Cloudy Water - Help Needed

[sandra_may]

Hi,

I have a 125l tank with a red and black oranda and a black moor in. We have been having a bit of a problem with ammonia so have been using ammo-lock every other day and also doing a 50% water change every other day (one day ammo-lock, next day water change) but it seems that every time we do a water change the water gets more cloudy. My 3 year old daughter this morning commented that our tank is very foggy! lol

Can anyone advise what we can do to stop this or what might be causing it please?

Thanks in advance.

San

 

[saph.st24]

hi
try cutting down on the water changes try changing 20%
and do you dechlorinate the tap water?
if you dont the chlorine and chloramines in the tap water will be knocking back your filters everytime you change the water

 

[sandra_may]

Yeah we dechlorinate the tap water each change. Doing the water change doesn't seem to have any effect on the ammonia levels tho. I know that when you use ammo-lock that it 'locks' the ammonia so it's not harmful and the levels will still read high until the filter has removed it but our levels seem to get higher and higher.

Should changing some water bring the ammonia levels down?

 

[saph.st24]

hi
sounds like your filter needs to mature, the ammonia needs to turn to nitrites then the nitrites need to turn to nitrates
the filter needs to have ammonia for the cycling to start and maturing it wont happend instantly it will take months you will have to do daily 10-20% water changes
this link may help i know its written about cycling ponds but a tank is exactly the same just on a smaller scale
[URL="http/www.koiponduk.org/smf/index.php?topic=1157.0"]http/www.koiponduk.org/smf/index.php?topic=1157.0[/URL]

forgot to add yes water changes will bring it down slightly but you will still get a high reading till the filter has matured

out of interest test you tap water for ammonia nitrites nitrates and chlorine
make sure your dechlorinator also removes chloramines

 

[Anna Robinson]

The ammo-lock will do chlorine and chloramines as well as the ammonia, if it is going in at the same time as new water, so could be used for this as well.

Cloudy water is a common side effect of ammonia levels, although it doesn't occur in all cases. I wouldn't worry about the appearance of the water, it's the ammonia readings that count.