Bio Spira.. Cloudy Water?

[jblasz]

I used bio spira on a new 55gal tank and it worked great!! with in 2 days i had a fully cycled tank water peramiters are : 0 amonia 0 nitrites 5 nitrates and 8.0 ph
My home tap water has 8.0 ph i supposed thats why my tank is staying there an not moving. Well my water keeps on getting cloudier and cloudier each day and its sort of a green color. Though the water tests keep coming up the same for the last 5 days now. Fish look good just the cloudy water. Is this normal? can i do anything to fix this? Are my fish ok? I did a water change yesterday about 30 % and it just got more cloudy today

 

[rdd1952]

Green water is cause by diatoms (free floating algae) in the water. Is the tank ever exposed to direct sunlight? It's not a problem for the fish and will eventually clear up on it's on (provided it isn't in direct sunlight). It is relatively common in new tanks. Water changes will generally have no effect on it. If you want to get rid of it, about the only way short of lettiing it run it's course is to us a UV Sterilizer. It will kill the diatoms as it passes through and the water will clear in a few days. Here is a link to a thread I did a couple years ago showing the results of a UV sterilizer on one of my tanks.

 

[jblasz]

[No the tank is not in the sunlight at all but my light is on prob. 14 hours a day. I have also been using algae tabs for my clown loaches

 

[rdd1952]

That could be part of the problem. I would switch to regular sinking wafers rather than algae wafers for the clowns. Unless you have plants that need that much light, I would also cut those back to 10 to 12 hours. If you don't have live plants at all, then just turn the lights on when you are there and leave them off the rest of the time.