Cloudy water & Ammonium Help!

[Livmclelland]

Hey guys so I have a newly established tank with a halfmoon betta fish.
He is very active and happy in there, had waters tested by local fish store - perfect.
After a few days I got a reading of 0.5ppm for Ammonium which I thought was normal, bacteria was slowly developing etc.
I made a dumb decision by trying an old water filter in the tank, to see how he’d like it (it’s a small tank).
After 6 hours the water was cloudy and ammonia jumped to 1.0-2.0ppm. Took it out straight away
I then did a 40% water change and added ammu lock. I can deal with fixing the water - don’t want to risk poisoning the poor thing. Added some stress zyme as well
This morning the water went back to very cloudy but ammonia down to 0.5-1ppm.
Should I let the bacteria bloom do it’s thing? Do I keep doing water changes to keep ammonia down?
Can bacteria eat ammonia treated with ammulock?
Betta is still acting quite happy

 

[Fishlegend]

Doing water change helps ammonia but it makes cloudy water worse

 

[Mebbid]

Don't worry about the bacteria bloom. It's just a think you're gonna drive yourself crazy trying to fix without fixing the original problem. To keep the water safe, feed very sparingly and do a 50% water change every time the ammonia reads 0.5ppm or higher.

Doing this, the bacteria bloom will fix itself in time.

 

[Livmclelland]

Yep thank you! Started feeding every second day. Ammonia seems to be wanting to jump higher and higher but kept up water changes and keeping an eye on it. Thanks!

 

[Mebbid]

Youre welcome! Happy to help