cloudy water?

Question

I keep changing the water every couple of days but the water still gets cloudy.It is a 14 gallon unheated tank so I do not think it is the heat.

Answer 1

How much water are you changing? How long has the tank been set up?
Most likely, the cloudiness is a bacteria bloom. It will clear up once your tank has enough anaerobic bacteria grown to break down waste.
You can do partial water changes, perhaps 10% every 2nd or 3rd day, not cleaning the substrate. You can do bi-weekly 25% water changes with a gravel vac. This should be part of your regular tank maintenance anyhow.
There's thing you can do to slightly ease the process for the fish. When changing water, use a product like API StressCoat or Seachem Prime. They will provide relief from stress for the fish with aloe vera, they will detoxify cholrine and chloramine in your tap water, and unlike other water conditioners, they will make ammonia somewhat less toxic as well. Ammonia will be present until the bacteria colony has grown.
Also using API StressZyme will provide "seed" bacteria to get this colony growing a little faster. It doesn't happen in 1-2 days, but it does cut the time down, perhaps from 4 weeks to 3 weeks.

Answer 2

In order to know what is causing this, one big question that needs to be answered is basically the age of the tank. Newer tanks, meaning within the first week or two, will experience this. This is what is known as the nitrogen cycle. Bacteria that is necessary builds up that oxidizes harmful compounds into lesser harmful compounds and makes the overall enviroment in the tank safe. That is not the only time water can become cloudy however. In many cases after cleaning, if you didn't clean well in the substrate you'll see debris still settling in your water, it should settle in a day or two. You could have excessive build up in your filter media, and to fix this, rinse out the sponge portion of your filter in a bucket of tank water you are changing. Most of that bacteria mentioned above resides there. Using the tank water, instead of direct tap water helps to keep more of your bacteria in place. You also could be giving too much food as well causing a "transient" bloom of bacteria. That is the continual haze as there is an increase of ammonia and a growth triggered in your bacteria, only it has no place to establish, so it stays transitional in the haze. Cut down the amount of food you are giving very strictly to only enough food they will eat entirely in 2 minutes and see if that helps. If you get stuck, email me anytime.

JV

Answer 3

It sounds like your tank is new and still in the cycling process, never overclean your tank

And do only partial waterchanges of 25% at a time, but you should do it weekly though with a gravel siphon

If it's a new tank, it's bacteria bloom, and is absolutely normal, you shouldn't really touch it when it cycles, the more often you take out water, the long it takes to cycle

http://fishlesscycling.com/articles.html



Hope that helps
Good luck


EB


Edit*
Don't use any chemicals to clear up, they don't work

Answer 4

you need to not clean the tank so often. only clean it once or twice a month. you also need to put something such as Aqua Safe in the new water you add. Also- they sell stuff at walmart or Pet stores for cloudy water. you only put one drop in per gallon or so i think. try this.

Answer 5

Put some new activated charcoal in your filter and it will make it crystal clear.

Answer 6

There is a special salt for it try one of them.