# Cloudy Water



## mhertzfeld (May 19, 2012)

My tank became very cloudy over the weekend and I'm not sure why. On friday night the tank water looked fine. I didn't look at the tank on saturday. On sunday I noticed that the water was very cloudy and I did a PWC. Today (monday) the tank is still very cloudy.

I have a wood burning stove that faces the front of my tank and sits about 25 feet away. Could the light and radiant heat from the fire be the cause? It sits far enough back that I doubt much if any radiant heat hits the tank but the light from the fire certainly does. Most weekends this winter I've just had a fire in the evening and let the fire go out over night. But this weekend it was burning the entire weekend day and night. Could this extra nearly constant light for a few days from the wood burner be playing a role here? Also, I dont' have a regular light schedule. Most days the lights are on for just a few hours and some days I don't turn them on at all.

The tank has been running since May. My water parameters are below.

Ammonia:0
Nitrite:0
Nitrate:<10


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

Is the cloudiness white or green? I don't think light from a fire would cause this. I know in my house (by design) because of the lower angle of the sun in the winter I get more light coming in the windows than in summer.


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## mhertzfeld (May 19, 2012)

It is white


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## vann59 (Jun 20, 2011)

How many time does your filtration turn over the water each hour? You need sufficient turnover and sufficient filtration. You might wrap your intake with some felt for a day or so, it's pretty quick and easy. But also make sure your filtration is more than marginally capable.


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## mhertzfeld (May 19, 2012)

Tank is a 125g and I have two FX5s running on it so my turnover should be more than enough. I also have a koralia pump that does 1,500gph for surface aggitation.

Tank "looks" pretty clean. Don't have any poop on the sand or anything. Fish seem fine too, no heavy breathing or anything like that. The water just got cloudy really fast. Could it be a bacteria bloom? If so are some causes for this type of symptom? :-?


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## 13razorbackfan (Sep 28, 2011)

Sounds like a heterotrophic bacteria bloom unless your filters are clogged and not filtering very well but if it happened all the sudden likely a bloom. Have you cleaned your filters recently or added some new fish? Starting feeding more? Changed foods? Any fish deaths? Anything you can think of that happened within a couple days before the bloom happened could be useful no matter how insignificant you may think it is.


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## mhertzfeld (May 19, 2012)

I cleaned one of my filters on 1/12/2013. I'm scheduled to clean the other within the next week. I normally clean them about every two months.

No new fish in the past month.

I had a fish die on my about two weeks back. See the following thread.
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=253710

I changed out my rock work about a week and a half ago which I did over three days. Did half one day, waited a day and then did the other half. Did around a 40% water change each time. I switched from cichlid stones to another type of hollow stone with multiple entry points.

Feeding the same as I always do which is about once every other day. Sometimes every day.

The only major change that has happend in the past few days was having that fire burning for the entire weekend (as I noted at the start of the thread). Could that along with my inconsitant lighting schedule be a cause? I've read in a few places that fish don't really need light and if you prefer you only need to turn the lights on the view the fish (as long as you don't have any live plants ect). Is that correct?

So if it is a bacteria bloom do I have anything to worry about as far as my fish health is concerned. How long will it take to go away? Is there anything I can do to get it to go away short of adding chemicals or anything like that to the water? I really don't want to add anything to the water other than what I normally add (cichlid salt, baking soda, prime).


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## 13razorbackfan (Sep 28, 2011)

Well....I would test your water again today. You may have just stirred things up when moving around your rocks. I am not sure about the fire but can't imagine that would do anything unless it was very close to the tank and melted some things. If you are still unhappy then I would do a large water change and fill the tank up slowly as not to stir anything. My water is a bit hazy in my tanks right now as well. I added a lot of new fish in each tank but today is water change day so hopefully it should clear up. I have been trying different medias in my filters as well. Sometimes you just have to let these things correct themselves and wait them out.


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## mhertzfeld (May 19, 2012)

Tested the water again today.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: 10-15 (darker pink than yesterday)

Didn't have time to check nitrite but figured if ammonia has been good past few days nitrites should not be an issue.

Also didn't have time to do a water change, that will come tomorrow. Water is still cloudy, a little worse than yesterday.

I'm hoping this new rock work isn't to blame? They are supose to be made of granite. They are called made by penn plax and are called hide-away stones.

I don't have a problem letting it correct itself as long as the health of the fish isn't in jepardy.


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## 13razorbackfan (Sep 28, 2011)

mhertzfeld said:


> Tested the water again today.
> 
> Ammonia: 0
> Nitrate: 10-15 (darker pink than yesterday)
> ...


Hard to say about the fish health as I don't know what is going on but if your fish appear healthy, eating and the parameters are within range then you are probably ok. I would do a large water change when you can. Don't feed and after that for 48hrs and see what the water looks like. It should look quite a bit better.

PS..make sure to vacuum above substrate as best as you can to get anything that falls to the bottom when pumps are off and you are doing your water change.


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

Note that you can have nitrite without ammonia...worrth your time to test. I agree the white cloudiness is usually substrate dust or a bacteria bloom.


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## Yael (Nov 25, 2012)

I was reading the other day about the relationship between pH and phosphate availability. Phosphate mostly precipitates out of water and coats substrate and rocks at higher pH (which is good). But in areas where the circulation isn't as good you can get small areas of lowered pH and this frees some of the phosphate to go into solution. This becomes organo-phosphate and can fuel various blooms. They go away once they eat all the fuel but they can also lower the oxygen levels.

It's also possible that your wood burning stove is putting more C02 into the air (check to see that you're venting it properly) and that might be able to set off your bloom.

Anyway, it's a start in terms of doing some googling.


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## mhertzfeld (May 19, 2012)

Thanks for all the replies. Fish looked fine this morning. Water is still cloudy.

It's also possible that your wood b...and that might be able to set off your bloom.

I really wonder if this could be it. How much of an increase in C02 do you think would need to be leaking to cause a bloom? Haven't had a fire since sunday night but when I get home tonight I will try to air the house out as much as I can and do a big water change. Also, would leaking gas levels of C02 enough to set off an bloom also include enough CO to set off my detector?

The only other think I can think of is that my new rock work is leaching something into my water. The rocks are made for aquarium use so I would hope that isn't the case. I can't find any reviews for them on the net but the LFS said they were a new product so I guess that explains the lack of reviews.


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## Yael (Nov 25, 2012)

I don't really know how much - people put C02 into their tanks when they have plants and that doesn't seem to result in a bloom, but they've got enough plants to suck up the nutrients.

The more I read about tank chemistry the more I'm in favor of having at least some plants in the aquarium to help balance out what's available in the water that can cause things like blooms.


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## mhertzfeld (May 19, 2012)

Well the water is still cloudy. Hasn't gotten any worse or any better.

I've spent a lot of time looking at the tank and it seems that everyday more and more of the sand is being moved around as the fish get things they way they want it. I'm sure that's a big factor here. So I'm really hoping sometime in the next week or two that all the garbage that might have been trapped down in the sand and got stirred up after I changed the rock work is processed and the tank clears up.

Also, I noticed a lot of film on the surface of the water this past weekend so I got another 1400gph pump to provide more surface agitation but that's moving a lot of sand around too. On a positive note the film on the surface has drastically reduced. I'll be starting another thread for advice on recomended placement for them since where I have them now probably isn't the best.

Here are my parameters. Did a water change yesterday.

Ammonia:0
Nitrite:0
Nitrate:5-10
PH:7-7.5
GH:180
KH:120

Thanks everyone


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## 13razorbackfan (Sep 28, 2011)

The film is likely caused by the oil in the foods you are feeding them. The best way to see if it is the bioload versus something in the substrate or rocks is to stop feeding for a few days after you do a large water change. If the water stays clear after a good vacuuming a few days after your water change and you haven't fed then that is the issue and you can take it from there.

I recently had a similar issue. I added a lot of few to my tanks, ordered a bunch in to save on shipping, and a week or so later the water started to become more hazy. Well....this was around the time I started new filter pads in my canister filters. I had to try and narrow it down so I simply started counting how much food I was actually feeding my fish and cut the food I was feeding in half and only fed once every two days. A week later and the problem is gone. Water back to crystal clear. So I have started upping my feedings from the baseline I established. Just to give you an idea I counted a total of 140 of the 3mm pellets. So I trimmed it down to 88 and shut off my filters so they could swim in the water and eat the leftovers.

So first you need to narrow down the cause. I would start with the no feedings and see what happens.


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