Cloudy Water After Setup

**wssay** · 31st Jul 2004, 14:55

Hi all.
My newly setup 3ft tank water has turned cloudy on the second day. I did not disturbed the gravels & the base fertilizer when filling up the tank. I have been changing two pails of water for the past two days but to no avail. Is the water being contaminated by the base fertilizer or it is due the presence or fine particles from the gravels. (i didn't rinse the garvels with water. ) Or it is due to bacterial bloom after I have replaced the filter media in my eheim filter? It's a bit disheartening to see the state it is in right now.
Pls advice.

**vinz** · 31st Jul 2004, 15:55

Most likely it's a bacteria bloom. Don't be dis-heartened... your tank is just going thru it's cycle. Frequent water change at this point will just kill the filter bacteria.

Change water one more time, but add-in anti-chlorine before topping up. Then don't change the water for at 2 weeks. If it gets so cloudy that you can't see the back of the tank, do a partial water change, but make sure you add anti chlorine before topping up.

It will help if you put in some frogbits. They'll help take up some of the ammonia and starve the bacteria in the water. This might give your filter bacteria a chance to catch up.

**ptero** · 31st Jul 2004, 23:53

You didn't rinse the gravel?

I set up my own 3ft tank today. Got pretty good second hand gravel and I had to rinse this in small batches, four times each. That wore me out. But when I added the I was careless just once and disturbed the base layer. So the tank's a little cloudy now, even though I scooped out the bigger particles with my fine fishnet.

In both our cases, as long as there's a current in the tank and as long as there are free particles small enough, the cloudy suspension will stay. Hopefully they would agglomerate or get caught in your filter or the substrate. If you remember your secondary school science, they do add certain chemicals at the water treatment plants for flocculation. Dunno if you even consider this at all for a planted tank. In any case, good luck.

**Blue Whale** · 1st Aug 2004, 23:33

Relax, dun worry.

Most likely u did not rinse the eheim gravels, etc enough. Actually I am surprised that u only get cloudy water on 2nd day. You should have gonna it on the day you introduce water in.

Anyway, when I was setting my 3 ft, I left the tank water cycling for 2 weeks before introducing the first plant. Fishes were only introduced after 3 weeks on setup. Too fast to some. But no casualties then. Water is quite stable so long kh is between 6 - 8.

During the 2 weeks wait time, at least 2 cleaning was made to my eheim filter. (Pro II) forgot the model. So just wait wait lah.

**a_scape** · 2nd Aug 2004, 13:27

Guys,
Last option for emergency that I've been tried succesfully several times is by using the EHEIM (2213,2215 or 2217) filter filled with the carbon and run it along your other filter.
In some cases less than a week the water already crystal clear specially because of some type of driftwood.
Hope this help....

**Blue Whale** · 3rd Aug 2004, 01:09

Word of caution though, not all fish is accustom to carbon filter.

If you plan to keep Arowana, then this might be something u wanna avoid.

Along the way when, Fin Rot/Tail Rot medicine is added, the activated carbon filter will need to be removed. Although this is a fresh setup, take it as an handy advice.

I'd say, wait for it to settle first.

**Shaun-** · 24th Sep 2004, 11:54

Don't put carbon into ur filtet. It will dirty ur water and black particles. I have tried it and had a hard time cleaning it. It will also neutralized certain nurtrients in the water causing ur water to lack of nutrients. So it wiser to leave out carbon.