Cloudy Water

[Stephan]

My friends tanks are both cloudy. One of them is in a fish in cycle but the other is cycled and seems healthy. Any pointers on what might cause this and what he can do to fix it?

 

[This Old Spouse]

bacterial bloom, overfeeding, high ammonia, 800 other things .... can you give us more info? Size of tanks, how many fish, feeding habits, etc.

 

[micko]

Need more info

 

[Stephan]

20 gallon tanks. One has high ammonia. Other is cycled. So no ammonia. One has 5 tinfoil barbs. The other has 1 rainbow shark. (just added tiger barbs but it was cloudy before that). Feed 2 sometimes 3 times a day. They eat it all within 1-2 minutes. Even when doing a 75-90% water change it's cloudy right away.

 

[Stephan]

I take that part back. He said it but I just watched him do a water change and its not cloudy at all

 

[Kj-Lou]

I have a fishless tank & i recently put PH7.0 in to lower my ph & now i have cloudy water, i heard its because i have hard water! Any ideas??

 

[This Old Spouse]

Stephan, The issue is overfeeding. 2-3X a day?? Drop the feeding down to once a day for a while. Even every other day. Trust me, you won't be starving the fish. And don't increase the amount simply because you're decreasing the number of times you feed. Keep in mind that the size of a fish's stomach is about the size of its eye, so very tiny. They don't need as much food as we think they do.

Also, the fish you named are much too big for 20g tanks. They'll outgrow them in no time.

And Kj-Lou, it's best not to add chemicals to reduce your pH. Get a nice piece of bogwood. That'll do the trick ... safely.

 

[Stephan]

I'll let him know. And yes he has a 75 gallon tank that he's setting up this week