Cloudy water?

Question

This morning when I woke up, the water in my 55 gallon tank was cloudy. I checked the ph and ammonia levels. They were off the chart. I have done a 50% water change. I have live plants in the aquarium, so I am using a DIY CO2 system. Could that have caused the problem? I just did a 25% water change on Monday morning.

The ph levels are high and so is the ammonia levels. ph didn't crash. My tank has been running for over 4 months now. When I did my weekly water change I cleaned the filters in the old water in a pail, then put them back in. The only difference is that I bought 5 fish yesterday. Could that be the problem then?

Answer 1

Your fish water change somehow managed to upset your nitrogen cycle is my first thought. I would continue to do small water changes as needed to keep the ammonia low enough for the fish and wait until the cycle kicks back in. The CO2 will lower the pH in the tank unless the water is quite hard, but only about .2 -.3 at the most. The plants can have a bigger impact on pH over night than the CO2 injector.

Hold the levels down until nature can take control again and all should be well.

MM

Answer 2

Can you be more specific about the levels? Because pH can't be "off the chart" - it has to be somewhere between 1 and 14 :). Anyway, CO2 can affect the pH of the water. At night, plants don't use CO2 (in fact, they generate it), and excess carbon in the water will cause a pH crash. However, I've been using DIY reactors for ages and I've never seen it cause a difference in pH - usually the crash is associated with more effective methods of CO2 injection, like pressurized CO2 or carbo-plus blocks. That said, it is possible that the CO2 is affecting the pH. Test your pH at night just before you turn the lights off. Then test it first thing in the morning, just before the lights go on in the tank, and compare the results. If your pH is crashing between lights out and lights on, you're injecting too much CO2.

However, excess ammonia will also cause a shift in pH. So if your pH is different from tap water (that has been sitting out for an hour) but does not fluctuate, the ammonia could quite possible be the cause.

Anyway, is this a new tank set up? If ammonia is present, it means that your tank isn't cycled. I don't know how much you know about the nitrogen cycle, but, in brief: In the wild, and in established tanks, there are nitrifying bacteria that break down toxic ammonia from fish waste and excess food into less toxic nitrates. In a brand new tank, these bacteria don't exist, so any fish in the tank will produce ammonia, which, not being broken down by bacteria, will kill or weaken the fish.

It's too late to cycle now; you're going to have to use your fish and the ammonia that they produce to cycle the tank. So do not add any more fish until the ammonia drops to 0 and the nitritres drop to 0. It could take a month. Until then, to make it easier on the fish, do small daily water changes to dillute the ammonia.


If your tank is not a new tank, then the water change you did must have upset the biological balance of the tank. Did you perchance replace the filter sponge? You shouldn't need to ever replace the sponge - a lot of good bacteria live there. Just swish it in some tank water in a bucket to rines the gunk off. Anyway, all you can do is keep the ammonia down by doing small daily water changes until the ammonia levels drop. They will drop, it just takes a little time :)

Answer 3

Sorry, I am having a problem with my Yahoo answers here.

How long has your tank been running? If it has not yet cycled properly adding the CO2 is not just feeding your plants it is also feeding algae. Your tank will go thru spikes when starting the nitrogen cycling process.

You said you have a DIY CO2. Are you using sugar and yeast for this process with a 2L soda bottle or similar-sized glass or plastic container? Are you sure you are releasing CO2 or do you have a possiable leak or your hose is too far into the bottle allowing the yeast to enter the tank to make it cloudy? Do you have a check valve (to keep water from back flowing into your tank) on the line? This alone can cause excessive bubbles.

To disperse the bubbles, you can do any of the following:

- place the tubing into or under the intake to the canister, powerhead or power filter, allowing the filter impeller to disperse the bubbles. Caution - do not place the tubing in any high flow area which might create a vacuum in the tubing and collapse the culture bottle or siphon the culture into the tank!

- place an airstone on the end of the tubing and anchor in the aquarium.

- make a simple reactor. Plans can be found at http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/CO2/

Airstones and diffusion bells are less efficient than reactors and filter dispersal.

Be sure to minimize any water surface turbulence in the aquarium. Turbulence allows the CO2 you've injected to escape into the air. Minimizing turbulence will maximize CO2 levels in the water.

It is most important to be certain that the aquarium water is well-buffered before adding CO2. The water should have a KH of 4 degrees or greater (or 70 ppm CaCO3, if that is how your test kit measures) in order to be able to maintain a stable pH with CO2 addition. A lower KH could lead to a situation where the buffer is exhausted and the pH suddenly crashes to 4 or less, with lethal results for your fish and plants. If your tank KH is not high enough, you can easily increase the buffering by adding some crushed coral (from the saltwater tank supplies at the lfs) in a filter bag in your filter. This will slowly dissolve, releasing calcium carbonate which will increase your KH. You will also see a rise in pH (the two parameters are chemically associated), but the CO2 will drop the pH back down again. You will have to use trial and error to determine the exact amount of crushed coral to use in the filter bag for your tank. Remember that after a large water change, the KH/pH can drop noticeably until the crushed coral dissolves into the new water.

Hope this helps.

Proper DIY CO2:
Using a funnel or rolled up paper, pour 2 cups of sugar into the bottle. Add 1/4 teaspoon of baker's yeast and a pinch of baking soda. Pour in a little warm water (NOT hot) and mix around to dissolve the sugar and yeast. Then fill to the shoulder (just above the label on a soda bottle) with warm water. Shake well and cap with the tubing-cap assembly. Run the other end of the tubing into the aquarium.

This setup will serve an aquarium in the 10-30 gallon range.