White cloudy water

[ChrisandTracey]

I have a white cloudy haze in my tank water. We use a wet/dry filter system. What could the cloudiness be and how can I clear it up. Thanks

 

[Vickitty123]

Often cloudy water is due to a bacterial bloom, usually related to too frequent or too big water chanhes at a time. When I had 10 gallons with only a betta or 2, I would excessivesly change 50 percent once a week which killed more beneficial bacteria than it promoted causing cloudiness. Whats your cleaning schedule?

 

[ChrisandTracey]

We’ve been doing 15-20 percent water change once a week. 150 gallon tank with about 20 cichlids and 4 catfish

 

[okapizebra]

Changing water has little to no effect on bacteria colonies. Bacteria live on surfaces like your gravel, in your filter, and on your glass. I suspect you may not be changing enough water. I would do 50% every week. Cichlids are very messy and produce a lot of waste.

How long has your tank been set up? Can you test for and give us readings on ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate?

 

[earhtmother]

You say the water is *hazy* so no obvious particles?
Is this is a fully cycled tank? In a fully cycled tank that size you should be able to change 50-65% or more weekly without an issue. Have you added anything new to the tank that could be causing this?
I can't speak to a wet/dry filter system as I know nothing about it. In my tanks with HOB filtration I would be taking apart the filter, using old tank water to rinse/clean all *permanent* or *semi-permanent* media and the filter box & tubing as well as replacing all temporary media(floss).

 

[Vickitty123]

I will say, during the water changes I would also ignorantly scrub off all the ornaments and scrub out the filter in the sink. These were dark times lol

 

[ChrisandTracey]

150 gallon tank. Cleaned gravel 2 weeks ago. Cleaned filter pads 3 days ago. Today ammonia is .50. Nitrite is 0. Nitrate is 5.0. Phosphate is 8.0. PH is 7.4. Added4 new fish 2 days ago but water was already cloudy. Tank was redone about 6 weeks ago. Cloudiness has been there about 3 weeks. Ordered some micro pads but haven’t used them yet

 

[okapizebra]

How did you clean your filter pads? And by redone, do you mean you started the tank over from scratch, as in cleaned out the whole tank?

Sounds to me like you are still cycling. Especially seeing you have ammonia in your water. You need to do water changes to get that down, that amount of ammonia is harmful to your fish. The cloudiness is likely just a bacterial bloom, and as your bacteria establish themselves the cloudiness will go away on its own.

When you clean your filter media you want to clean it in a bucket of dirty tank water and not tap water so you don't kill off the good bacteria.

 

[ChrisandTracey]

We’re going to do a 50% water change tonight. Should we clean the gravel lightly or do a full clean? When we redid the tank we kept the existing gravel and didn’t completely drain the water. We removed all of the lace rock and replaced it with plastic fake rocks. We had two large clown loaches and two catfish. After redoing the tank we added cichlids

 

[Vickitty123]

In my experience, smaller water changes (probably just more frequently) and less scrubbing down of their ornaments is what helps the cloudiness.

 

[rlederer]

If you have a wet/dry filter (I have several and love the system), then you have bioballs or some other material in the filter on which the bacteria accumulate. The filter media on top of that collects small particles from the water. I use 100 micron pads and the water stays crystal clear. I throw out out pads though because you really can't get them clean and they aren't important in biological filtration.