Do Live Plants Mucky The Water?

[Man of fish]

Do live plants mucky the water? I want to know as about 2 weeks after getting my plants (I think in december.) my eater went cloudy. It's shown a tiny bit of improvement but not much. I have a very big bunch of amazon swords, a small argentine sword, and some anubias attached to driftwood. I've had them about 4 months with the cloudiness and I'm getting sick of it. I don't dose any ferts, and the amazons seem to be dying a bit. Would ferts help with the cloudiness and/or help my plant live?
I need this answer because my dad thinks the plants cause cloudiness (he had the same problem in his old tanks) and wants me to scrap them.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Cazgar]

Live plants shouldn't cloud the water.
I have the same plants as you in most of my tanks & the water's clear.
what substrate do you have?

 

[Man of fish]

Gravel from petco.

 

[Man of fish]

When I look down on my tank it's a whitish color. It also has a bit of a soily smell.

EDIT: spell check

 

[marieukxx]

No, my tank is crystal clear. I get a bit of old plant debris stirred up when I clean the tank but that's it.

 

[Man of fish]

Do you think the dying odds and ends could be producing the cloudiness? I'll trim them all of then should I buy ferts? If so what does anyone suggest?

 

[CezzaXV]

Any leaves which are dying should definitely be cut off as they won't be helping the water quality, though plants shouldn't cause cloudy water. Was going to suggest that you might have disturbed a bunch of stuff when planting them, though it seems unusual that it would happen two weeks after.

I'd imagine it's a bacterial bloom of some sort and advise you to just stick at it and do more frequent water changes until it clears.

 

[Livewire88]

What filter do you have on your tank? and have you cleaned it out recently?

 

[Man of fish]

I got the marineland penguin 350 last month and moved all my media over to it. It's only a month old and today is my scheduled cleaning which I just did. I'm also doing a w/c today. I think I'll do a 75% today and I'm cleaning all of the decorations today too.

 

[deftuch]

if you dont clean all plants before you put them in your tank. they will easily cloud your water and make a mess of it. b ut apart from that then no

 

[Man of fish]

Would they still do it after 4 months? I didn't clean mine.....

 

[Man of fish]

I have figured out the problem now one of my filter cartridges was so dirty it was clouding the water on it's way out the filter oops. I decided to now change 1 of my cartridges every month in s rotation. I have 4 cartridges 2 sponges a ton of ceramics and a bit of floss so I'm sure 1 cartridge per month is fine to change

 

[ATK!!!]

You should just clean the cartridges in old tank water, it works just as well and you don't lose your filter bacteria. Unless you're talking about the filter floss, that should be changed every so often, everything else can just be cleaned and then put back in.

 

[CezzaXV]

Agree with ATK. Just a good clean out using tank water should be enough, though it sounds like youve got enough media in your filter that you could easily change one cartridge every so often without consequence.

 

[Man of fish]

Yeah I'll only be changing one cartridge every 1-3 months (still haven't decided. Maybe I'll do 2. Trying to save money but still want the cartridges all turned over once per year) and then the filter floss maybe once a month so it won't hurt I guess