Aha! In just one week, my water has gone from cloudy (couldn't quite see the back of the tank) to almost crystal clear. I can tell you what I did, but I did so much in one week that I'm not sure what worked!
Last weekend, we took a trip to the fish store. DH has desperately wanted an African Butterfly Fish since we set up the tank, but I wanted to let the tank mature for several months first.
We bought a 2" ABF and a 3.5" weather loach (impulse fish!). We also got a bunch of ghost shrimp (I can't remember how many -- 8? 10?) since "something" ate the last group a few months ago. (We think it was the African frog, which has since found a new home.)
Some of my plants had been pulled -- I couldn't keep up with the anacharis, and the bacopa had started to die since I'd drastically reduced lighting in an effort to get rid of the cloudy water. (Didn't work.) So I bought a myriophyllum. Pretty, and it's supposed to take a lot of its nutrients from the water column.
We got home, I vacuumed the tank and planted the myrio, and we acclimated the fish. For the next three days, I did small partial water changes (maybe 15%?) and vacuumed the gravel. At the same time, my new clean up crew was going nuts. Those shrimp are always moving. Plus the weather loach likes to look in the substrate for tasty morsels other fish have missed.
I dropped the water level another inch or so for the benefit of the ABF, so no more film. (Thanks for the tip, BobK.)
The myrio is very perky (although sometimes uprooted, due to Mr. Loach -- he likes that plant a lot!), and the water is much cleaner now. I suspect that the plant contributed significantly to the water quality.
The other thing I did was to increase the lighting period from 7 hours to 8 hours, but I broke it up -- 4 hours on, 4 hours off, 4 hours on. My goal is to work my way up to about 10 hours on while adding more bright light plants, and to gradually make it a 10 hour period with no "off" time. But I had read in someone else's post that the on-off thing is fine for fish and plants, but murder on algae. (It's also nice for us, since no one's really in the same room as the fish mid-afternoon!)
Anyhow, I know that a lot changed in a short period of time -- a good plant, some bottom feeders, lighting change -- but wow! what a difference. I thought someone might be able to try one or two of these ideas and see a difference in their own tanks. Good luck!
-- Pamela
