Help! White Cloudy Water In Established Tank

[leviethan]

tank has been established maybe half a year, water reads fine. Have 5 leopoldi angels 5 pencil fish, 3 platy, 6 dwarf chain loach and a catfish. The water went cloudy last night. Done large water changes, added chemicals such as prime and ammo lock and stress zyme, even good as far as to change one of my sponges in my filter. Fish seem ok, although a little lack luster than usual. Please need advice, dont know what else to do.

 

[leviethan]

oops forgot to say, when i did first water test today ammonia was sky high, now better but not great. Ph is normal as is nitrite and nitrate. Please some one help, dont want fish to die.

 

[leviethan]

never mind, discovered it was my filter. Half fish were dead this morning, got 50 fish in a 60l tank now. Lol, this is going to be fun.

 

[fluttermoth]

So, what was wrong with the filter? You'd be better off keeping the fish in the larger tank; put the filter from the 6ol in by all means if it's cycled, or seed your old filter with some of the media from it, but cramming all those fish into a small tank like that is asking for trouble.

If your filter's crashed you'll just need to do a lot of water changes until the bacterial colony recovers; it's highly unlikely that it's been totally wiped out, so you shouldn't have to do a complete cycle from scratch.

In the meantime, water change, water change, water change...

 

[leviethan]

nah, took everything out and started again. Got two filters in my 60l so its fine. And no wont be moving that filter over. Threw my broken filter away and got a new one and one my mates had running in his tank for over a year. But no as long as the fish all get enough to eat there shouldn't be a problem. Seen as many fish living in a 30l tank at my lfs and thier ok.

gonna move them back tomorrow. Just not going to buy stingray filters any more.

 

[Caprichoso]

Hold on, there are major things wrong here. First of all, you said that ammonia was high. Were you doing large water changes, like 75% twice daily? Even with the broken filter, you should've been able to get the ammonia down. Now you've started over again and have put the fish in an un-cycled tank? Oh boy, you're making things difficult on yourself. You're going to have to test the water everyday now for like the next month or so until you tank cycles. Get ready to do some major water changes or you're going to lose your fish. In the future don't start your tank over unless you plan on using cycled filter media, it's way too hard on your fish.

 

[leviethan]

lol no no fish in un cycled tank. The tank has established filter a back up filter and half the water is from my other established tank. And yes ammonia was high, water changes brought it down but filter keeled and expelled all its crap at some point. So moved all my refugees to other tank, got am extra filter to help water quality till i can move the 20 back that were originally in there.

 

[leviethan]

oh, plus the water that wasn't from my other tank is ro water. But yeah gonna leave tank 30 hours with cycled media. And ship them back off home. They liked playing with the other fish, was cute watchin them while i stressed for 5 hours cleaning the tank and setting it up again. Lol

 

[Caprichoso]

Oh ok

 

[leviethan]

sorry i weren t to clear pal. i've got aspergus (autism) so my words and time line can get distorted as i forget to add specific details as i go along. sorry. Will try and be clearer in future.

 

[Caprichoso]

No worries mate