How To Get Clear Water

[Starvinmarvin]

My water has got abit cloudy and i cannot get it clear, i have done a good clean of the gravel with my gravel vac but it still look's cloudy so what can i do to get it clearer??

Do i need to buy some stuff like filter aid to make it clear???

 

[ox5477]

My water has got abit cloudy and i cannot get it clear, i have done a good clean of the gravel with my gravel vac but it still look's cloudy so what can i do to get it clearer??

Do i need to buy some stuff like filter aid to make it clear???

I forget the name of it exactly but it's like a filter cloth that goes into your filter that helps to screen out all the fine particles in the water make it crystal clear

 

[raptorrex]

My water has got abit cloudy and i cannot get it clear, i have done a good clean of the gravel with my gravel vac but it still look's cloudy so what can i do to get it clearer??

Do i need to buy some stuff like filter aid to make it clear???

dont normally recommend Carbon, but a small filter with some carbon and a wrap of sponge, changing the carbon, once a week. will go a long why, to clearing it up. but you still need to know, what caused the problem in the first place.


Your name still cracks me up

 

[DarkEntity]

When a tank is cycling it will go cloudy. How long has the tank been running.

 

[PaPeRo]

I use filter floss to filter fine particles and dust.

 

[WILDER]

Is it a juwel tank as I always run another filter in the tank, this way my tank water stays crystal clear.
Have you removed oraments as debris can amount under them causing the tank to go cloudy.

 

[BigC]

diatomic filters

 

[draugrnz]

over filtration always works.......prevention is key!!! Your filter may not be enough to cope with the waste being put into your tank and/or could be over feeding. Flakes are a good food to cloud your tank if feeding to much. Floating pellets are great.

 

[ers81239]

I'm just setting up my tank. It was super cloudy and murky. I couldn't really understand what people were saying to do with 'floss'. Here is what I did.

I bought a $3 bag of this white fiber stuff. I already threw out the bag, or else I'd tell you the name. It looks like the stuff you would stuff a pillow with. I got it at Petsmart and it said it was for 'all filters'. I cut a rectangle about the size of my little carbon filter for my Penguin 200. I just slid the rectangle down into the penguin's reservoir so that the white cloth was touching the blue part of the filter. In about an hour, the water was a bit clearer and the cloth had turned black. I've changed it out and its already getting even better.

The $3 bag contains enough material to make probably 100 rectangles or more.

 

[Tommy Gunnz]

From your other post (about the angelfish I think), your water is either cloudy from the medications you used and your tank is not completely cycled if you have an ammonia and/or nitrite level above 0. Anyone on this site can tell you that a mini-cycle will cloud the water if you put too many fish in at once or something like that. I recently had this happen with a feeder fish tank of mine when I stupidly thought a bulk deal was a good idea.

For these mini-cycles, I do not think the filter floss or anything will really work since it is chemically clouded rather than clouded by particles. The best is to wait it out until you have a cycled tank, and then start adding things. Carbon filters will help take out some of the cloudiness. There are other filters on the market that will do the same, but they cost A LOT.

I do agree with the over filtration ideas and there is never a such thing as filtering too much. Still, a filter doesnt take out the ammonia or nitrites and very few nitrates can be removed by carbon over the long run. I also would be leery about the 'quick fix' water clearing chemicals and stuff unless I was sure that the problem was particulate since these work by making particles stick together and become large enough to be caught in filter media. I once cleared up a tank with these methods by using the drops of chemicals coupled with wrapping a clean, steril t-shirt around my filter media (carbon in my case) which picked up the finer particles because the t-shirt is not as pourus. That was after putting a bad rock in the tank though.

 

[PaPeRo]

Why do you automatically assume the tank is going through a mini-cycle? The cloudiness could be ANYtHING including a bacterial bloom.

 

[Tommy Gunnz]

Why do you automatically assume the tank is going through a mini-cycle? The cloudiness could be ANYtHING including a bacterial bloom.

Ok, Dr. PaPeRo....

What is a bacterial bloom? Part of a cycle and I am NOT assuming anything becuase in another post found here:

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showto...67264&st=16

I read his tank parameters from today at 6:30 p.m. and noted that he still has ammonia reading and nitrite readings. This was the basis of my advice and yes, I realize it could be some other things, but not just anything, however the water parameters do tell alot about water problems.

 

[PaPeRo]

A bacterial bloom can happen anytime there is over feeding or lots of organics in the water even in a cycled tank. Filter floss can clear water of bacterial blooms.

 

[Tommy Gunnz]

I dont know about the filter floss since it seems as though in my tank at least there is a pretty fine sponge like media and that didnt help me out when cycling too much. Of course, time worked and I figured out how to feed without overfeeding eventually (which is really a hard thing to do sometimes, I admit). I am not discounting the filter floss thing though and I use it in my SW sump to catch sand before it gets to the return pump. It doesnt do the best job at it and some gets through but I am sure that it gets a lot.

If we are talking about algea blooms, those are sort of easier to deal with and I can see how it might be able to filter it out. In any case, both bacteria blooms and algea blooms are the direct result of having too many nutrients in the water so the problem can be addressed within the water quality/parameters.