Cloudy water

[AndySmithers]

Hi guys!
Great site - loads of good advice....
My FOWLR (for now) tank has been running fine now since February.
Last month I had an outbreak of Hair algae which is now coming to an end (the hair algae is dieing off rapidly).
But, I've now got a problem (gradually gotten worse over the past few weeks) with cloudy water. It's not VERY cloudy, not so you can't see the back of the tank or anything, but just 'milky'.
I've got 3 Aquaclear 420 PH's in the tank which I've fitted today with the quickclear cartridges (had good results with running these just for a week before) but I'd prefer to get to the root cause. Since the beginning I've been using one of those DI tap water purifiers (actually today I ordered a RO/DI unit on-line). Is the water purifier the likely culprit?
I don't think I feed the fish too much - the chemistry is 0,0,0 for Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, PH is 8.4, Temp. is 80-81F.
Any ideas, experience?

Andy.

 

[reefrunner69]

Does it look like smoke in the water? It sounds like a bacterial bloom. Opportunist bacteria are being fed by high nutrients in the water, I would stopp (or seriouly cut back) feeding for a few days, do a waterchange siphoning out any detritus and dieing algae etc...It should clear up.

How big is the tank, how much LR, how many and what kind of fish?

 

[HoopsGuru]

In addition to the above, any recent additions to the tank that may be disturbing the sandbed (if you have a sandbed )and releasing some of the finer sediments?

 

[AndySmithers]

Yes, I suppose it does look like smoke in the water.
The tank is a 90 AGA with 135lbs LR, 3 x Perculas, 1 Yellow Tang, 3 skunk cleaner shrimp, 1 green brittle star and crabs, snails etc.
There have been no recent additions to the tank.
I'm kind of loathe to cut back too much on the feeding for 2 reasons:
1) It's only 2 weeks since I was on vacation for a week and the fish were fed only once during the week's vacation = damn hungry fish!
2) One of the clown's is (relatively) new to the tank (about 3 weeks) and I'm having a devil's own job persuading him to feed on anything except brine shrimp.
When I do feed, all the food simply vanishes in around 2 mins. - it's like the Pirhana sequence in one of the Bond movies in there!