Need help with water quality.

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Hunter Brown

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Here is an image of a 10 gallon Aquarium I have been trying to get nice and healthy for some newcomers but itā€™s not coming out exactly right. It seems a little cloudy. Every 48 hours I cycle 50% of the water. I make sure that the water test are good for all the levels. No chlorine, safe hardness, pH good for the fish I will be adding. It is high for nitrites, but I thought my filter would take care of that. I have the tank always bubbled and heated.
I have read the cycling link, and I didnā€™t know much about the whole adding ammonia to the tank. But I figured there was probably enough in my water to eventually take off?
If anyone had any input I would love and appreciate that!
 

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Here is an image of a 10 gallon Aquarium I have been trying to get nice and healthy for some newcomers but itā€™s not coming out exactly right. It seems a little cloudy. Every 48 hours I cycle 50% of the water. I make sure that the water test are good for all the levels. No chlorine, safe hardness, pH good for the fish I will be adding. It is high for nitrites, but I thought my filter would take care of that. I have the tank always bubbled and heated.
I have read the cycling link, and I didnā€™t know much about the whole adding ammonia to the tank. But I figured there was probably enough in my water to eventually take off?
If anyone had any input I would love and appreciate that!
Did you clean the gravel before adding it to your tank? This will make your water cloudy but after numerous water changes it should settle down.
 
Changing water doesn't cycle it. You need a source of ammonia to feed the beneficial bacteria so they will multiply. It takes around six weeks. It may be less than six weeks with SafeStart.
 
Did you clean/rinse the gravel before adding it? That makes your water cloudy but over several water changes it should clear up
 
The cloudiness could also be a bacterial bloom. These are common in new tanks. The bacteria are not the ones we need to grow. They feed off organic matter (eg plasticiser in all the plastic things in the tank) and live free floating in the water while the bacteria we need to grow feed off ammonia and nitrite and live in the biofilm which is tightly bound to surfaces. The bloom bacteria multiply very quickly; faster that we can get rid of them with water changes. The good new is that they die off once their food supply is exhausted and the water clears. But it is impossible to say how long this will take as every tank is different.


There may be a trace of ammonia in your tap water but that is not nearly enough to grow enough bacteria to deal with the waste from a tankful of fish. You'll see in that link you've read that the bacteria need to be enough to remove 3 ppm ammonia in one day; tap water should have no more than 0.5 ppm at the most, and most places have less than this - my tap water has zero ammonia.
As you have no live plants (the plants in the photo look fake) you do need to cycle the tank. Tetra Safe Start will help shorten the cycle, but you still need to add ammonia to feed the bacteria in the Safe Start. As you are in the US, I will leave it for American members to advise on where to buy ammonia.
You'll also need a liquid reagent test kit for cycling, and for keeping an eye on the water once you have fish.
 
No chlorine, safe hardness, pH good for the fish I will be adding.
Please let us know the actual numbers for pH and hardness and what fish you intend keeping. different fish have different requirements so there is no safe or good number, unfortunately fish shops won't usually tell you this.
 

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