cloudy ammonia with fishless cycling

[blakeyoung]

I am in the process of fishless cycling my new 29G freshwater tank. I have a combo sand/gravel bottom, no live plants, and a Penguin 150 pump with a biological wheel filter and a carbon filter. I also bought an active filter from Angels Plus that is supposed to already contain all the bacteria needed. I hooked up this active filter in my tank and let it do it's thing for about 48 hours, then I bought some Ace Hardware Janitorial Strength Ammonia. I found a recommendation for using this particular ammonia here on this site. I used an ammonia calculator I found online to calculate that I needed to add 5.5 mL to reach 5 ppm. Almost immediately after adding the ammonia, my water turned cloudy. I checked the ammonia level about an hour afterwards and it was in the 4-8 ppm range. It is now about 48 hours since adding the ammonia and the water is still cloudy. It doesn't appear to have cleared up much if at all. I just checked the ammonia level again and it seems to be closer to 4 ppm now. So it's certainly not zero, but MAYBE a little improved since I first added it. I also checked the pH and it is around 7.6. I thought that the active filter would have cleared up the ammonia by now. Once the ammonia level drops should the cloudiness clear up? The ammonia does not appear to contain ANY additives or surfactant. I shook the bottle up furiously for several seconds and there is no foaming at all.

Just wanted some advice since I'm getting tired at looking at a completely cloudy tank. I don't want to have to disassemble everything and start over.

 

[armymp327]

the cloudiness is probably because of bacterial bloom, which is a good thing and will go away when the cycle is complete, also i have use the active filters from angel plus, did you do overnight shipping when you bought it? if not then not all of the bacteria would have survived, so give it some time and be patient, allow time for the bacteria to grow back.

even with that, i used those filters with overnight shipping and it still took 2 weeks for my tank to cycle, its not going to be instant.

 

[blakeyoung]

Thank you for the quick and helpful reply. I did not choose overnight shipping, and I was also thinking that there could have been quite a bit of bacterial death. I'm encouraged to hear that it took yours up to 2 weeks to cycle. I'll keep watching and waiting!