Noob Question regarding cloudy water

[sjdbln79]

totally noob question im afraid, but having bought my first tank on the weekend, lovingly assembling, washing out the gravel, carrying out various tests to make sure all was well, i came downstairs thismorning to find the water VERY cloudy with a thick layer of 'scum' on the water surface and on the plants..... what am i doing wrong?

Cheers

 

[neilanh]

Welcome to AA! Check the articles section for a ton of great information, and feel free to ask all your questions here.



You didn't use any soap when you were washing everything, did you?

 

[theotheragentm]

What is in the tank? Could the scum be a bacteria bloom? If you washed away the bacteria culture growing on the substrate and plants but still have a source of bioload, it's possibly bacteria bloom.

 

[QTOFFER]

Welcome to AA, sjdbln79!!!

I'll offer another possibility that I suspect and hope is the case: dissolved gases.

If you wash your ornaments and fill your tank with cool/cold water, dissolved air will come out of solution and coat every surface with tiny bubbles. The gravel looks like it's covered with an opaque scum and I've seen short strings of air bubbles that looked like algae. Air bubbles in the water itself can make it look cloudy or even milky. The bubbles and cloudiness can take hours to dissipate on their own.

Heating the water slightly and increasing surface agitation via the filter or with an airstone will force the bubbles to dissipate faster.

As an aside, I've noticed that my betta gets coated with tiny air bubbles after a water change - especially at the fin edges. It could easily be mistaken as ich or finrot, but if you look carefully, you can see the air bubble slowly rising and coming off. Within a few hours, the bubbles are always completely gone.

 

[sjdbln79]

Thanks for the tips guys!

This whole aquarium business is a little daunting at the mo, got home from work last night to find that it had dissapated completely tho so im thinking it was the air bubbles option : )

Cheers for the tips about the sections to visit on this site, there are some very usefull articles there.

Hope to be seein a lot more of ya!

 

[Marconis]

Phew, I thought it was another mistake like when some guy (forget his name) used ammonia with surfactant to cycle!