I just cleaned my eheim external filter. after I took the charcoal out, the water has been VERY cloudy. why?

Question

is this normal?

I meant to say,

eheim external canister filter...

I was told to wash the filter with dirty water from the aquarium... and I did

Answer 1

charcoal is not necessary. if you don't replace it often, it is harmful.

You can replace the charcoal with bio-media such as ceramic. Much better. Charcoal should ONLY be used for removing medications. Prolonged use of charcoal is linked with Hole in the Head and Lateral Line Erosion (HITH/LLE). Charcoal only disguses smells (if there is a smell, there is a problem), and removes some essential nutrients from the water the fish need.

I agree with the first poster. It is sometimes common to cloud up a bit after filter cleaning. If you changed water at the same time, then there is sometimes a cloud of tiny bubbles that take time to disperse as well.

If it is still like that tomorrow, test your water and make sure you don't have a mini-cycle going on. You were right for using tank water to clean your filter.

The only reason I could see a mini-cycle is that the good bacteria can form on the carbon, and when you removed it you removed some of the bacteria culture. Depending on your filter to tank size, you may still be ok without adding more bio-media, but it wouldn't hurt.

Answer 2

1. Why would you clean the filter with the dirty water??????
Use regular tap to wash and fill with decolonized
2.Carbon/Charcoal is an impurity remover with it gone the impurities stay in the water causing the cloudiness and yes it's normal but if it came on so fast take your fish out and put them in your back up tank and shake up the gravel usually after a while food and poop get put down the gravel and can continually release bad stuff into the water let the stuff stay in there let your filter do the cleaning and after rinse the filter pad you can speed up the process by using your fish net to act as a mechanical filtration device.

Answer 3

It's probably nothing to worry about especially if you did it in the last few hours. It's not uncommon to see cloudiness from fine particles washing out of the filter material for a little while. It should settle out soon.

MM