REALLY CLOUDY fish tank?

Question

I had a fish tank for like 2 weeks with fish in it... I started off with 2 angels and one gourami. one angel died the first day. Then the other but the gourami was fine. Now theres 2 loaches, a catfish, one gourami, a tricolor shark. its a 55 gallon tank with a 60 power filter waterfall thing. The water is really cloudy now and it looks like yellow or green. What do i do? I bought a gravel vac that didnt work, so i just used a bucket to get some of the water out and do a water change. Then i bought a battery powered gravel vac and its still bad. What else should i do?

Answer 1

Your tank is in the middle of completing a cycle. Just check your water PH, Nitrates and such. You can purchase test kits or strips at any pet store. Make sure all levels are in the normal range. If not do a 25% water change. DO NOT take out all of your water. This will ruin your cycle and you will have to start all over.
Also with all the fish in there it might have a tad bit much of ammonia which comes from waste and food. A weekly partial water change will keep the levels down for that also.
Good luck!

Answer 2

You have to get a gravel vaccum because all the excess food and the fish waste is in the gravel- buy one that you just move it really fast in the water to get it started- they are cheap and work great. You have to clean the gravel or the fish will die from the rotten food/waste. Also, just change 15%-25% of the water- use a water conditioner and bacteria supplement from the petstore. Make sure you let the water get to room temperature before putting it in there. Do you have a heater? The temperature should be between 74 and 82 degrees. Also, do you turn the light off at night? The cloudiness may be caused from a bacteria bloom- is it white cloudy? Keep the light off half the day and it should go away within a couple of days. Also, you were supposed to let your tank run with the filter for about 5 days so it gets beneficial bacteria for the fish. If you didnt do that, that is probably why the fish died the first day.

Answer 3

Your water is cloudy because your tank is cycling and you have far too many fish at this point.

The cycling process will take 3-6 weeks, and you should only be adding 1-2 fish hardy per week at best. During this time, your fish are producing wastes, but your tank doesn't have the bacteria necessary to convert these into "safe" compounds. Each time the fish produce wates, they give off ammonia, which is toxic in relatively small amounts (they begin to be stressed around 0.5 parts per million). Bacteria will convert the ammonia to nitrite (also toxic in small amounts), then another bacteria converts the nitrite to nitrate, which is safe for most fish up to 40-50 ppm. But your tank is too new to have enough bacteria to do this yet, so the ammonia and/or nitrite are building up to toxic levels. That's probably why the angels died.

Until the bacteria build to a level where all the ammonia and nitrite are converted, they'll be doing some rapid reproduction in your tank - this is part of the reason your water will look cloudy. Once the bacteria population is capable of converting these completely, the reproduction will slow down and the water will be clearer. I don't think this explains it all in your case, since the bacterial "bloom" should be white, not yellow-green. If you have driftwood or live plants, these may be leaching tannins (from the wood or dying leaves), or you may be overfeeding your fish, or wastes are building up in the gravel. Only give the fish what they can eat within 2-3 minutes, twice a day at most. If truely "green" this could be a free-floating algae - this can be controlled by leaving the aquarium lights off, but you'll also need to do regular partial water changes to bring nutrient levels (from the fish wastes/excess food) down. You may also have high levels of nutrients in your water source if you use tap water for the tank - this can also contain nitrates, as well as phosphate (and both of these are plant fertilizers). You might want to take a sample of both your tank water and tap water to a local pet store and have them test the water for you, if you don't have a kit to do this yourself.

For both the removal of nutrients for the algae, and lowering the ammonia and nitrite levels for your fish, the best thing to do is partial water changes of about 25-30% per week, using a gravel vacuum. I prefer the non-type myself. All you should need to do is to put the larger end in the water with the open end facing upward so it fills, then lift up so the water begins to drain - once it starts flowing beyond the rim of the tank, put the open end back into the bucket and allow it to fill again. You need to do this fairly quickly, while water is still flowing through most of the narrow part, or the suction will be lost. Then, all you should do is remove any debris laying on the surface, clean well righ in the front where anything below the level of the gravel can be seen, and about 1/4-1/3 of the rest of the tank deep into the gravel (switch which are you do with each cleaning so nothing has the chance to build up). Another method is to submerge the entire gravel vac and hose, starting at one end so all the air is removed, then cap the narrow end with your thumb while removing it and directing it into a bucket, then removing your thumb. If the first vacuum didn't perform that well, you may want to check that no gravel got caught in the opening where the narrow tube attaches. Other than that, your vacuum may have been too small of a size for your tank.

See the links below for some additional info for your tank:

Answer 4

Okay.

Your tank is not overcrowded, so that is not the issue. 60 power? What do you mean by that? I would recommend a pair of Penguin 350s or an Emperor 400 for your filtration.

Second. Yellow or green water is a sign of an algae bloom. I had this recurring problem in my 55gal until I finally moved it away from the window. You can test to see if that is right - Cover your tank with blankets so not one bit of light can get in and DON'T TOUCH IT for four days. Your fish will be fine, I promise. Don't even peek - one little bit of light will be enough for your algae to survive. If, in four days, your tank is crystal clear, you have three options. One is to get a UV Sterilizer. If you don't mind throwing a heapload of money into your hobby, that's a fine decision. But I've warned you - they're very expensive. Your second option is to throw away a lot of good money buying chemicals that claim to stop algae bloom. I battled it for four months and I can tell you they don't work. The third, and fool-proof option is to move your tank away from any windows.

Next, was your tank completely cycled? If you have no idea what I just said, you should stop buying fish and research that before you do anything else. Not cycling can lead to a huge bacteria and ammonia spike, which could lead to cloudy water. If you know about water cycling, good for you!

The angelfish and gourami dying. Depends on where you get them. I can't say much, because I have no idea if they were from a place like Petland or a nice fish store.

Ooo, one more thing. If it IS an algae bloom, you can do waterchanges for days on end and it won't help. I'd test it ASAP.


ETA: I would also recommend you go out and pick up some water testing strips.

Answer 5

The cloudiness is a bacteria bloom,and you need to learn a lot about keeping a tank clean. You can't filter out the bacteria and if you kill them you will also kill the few beneficial bacteria the are in your tank.
First buy a really good book,and study it thoroughly you need much more information than you can get in a forum like this.
First lessons should be "The Nitrogen Cycle",then "Tank Maintenance". Then you should begin to understand how much more you need to know.

Answer 6

add chemicals that are suppose to clear cloudy water.....and when cleaning the tank be sure to add something that makes the water safe for fishes (takes away ammonia)

Answer 7

Um... not really sure if its a kind of algae but my guess would be that you may be feeding the fish too much food try cutting down on how much food you feed you fish...and hopefully it will make the cloudiness go away....

Hope this helps good luck!

Answer 8

Sounds like you have ammonia in your water. Buy some ammonia detoxifier. It is a liquid that you put in the water to clear out the ammonia.

Answer 9

try to clean it and when u clean it by hand put the fish in a bucket

Answer 10

its probally really dirty just clean out the tank ur self and if it keeps getting dirty try buying a filter or replace the one u have already