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Old 13-07-2009, 10:22 AM   #6
globalcookie
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Default Cloudy Water

If the water becomes milky or ashen soon after you set up your aquarium, it could be a case of:
(1) Unclean gravel.
You might not have rinsed the gravel sufficiently. Drain the tank and rinse the gravel thoroughly in a pail until the water runs clear. That ought to solve the problem. This entails a lot of hard work, much of which is undoing what you’ve done, so it is important to get things right the first time when you’re doing up your tank.

(2) High levels of dissolved chemicals such as phosphates or other minerals and metal compounds.
Test the pH level of the water: it will most likely be high. If so, adding some water-softening agents ought to help.

(3) bacterial bloom, which may take several days or a couple of weeks to develop.
A newly set-up aquarium has to go through a cycle during which beneficial bacteria multiply. Milky water is common during this process, and usually shows up fairly late in the cycle.

There’s no effective way of getting rid of cloudiness created by bacterial bloom – and it wouldn’t be beneficial to do so either. You’ve got to let the cycling run its course. So have some patience; the water will clear up after the cycle is completed.

(3.a) Other factors that could trigger bacterial bloom include decaying organic material or overfeeding.
The decomposition of organic material and uneaten food releases nutrients which feed the bacteria. The solution, in this case, is quite straightforward: Remove debris, do not feed your fish an amount beyond what they can consume within two to three minutes, and make partial water changes frequently.

(3.b) Paradoxically, excessive changing of water can cause bacterial bloom.
If you remove too much water from your tank, you may disrupt the bacterial colony in the substrate, which functions as a biological filter for the aquarium. The water could turn cloudy as the biological filter re-establishes itself.
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