on again off again cloudy water

[sansouci01]

Been having problems with my water getting cloudy. My tank is only 2 months old. The water gets perfectly clear for 3 or 4 days then, I get a day or 2 of cloudy conditions. My water tests ok. It doesn't seem to affect my fish. I am going through that new tank diatom bloom. Could this been the cause ?

 

[Breakthecycle2]

Get a UV sterilizer. It will clear it up.

 

[Shirtlessbill]

Get a UV sterilizer. It will clear it up.

+1 my tank is crystal clear and I owe a huge part of it to my uv sterilizer

 

[carey]

What is the filtration like? Is there a filter floss pad or something like that? Might be kicking back into the tank...if you change it every few days it could make sense why it comes and goes.

 

[sansouci01]

I'm using. chemi-pure elite in my hob filter. I put some floss on top of the bag. Checked it last night and it did look pretty dirty. I took it out to see if it would make a difference. Got home from work today and the tank still looks cloudy. Could it be some kind of algae bloom ?

 

[Jaketit]

Try some activated carbon. That always does the trick for me. Polishes up the water nicely. BTW how new is this tank and what did you clean it with??

 

[sansouci01]

The tank is been running for about 2 months. The chemi-pure I'm using in the HOB filter is a combination of carbon and resin. I have a lot of diatoms in the sand and I was thinking that could be adding to the problem. I am thinking it is some sort of bacteria bloom though.

 

[Shirtlessbill]

Are you using tap water?

 

[melosu58]

I too might think about activated carbon.

 

[Mebbid]

Get a UV sterilizer. It will clear it up.

+1 my tank is crystal clear and I owe a huge part of it to my uv sterilizer

Beyond the initial cycle a UV sterilizer won't do much of anything to clarify water. The only type of cloudiness a UV sterilizer will take care of is from a bacterial bloom and there is nothing pointing to that being the case. I would try either purigen or carbon before anything else.

 

[Mcmcoker]

I have a 36 gal fowlr that is about the same age and I ran into the same sort of thing, sounds like we have very similar setups, I have a hob filter that I run chemi pure in as well, I run the chemi pure inside floss on one side of the filter and just straight carbon on the other, on the side that is just carbon I pack the living crap out of it with carbon, I rinse them thoroughly once a week. I had a diatom outbreak a couple weeks ago so i went and got 10 hermit crabs 2 coraline snails and 2 turbo snails. Within 3 days all brown algae was gone and my tank looks awesome now

 

[sansouci01]

well,
got home from work today and the water was crystal clear. I had some microbacter7 that I used when I was cycling my tank and read that it would help clear up water so I tried it last night. Don't know if that's what did it but the water is clear today..