Cloudy tank, messed up chemistry...

[celticcrow77]

So I've been battling a cloudy tank for maybe a month now. I tested my water at first, and the ammonia was a tiny bit above 0 ppm, but barely, and the nitrate was through the roof. I've been trying to do about 10% water changes every day on top of my weekly 25% change, and it hasn't cleared up. I have one axie in a 20 gallon long tank with two good-sized sponge filters. Today I decided to do an almost complete water change, squeeze out the sponges, and start from scratch. Before I did so, I checked my water and got:
pH 6.4
Ammonia 0.50 ppm
Nitrite 0 ppm
Nitrate 100 ppm
It was through the roof!! Why would the nitrate be so darn high?? Did something happen to my nitrogen cycle? I've been trying not to resort to any sort of chemicals to fix the water, but if it clouds back up after this big water change, will I have to? Should I keep up with my daily small water exchanges, or just wait to see if this big change helped? I'm at my wit's end... Any help would be appreciated. :/

 

[jdlqh8]

So I'm not going to be much help, but I will say that I am dealing with similar problems in a few of my tanks, at least with the cloudiness part.

I can say that high nitrate levels are not surprising. Nitrate is actually at the end of the cycling process and unless you have plants in your tank, the nitrates just build up until you do a water change. luckily for us nitrates are the least toxic of the nitrogen cycle.

I'm thinking that since you have lots of nitrates, it may be an algae bloom or bacteria bloom. If that's the case you could remedy your cloudiness by cutting off all light to the tank for two or three days.

Good luck!!

Josh

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 2

 

[Bdyoung]

I just want to clarify, the water readings are from your 20 long with two sponge filters correct?

Here's a few possibilities:

1. The bioload is too much and causes the nitrates to rise very quickly
2. You need more air pumped into the filters
3. You could have traces of nitrates in your tap water
4. You need to do more frequent water changes
5. You may have misread your readings and the tank was not fully cycled, because a fully cycled aquarium will have no traces of ammonia.