would stress the fish, and not fix the cloudiness.  

I could add a second HOB with a UV light in it, but I think the tank will stabilize better with out UV killing good and bad bacteria.

Any thoughts or ideas? (I promise not to over clean a dirty tank in the future !)

>>>>@each and every: I forgot to add the link to my first post. The tanks is about 8 weeks old. I believe it is a bacteria bloom from over cleaning.  Thank to  @MattyM I have been reading his thread. and it seems to be confirming everything.  I have been adding Stability, but will hold off. After being mostly away for 4 months, and having the over stocked guppy tanks, it is likely I am over feeding this one.  We got the UV filter on the well fixed. Once the water checks out clean, we will be slowly transitioning back to well water from store bought spring water, and everything will probably change again. Once the guppies go, things should start to settle down.

 

 

Edited by KittenFishMom
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How old is your tank? I'm going through something similar, maybe my thread on the topic might have some useful info:

My only update is that the water is still cloudy, I can't even see the back now! But fish are fine and eating. I just hope my all my Amano's are still in the tank. It is getting annoying, longer and bigger than any bloom I had when starting up my tanks. Curious to hear what others say about the UV light (though I believe most of the good BBs live on surfaces, not in the water column?). 

Edited by MattyM
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As you have nitrites of 1 that what is more than likely causing the cloudy water I would do daily water changes and add a double dose of prime till your nitrite constantly stay at zero and add a small amount of aquarium salt 1 table for 5 gallons that will help with nitrite toxicity 

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@colu Thanks. It has been months and months of things going wrong, not just with the fish. I'm going to see if a nights sleep helps.

Life was stressful. People said "Get fish, they are so relaxing". Then life got crazy, and I still haven't gotten the fish back to the "so relaxing" state yet. Maybe they will get closer once the guppies are gone. 

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@modified lung True, I don't trust the water companies all that much.  When the well clouded up and the UV filter did not kill everything in the water coming into the house and several tank got weird webby looking stuff and tanks went down hill fast, we didn't know that a week later Mom could never be left alone, (Drs hoped for max 2 week, but it was until she died).  We were talking about boiling pots of water for water changes. Cory from Aquarium Co-Op even said to go with the bottled spring water.  We were way too busy caring for Mom to get things figured out and fixed at first, then things got worse. We still picking up the pieces. 

I am sure the transition back to well water will be a bit bumpy too, but it won't be abrupt like the switch to bottle spring water. We were just about to shock the well when the holding tank alarm went off and the people who normally pump it are out of service for a month, so we were put on the end of the lists of the other companies. In the mean time,  we are using the pumping 3 cottages away for ourselves while we wait to get pumped out. Then we shock the well and have it tested and then can use it in the tanks again.

You can't make this stuff up.

P.S. We tested the spring water frequently before using it. No chlorine and not much flocculation, so that was good.

Edited by KittenFishMom
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I commented on your other post but didn’t realize you had nitrites showing up- the stability is designed to help with that.  I got stubborn nitrite flairs when I was getting back into the hobby with that first tank.  Hang in there and once you get through it, your tank will stabilize out and be fine.  Nitrites can be fuel for cloudy water so probably linked. 
 

waiting out a bacteria bloom can take a couple weeks even without a nitrite spike so just hang in there.  I wouldn’t do the light in a separate HBO as I don’t think the flowrate would be slow enough- but I could be wrong.

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The webbing stuff appeared the day after I noticed the well water was cloudy. It looked like super magnified mold with long arms. a lot like electron microscope images, but with the naked eye. It clogged the sponge filters, and crashed the cycles. It was crazy until Mom's drs called and we had to pack leave the cottage in about 20 minutes. Then crazy really ramped up with caring for Mom. We didn't get back to the cottage for 3 days.  We thought we were just going to be tied up for 2 weeks.

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@_Eric_ I think the nitrites showed up today, and were not there yesterday. I probably over fed a bit, or stirred old food up when I moved the plant.

We could slow the rate with baffles and intake sponges and most HOB have an adjustment to lower the rate for long finned fish, but I don't want to go there just yet.  We could even pipe the water in a spiral around the light.  Just need to talk to a glass blower. Ithaca is a collage town. Lots of little shops have glass blowers who do custom work, just not normally for fish aquariums.

Edited by KittenFishMom
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On 9/12/2022 at 9:35 PM, KittenFishMom said:

@_Eric_ I think the nitrites showed up today, and were not there yesterday. I probably over fed a bit, or stirred old food up when I moved the plant.

We could slow the rate with baffles and intake sponges and most HOB have an adjustment to lower the rate for long finned fish, but I don't want to go there just yet.  We could even pipe the water in a spiral around the light.  Just need to talk to a glass blower. Ithaca is a collage town. Lots of little shops have glass blowers who do custom work, just not normally for fish aquariums.

Yeah potentially could work with the mods - there is a limit to how much you can throttle back the overall flow of the pump itself but you could set up a little bypass with lower flow.  Still - seems like a lot of tinkering to maybe save $20 over the gkm.  but I agree with you working on other routes first.  Keep fish safe with water changes and the Fritz and it will  sort itself out with time.  it can be a slog but will be worth it. 

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