Very Cloudy Water??

[Mudfrog]

My 55 gallon FW tank has had very cloudy water for the past 3 weeks. I do partial water changes every two weeks with the exception of once per week since the cloudy water started. The last water change I did was on Saturday which was about 40% of the water. I also throughly cleaned the filter (Penguin 330) and replaced the cartridges. The water gets a little clearer once I'm done changing the water but is back to very cloudy within 24 hours.

My current parameters are:
Nitrites: .3 mg/l
Amonia: .25 mg/l
Hardness (GH): 12
PH: 7.5

I used the Tetratest Laboret to get all of my readouts.

Anybody have any idea on whats wrong? The only thing I see that sticks out is maybe the hardness but I'm not sure what that should be..

 

[greenmaji]

Looks like your going through a mini cycle.. did you clean your filter and vac your gravel the same day? You can accidentally damage too much of the bacteria during cleaning..

 

[Mudfrog]

I might have.. I usually only vacuum about once a month so who knows. Think that might be the problem?

 

[greenmaji]

how do you clean your filter pads? do you use aquarium water? or do you run it under the sink or replace the pads.. if your filter has more than one cartridge only change one at a time.. you took almost all of your beneficial bacteria out of the tank when you replaced the filter cartridges..

 

[Mudfrog]

I usually run them under tap water or replace both at the same time. I thought the biowheel was supposed to keep the bacteria when I change my cartridges, and yes I have two cartridges in this filter.

 

[greenmaji]

your going to need to do frequent pwc's to keep amonia and nitrite down untill you get your nitrogen cycle back under controll.

 

[greenmaji]

the bio-wheel is only 1/3 of the filter.. I wouldnt count on only it to recolinize new filter pads and the gravel.. its just alot of work for it to do all at once.. but since you have a bio-wheel you should be able to get this cycle back under controll in under a week, I would think..