Water Parameters

Just looking for some advice on my water parameters. Woke up to a fairly cloudy tank this morning. Currently fishless however

Parameters read

Ammonia - 0.25ppm
PH - 7.8
Nitrite - 0.25ppm
Nitrate - 5.0ppm

The tank has been cycling 4 days now but the filter media was from an established tank. Water was completely changed consisting of180litres. Only added easy balance to the water since.

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Cloudy water is common in new tanks. it is a bacterial bloom,but the bacteria are not the ones we need to grow. The bloom bacteria feed on organic (ie carbon based) matter. They live floating in the water and multiply very quickly. The good news is that once they've eaten all their food, they'll die and the water will clear. But as every tank is different it is impossible to say how that will take.

Do you have fish in the tank, or are you doing a fishless cycle? If their are fish, you need to keep ammonia and nitrite down at zero by doing water changes - with a pH above 7, a lot of that ammonia will be in the free ammonia form which is the toxic form.

Tetra Easy Balance claims that by using it you only need to do water changes every 6 months. This is not a good procedure to follow; during cycling with fish water changes should be as often as needed to keep ammonia and nitrite at zero, and after cycling water changes should be at least 50% every week. Personally I wouldn't bother with Easy Balance.

Fantastic info there. Thanks for that.

It's currently fishless. I was planning on putting fish in today but I'm glad I held off now. A few more days will do no harm.

I think I was led down the garden path with the tetr water products. But everything's a learning curve.

Would you recommend a water change now (maybe 30%) or let it clear first.

If you are fishless cycling you will need to add ammonia to the tank to make sure there are enough bacteria to process it.

Have you added any ammonia to the tank? If so, how much?

I haven't yet. I assumed with the filter media being used from an established tank I wouldn't have needed to.

Can you recommend or link me to something pleas

In theory, using mature media can cycle a tank instantly. But it does depend on how much mature media you used compared to the size of tank. So, for example, if the tank is 180 litres, and the mature media came from a 20 litre tank, there would not be nearly enough bacteria to support a fully stocked tank.

If there was quite a bit of mature media, there will be a lot more bacteria - although if the donor tank was heavily planted there won't be as many as with media from a tank with no live plants.
If there is a fair amount of mature media, and you stock slowly, you might be OK to start once the levels of ammonia and nitrite drop to zero. You don't mention if the new tank has live plants or not. Live plants would help as they take up ammonia as fertiliser and don't turn it into ammonia. Even if you only had a number of floating plants, it would be beneficial.

Sorry.

Yes there is live plants in the new tank. Also came from a tank with live plants. Both tanks are Vision 180s as well. I have 3 Java Fern and 3 beckettii also.

The filter media was complete (bioflow filter) the only addition for me was to add new poly media.

So the tanks technically are almost identical, although I have only added more plants.

In that case, I would wait till you are sure ammonia and nitrite are zero, then add fish slowly. Monitor ammonia & nitrite every daay and should you see a reading above zero, do a water change.

No problem

Thanks for all the advice

milky cloudy water is a bacterial bloom.
green cloudy water is an algal bloom.

So tested the water today again

Results were:
PH - 7.6
Ammonia - 0.5ppm
Nitrite - 0ppm
Nitrate - 5ppm

The water was spotless again by last night.

Any recommendations on the next step. Small water change or just leave it as it is

That's the ammonia and nitrite measurement. Probably a bit less that 0.5ppm on Ammonia?