Cloudy Water

[basia]

My son has an Oranda and a Lionhead in a 20 gallon which we are going to upgrade after Christmas. I bought them for him in May when they were about 2 inches, the Oranda is now a good 5 inches, not counting his tail, the Lionhead 3.5 inches (we bought him later).
When we set the tank up we put a very large internal filter I used to run on the tropical community tank in which coped fine and obviously the goldfish were much smaller then. Then my son forgot to turn the filter off when siphoning the water and the filter stopped working and I couldn't get it going again. The only shop open was Pets at Home and I bought a Fluval 2 plus which was basically all they had. This was smaller than the original filter.
A month later the water is really cloudy. Yesterday I bought him a Fluval 204 cannister filter and set it up. How long will it take for the water to clear? I changed about 30% of the water. My son is very good and does water changes at least once a week.

 

[Fella]

If you added a new filter, you would have lost the beneficial bacteria in the sponges of the original filter, and the tank would have cycled, and could still be cycling now. This means that the fish would have been stressed (although you might not have noticed a change) and the filtration would have been inefficient.

The 204 is no bad filter, I myself have a Fluval 4plus internal filter in my goldie tank.

I'd recommend doing small water changes (10%) daily for a week, and investing in a test kit if you havent got one already. The aquarium pharmaceuticals kits are recommended, and when you check your water parameters you want to check for ammonia and nitrite. These 2 factors indicate that the tank is still cycling, and that will be part of the reason why the water is so cloudy.

 

[basia]

I put some of the original filter sponge (as much as I could fit) into the Fluval Plus 2 when I changed them over. Now I've put the external filter on I've put the sponges out of the internal one into it but of course there is a lot more media which hopefully the bacteria will spread to.
I checked the water and I do have a nitrite reading. Amonia 0, Nitrite .5, Nitrate 40 and ph 6.8. I'm guessing as I have a quite high nitrate reading (obviously have beneficial bacteria working) that the smaller filter just wasn't coping - hence the nitrite reading.
Will do small daily water changes and keep testing.

 

[Fella]

I put some of the original filter sponge (as much as I could fit) into the Fluval Plus 2 when I changed them over. Now I've put the external filter on I've put the sponges out of the internal one into it but of course there is a lot more media which hopefully the bacteria will spread to.
I checked the water and I do have a nitrite reading. Amonia 0, Nitrite .5, Nitrate 40 and ph 6.8. I'm guessing as I have a quite high nitrate reading (obviously have beneficial bacteria working) that the smaller filter just wasn't coping - hence the nitrite reading.
Will do small daily water changes and keep testing.

Yeah, you did great to move the media over.

If it's showing nitrite then I'd assume you're getting a mini cycle, which isn't terrible news, far from it. As you dont have an ammonia reading I'd assume that you're quite far along the cycling stage which is great.

Yeah, I think you're doing the right thing with small water changes, good luck!