Cloudy Tank Water

[Bluesand1313]

So my boyfriend's tank is having an issue, and I don't know what it could be.

He had a 5.5 gallon and recently moved to a 10 gallon, like not even a week ago. It hasn't stopped being cloudy, and we've tried almost everything we can think of.
-He's got sand, so we turned off the bubblers to see if that would help... nothing changed.
-We've done frequent water changes at first 25%, then 40%, then 50%. Still cloudy.
-The filter doesn't seem to be clearing any of it, but the filters get pitch-black in a few days of being in there.
-He bought this "new tank syndrome" liquid thing that's supposed to help cloudy water. I don't think it's new tank syndrome but w/e lol he bought it. Doesn't seem to be working.
-We turned down his heater from 80 degrees F to 76 degrees F.

His tank is fully cycled, 0 ammonia, nitrate, and nitrites. His PH is at about 8.0 or 7.6, so not incredibly bad. His hardness, however, is incredibly out of whack. His General Hardness is at 0 and the other hardness (forgot what its called, sorry) is at like 180. Not sure how that's even possible, or how to fix it, or if it's causing the cloudy tank.

Here's a pic of what his tank looks like. I took this picture this morning.

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[FroFro]

I don't know as much as the other folks on here but I've had fights with cloudy water. First off, the "cloudy water" fixes don't work and can actually make the issue worse. It's a waste of money. Second, it's most likely an bacteria bloom. Even though my tank (when it was cloudy) had stable and good water parameters I could not for the life of me get rid of the cloudy water. My Uncle then gave me some of his old filter media when he changed the filter floss, I jammed it in the back of my filter and within two days the water was almost completely clear. What could be wrong is that even though your water parameters are stable, you might not have a mature enough beneficial bacteria colony to take on the bio load from your fish/ the food they don't eat/ their poo, resulting in an bacteria bloom. Do you perhaps have another healthy tank you can borrow filter media from? A friend perhaps? Be warned that you should only take filter media from a tank you trust is healthy and not some place like a pet store, as it can be full of all kinds of hidden nasties. The next best option is to wait it out and keep a close eye on water parameters and fish health. I hope this helps, and if anyone else has better advice then best of luck

 

[Bluesand1313]

I'll take some filter media from my own tanks. I have about 4 of them hahaha. And all have always been healthy tanks.
We'll try that, and hopefully it'll work. Thank you so much for the info!

 

[Mrscmurray]

The picture looks a lot like when I set my tank up and didn't rinse the sand properly. if you put your hand in and swirl the sand around does it make it worse?

 

[Bluesand1313]

I've put sand in my own personal tanks before. It's possible that he put the water in too quickly, I can't remember, but shouldn't the filter have filtered it all out by now? If I had sand and there was some cloud in the water, I just ran the filter and it usually cleared it within a few hours.

And no, stirring up the sand doesn't make it any worse than if the sand is settled.