Cloudy Water On First Day

[nike12301]

I finished cycling. Yesterday I went out and got six rasboras to start.

Today I wake up and the water looks cloudy. And if you look really carefully, some of the plants and gravel looks like they have a really, really thin coating of white dust on them. Also the pH has dropped from about 8.0 to 6.6.

Is this a problem? What should I do?

 

[hollanda88]

I finished cycling. Yesterday I went out and got six rasboras to start.

Today I wake up and the water looks cloudy. And if you look really carefully, some of the plants and gravel looks like they have a really, really thin coating of white dust on them. Also the pH has dropped from about 8.0 to 6.6.

Is this a problem? What should I do?

What are all the rest of your parameters?

and when did you fill your tank with water?

Wood in the tank?

andrew

 

[nike12301]

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 20


No wood in the tank.

I had been fishless cycling for about a month or so. And did my 70% water change before getting the fish.

Is this a bacteria bloom? I don't know much about them.

 

[waterdrop]

The 70% water change might have been not quite enough. Usually we recommend a 90% change, which is down to the substrate if possible with gravel vacuuming going the whole time and just the wet gravel and filter box water left.

It might not be any big deal, however, and I'd just go ahead and do some extra water changes with gravel vacs, maybe a couple of days of 50% changes. Presumably your tap pH will also help bring your tank pH back up or else that might have to be looked into more.

Regardless of whether some unknown dustings or particles can be explained right away in a tank, the healthy response is often the same, a good gravel clean water change with conditioner and rough temperature matching for the new tap water and followup tests recorded for your logbook an hour or so later. Then you can come back and continue to think about reasons.

~~waterdrop~~