What to do with cloudy water?

[Jan Cavalieri]

I had a tank of 1 foot loaches and about 15 Rainbow fish of various species. Just ordered a 100 gallon tank for the loaches so they'd have more room to swim and was planning on moving in my Gourami and Plecos (all tiny right now) into my 50 gallon tank together and then retiring their previous 29 gallon tank. As I've mentioned before I'm disabled and on O2 24/7 - water changes have become a struggle for me so I pay somebody to come every Friday and do a 70-80% water change. I've also mentioned before that Topeka's water has a PH of 9.4 - same as my tap water and all my fish require a PH of 6.5-7.5. In addition to Prime we add a small amount (about 1/8 tablespoon) of Neutral Reducer to each 5 gallon bucket of water. The Neutral reducer always makes the water cloudy for about 1 hour and it also makes the PH a solid 7.0.

Last week I gave my DoJo's some orange dried shrimp pellets "for loaches". From what I could see, they chewed them up and then spit them out. The water turned a very dark orange color. While I was getting ready to do a water change, a Rainbow fish died, then 2 Rainbow fish died. I got a big net and just scooped as many rainbow fish out of the tank as possible - got them all out without any further deaths. They are now with my Gourami and Plecos in a rather overcrowded 29 gallon tank, that had crystal clear water at that point.

So at 2 am I am back with my loaches and changing the orange water. I did it just as we always do with Prime and Neutral Reducer. That got rid of the orange and it turned cloudy. I turned off everybody's light and went to bed about 6 am (it takes me a LONG time to do a water change. When I got up the next day the loaches tank was still cloudy - very strange. A day or two later it was still cloudy my assistant came in and did a water change on both tanks. The loaches tank remains cloudy. I have NO IDEA WHY.

Then the next day all of a sudden I looked at my Gourami/Rainbow/Pleco tank suddenly had turned cloudy too. I haven't done a water change and no fish that I can see have died - I know my Gourami very well and I've accounted for all of them but can't locate all 6 plecos (not unusual). I don't even remember how many Rainbow fish I had after I lost some in the orange water, but I believe I have 10 left - I haven't been able to locate all of these since they move around so much but I think they are all alive. Interestingly, ALL the snails have moved up to the top of the tank like they needed more air. I have had hundreds and hundreds of these so I quickly removed all of them that I could see and I should have the population back down to normal numbers (less than 10 - at least for a week or so.

So any ideas about what is causing the cloudy water in these two tanks? I;ve been using the Neutral Reducer for about a year and a half - and it always behaves the same way - cloudy for 1 hour then sparkling clear - until now. The loaches have behaved fine. The other tank of fish seem a little agitated to me the gourami are going to the top for air more often and sometimes the Rainbow fish behave rather frantic but then will settle down. And I know the behavior of the snails is unusual. I have a large HOB AquaClear filter on the back (largest they make) and it is cleaned weekly. I need to test the water but my test kit ran out of ammonia and nitrates so I ordered a new kit (I don't go in places or travel much at all so I order everything online. I'm kind of expecting to see high ammonia or nitrites. I should go ahead and test for nitrites since i have enough of that solution. I tested all tanks about 2 weeks ago and they were perfect so any change would be a clue. The solution being yet more water changes that I don't have the energy to complete. right now.

 

[Jan Cavalieri]

Had enough stuff to test nitrites - zero in both tanks.

 

[carligraceee]

I had a tank of 1 foot loaches and about 15 Rainbow fish of various species. Just ordered a 100 gallon tank for the loaches so they'd have more room to swim and was planning on moving in my Gourami and Plecos (all tiny right now) into my 50 gallon tank together and then retiring their previous 29 gallon tank. As I've mentioned before I'm disabled and on O2 24/7 - water changes have become a struggle for me so I pay somebody to come every Friday and do a 70-80% water change. I've also mentioned before that Topeka's water has a PH of 9.4 - same as my tap water and all my fish require a PH of 6.5-7.5. In addition to Prime we add a small amount (about 1/8 tablespoon) of Neutral Reducer to each 5 gallon bucket of water. The Neutral reducer always makes the water cloudy for about 1 hour and it also makes the PH a solid 7.0.

Last week I gave my DoJo's some orange dried shrimp pellets "for loaches". From what I could see, they chewed them up and then spit them out. The water turned a very dark orange color. While I was getting ready to do a water change, a Rainbow fish died, then 2 Rainbow fish died. I got a big net and just scooped as many rainbow fish out of the tank as possible - got them all out without any further deaths. They are now with my Gourami and Plecos in a rather overcrowded 29 gallon tank, that had crystal clear water at that point.

So at 2 am I am back with my loaches and changing the orange water. I did it just as we always do with Prime and Neutral Reducer. That got rid of the orange and it turned cloudy. I turned off everybody's light and went to bed about 6 am (it takes me a LONG time to do a water change. When I got up the next day the loaches tank was still cloudy - very strange. A day or two later it was still cloudy my assistant came in and did a water change on both tanks. The loaches tank remains cloudy. I have NO IDEA WHY.

Then the next day all of a sudden I looked at my Gourami/Rainbow/Pleco tank suddenly had turned cloudy too. I haven't done a water change and no fish that I can see have died - I know my Gourami very well and I've accounted for all of them but can't locate all 6 plecos (not unusual). I don't even remember how many Rainbow fish I had after I lost some in the orange water, but I believe I have 10 left - I haven't been able to locate all of these since they move around so much but I think they are all alive. Interestingly, ALL the snails have moved up to the top of the tank like they needed more air. I have had hundreds and hundreds of these so I quickly removed all of them that I could see and I should have the population back down to normal numbers (less than 10 - at least for a week or so.

So any ideas about what is causing the cloudy water in these two tanks? I;ve been using the Neutral Reducer for about a year and a half - and it always behaves the same way - cloudy for 1 hour then sparkling clear - until now. The loaches have behaved fine. The other tank of fish seem a little agitated to me the gourami are going to the top for air more often and sometimes the Rainbow fish behave rather frantic but then will settle down. And I know the behavior of the snails is unusual. I have a large HOB AquaClear filter on the back (largest they make) and it is cleaned weekly. I need to test the water but my test kit ran out of ammonia and nitrates so I ordered a new kit (I don't go in places or travel much at all so I order everything online. I'm kind of expecting to see high ammonia or nitrites. I should go ahead and test for nitrites since i have enough of that solution. I tested all tanks about 2 weeks ago and they were perfect so any change would be a clue. The solution being yet more water changes that I don't have the energy to complete. right now.

Hello! Here is what I think could be wrong.

Causes:
Cloudy water is usually a sign of a build up of ammonia/or proteins; specifically white cloudy water. Anything green is algae build up! This is a call for pictures if you can.

To Fix:
In order to fix this issue, you need to neutralize all ammonia levels. You can do this by doing a very large water change, about 80-90%. You need to get that testing kit, it will help you see if there are any other problems like nitrite levels.

Conclusion:
You needn't worry unless your fish show signs of ammonia poisoning (tipping, breathing heavily, swimming on their back, not eating, swimming in one place, etc). However, high levels of ammonia for long periods of time will harm your fish so please make sure that you get yoru water change done sooner than later.

Good luck! I would love to see some photos of the tank. All of this is just a guess from personal experience with cloudy water.

 

[Jan Cavalieri]

Testing kid arrived the day after my last post (I had it on order - but is sure is frustrating when certain chemicals run out way before the others - but the cost of buying one chemical is about 1/2 the price of a new kit and I was out of 2 solutions. I guess I can stop worrying about not breaking the test tubes since I'm on my 3rd kit). Anyway I tested everything on the two cloudy tanks and it was all perfect other than Nitrates being 20 (which I understand to be the top range of normal) but the was no ammonia, no nitrites, and a normal PH.

Week before last I had to do my own water change because my assistant was busy closing and moving to a new house. Well I recently bought 4 Rubbermaid garbage cans (the are food save and don't leach any chemicals) Before we were using the Siphon bucket method - which for me, on a 50 gallon tank means a total back and forth of about 20 bucketfuls - I can't carry much without having to stop and rest - it it's a serious drag. But I just bought a salt water tank (32 gallons - a little over nano size) and a 90 gallon tank for my loaches (which apparently takes 4-6 WEEKS to make - they don't stock them. Plus the guy that I dealt with on the 90 gallon acrylic didn't get the order in for 2 weeks - he just emailed me with different question trying to upsell me to a different brank which makes EXACLY the same tank but stocks it and charges $400 more. I kept insisting that I will wait an extra month rather that pay $400 more for the same tank (different name to the tanks but I have one of each and they are identical and salesman agreed they are identical).

So for that week's waterchange I put two trashcans on rollers and took one to the fish room and one to my sink in the kitchen. I started siphoning into the trashcan while running water from my faucet with a hose adaptor and 5 foot hose (labeled "drinkable"_ Amazing we all didn't die as chidren all that drinking of of dangerous hoses. The new water one filled up first of course. Unfortunately I discovered that there is no way to get the dirty water trashcan over the openings of either the back or front door so I couldn't just water the grass so I ended up taking the watar over to the toilet and using a small bucked that I can easily lift it remove all the water from the Rubbermaid trash can in about 5 minutes or less. Then I rolled my clean water trashcan down to the tank and took another small bucket down empty that into the tanj, I was shork a little water so I got a little more and repeated the process. Doing 80% water changes for 2 tanks took me 1 hour and my back was just minimally sore. Usually this take me 3 hour with buckets and my back and legs are killing me. So guess what - only minor cloudiness as usual and after 1 hour both tanks had cleared completely.

So this week I showed my assistant how I measured the 2 chemicals I have with my measuring spoons and where on the backs of the bottles you see how much to add in bot liters and gallons. We used gallons and had him ready to add clean water - then we set up the new siphon i had purchased (the old ones were very slow) and he started the water change process, along with scrubing algae off the decorative items and replanting all the plants the dojos had pulled out that week. He did the same with the little tank. Guess what? The big tank with the DoJos is STILL cloudy after his water change and cleaning and my two water changes. I added a packet of purigen in my filer along with clean carbog. Maybe it's gotten a tiny bit lighter but you still can only see the fish that are al the front of the tank. So far nothing has happened to the little tank but I'm so bad about overfeeding since we have all these new fish in the tank (and the old fish are too scared to eat much). Water is crystal clear - just the bottom needs vacuming,

So sorry again for the long post (but I had to include my use of trash cans and short water hoses). What the he@@ do I do about all this cloudy water. The last time I did a number of water changes and when the cloudyness eventually went away on it's own and then I did that next tank cleaning and water change by myself without any problems. Then my assistant did another water chage again and it was at first cloudy, then it started to clear up then it got cloudy again, . Any hope that purigem will wok (It was in a bottle not a bak) - I doubt I put enough in to totally clear the tank but do you think the stuff actually helps at all? Any ideas on anything else I can do for this neverending cloudyness? I know I don't want to deal with this proble on a 90 gallon tank much less a 32saltwater tank. HELP!!! Picture below -

 

[Jan Cavalieri]

Byron gave this answer to somebody else white cloudyness problem from a year ago and, at that time it applied to me - probably still does. I think what is frustrating to me is that the tank that does it mostly has got to be the one that has the least amount of overfeeding, You can't really ever see any leftovers in my DoJo tank, on the other hand. when you siphon it there is a TON of poop to pickup. When Dojo's poop and pee at the same time it is lika the size of a quarter, and in fact, round - it is a cloud of poopy water. I suspect it settles in the substrate and when it's disturbed it could be causing the could but I'd think it would be a brown or orange cloud the color is so intense and when you filter it out of the substrate you get a zillon of pieces more solidified poop - and a lot of it. Maybe he's not vacuming long enough compared to what I do? When I'm fully cleaning that tank it takes well over an hour to clean the gravel - and usually have to add more water to the tank so I can continue to siphon the gunk out of the gravel. I know he's mentioned that he's done this as well - so I'm not sure why it doesn't happen to me but happens to him So what do we do - start daily water changes until it's gone? Acrylic tanks are such a pain to clean and get to every area. My 50 gallon has a ledge that faces inside (the water side) so you have to use a cloth and contort you hand up under the ledge to clean it. Then it has a patch of acrylic about 3"-4" wide running the full length of the aquarium and another one that covers the entire width of the tank. You have clean over and under that. It is effective at keeping DoJo's in the tank because I've also got about a 6" width of LED lights going down the length of the acquarium. Between the ledges, acrylic cross and the lights there isn't a way for them to jump out of the tank.

If the cloudiness is white, it is not algae but more usually a bacterial bloom. Organics blooms and diatom blooms are also whitish. All look much the same. A green tint is "green water" which is due to unicellular algae that suddenly and rapidly proliferates. The cause behind all of these is pretty much the same...high nutrients/organics that the system cannot process.

I have seen the bacterial bloom after a water change, or cleaning the filter sometimes. Any major disturbance to the substrate which is the primary filter bed can also do this. Increased organics in the tap water especially in summer months are often responsible.

Prevention is key, and also becomes the cure. Regular (once weekly) water changes of at least 50% but preferably 60-70% of the tank water (every week, regardless of any thing else), and regular filter cleaning; not overcrowding fish, not overfeeding; substrate cleaning; live plants especially floating.

These blooms in themselves are not dangerous per say, but they do indicate that the underlying biological system may be out of sorts, and that can easily lead to disease and other problems, depending.

 

[Colin_T]

Either reduce the amount of food going into the tank or try a different brand of food.

What type of media/ materials are in the filter?
Maybe try a fine filter floss in addition to sponges or whatever else is in the tank.

Put a couple of Water Sprite plants in the tank and see if they help.

 

[mark4785]

I suspect the cloudy water is a bacterial bloom from the over feeding that you say you have an issue with. Perhaps do not feed the fish while the water is so cloudy as you will not be able to see if the food is being eaten or not. If it Is not eaten it will be perpetuating the cloudiness.

Fish can go 1-2 days without food so perhaps factor this in before over feeding; there really is no need to be providing a surplus of food.