Bacterial Bloom?

[follicle]

I think I might have bacterial bloom. I've had cloudy water for close to three months now. I know it's not algae, since the water has no color (green or brown) when I pour some in a glass. The water looks a bit milky and there are tiny white particles floating around in the water. I don't believe it's ick because I can't find any of these spots on my fish.

I tested my water tonight. The pH was a bit high (above 7.6). No Ammonia or Nitrites. Very low Nitrates. I feed the fish once a day (tetra flakes) and feed my black ghost knife one cube of frozen bloom worms daily. The lights are on for about five hours during the evening hours and then then two lunar lights come on from 9 at night until 7 in the morning. The rest of time the lights are off. I change my carbon filters once a month and I rinse them off halfway through the month. I do a 25-35% partial water change once a week with a pretty aggressive gravel vac.

I've tried Tank Buddies Water Clear (which I heard doesn't work well to begin with) and a few other "de-clouding" water conditioners with no luck.

Below are a few photos I took tonight of the tank. Sorry for the poor quality, but I had to shoot these photos with the lights off so they could be as accurate as possible. Note that the tank looks halfway decent when looking at it from the front (top) but from the side (bottom) it's a different story. Any thoughts on what I could do? I've heard a lot about carbon but I'm not too experienced in that area. I have a Penguin Bio-wheel 350 filter. Could I even put more carbon in that?

Thanks!

 

[neilanh]

Honestly I think it's tiny bubbles. Air bubbles.

See how your filter return is plummeting into the water? that creates a lot of O2 into the water, and can saturate the water. Then the flow is forcing the microbubbles, as they're called, all over the place.

Try raising your water level as much as possible so that the return from the filter creates as little turbulence as possible, and see what you have after 12 hours or so.

 

[follicle]

Okay. I had a partial water change and a filter change scheduled for today, so I'll do that this afternoon and give an update tonight.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[follicle]

Well, I know it hasn't been twelve hours yet, but I performed the water/filter change earlier today (about 6 hours ago). I also washed out the Penguin Bio Wheel (there was a lot of muck in there).

The cloudiness still seems to be there – just as bad as before and the same little white dots are floating around inside. I still don't think it's ick, because none of my fish look or are acting unhealthy. I took a close look at a few of my fish and I can't see any white dots on any of them.

These may help. I was able to get some better photos with my SLR (post water change) just a few minutes ago. See below:

Front of the tank.

Side of the tank.

A close-up of the particles floating around like crazy in my tank.

It also dawned on me that my house is equipped with a water softener that takes salt pellets. Would this have any effect? Any additional thoughts?

Thanks!