Never seen this before in 30 years of owning freshwater tanks

engel2223

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So I always owned bigger tanks, 29g and 55g. So for my 2 year old I got him a 10 gallon glo fish tank and of course I had to go bigger so I got him a 20 gal.. It has been hell from day one, its always cloudy even after water changes. All the water test come back good. Eventually everything in the glo tank died, so I cleaned the gravel, boiled the plants and scrubbed the tank and started anew with even a new filter, again within 3 days were back to green cloudy water again. Nitrates were high for a few days and I have those back to ideal levels, this time its been cycling for 10 days but this shouldn't be happening this quickly. Its not near and window and the light is only on at night as his night light for about 8 hours a night. I'm at a loss, I've talked to fish stores, hell Im a manager at Petco and no one I know can figure this out. I even added a air stone to get more air into help with the nitrates but still cloudy then onto green cloudy water. Please help.
 
Can you post pictures and some additional details? Who are the current occupants? is the tank overstocked? what do you have for filtration? Can you post your full water parameters (numbers)?
 
3 Molly's, 3 plates, 5 zebra danios, a placo and 3 snails. Filter is a fluval 30 gallon.

No3-20
No2-0
GH-75
MG-0
KH-120
Ammonia-0
 

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So the tank is never really in darkness ? And doesn't really have a day night cycle ? How about a very low watt blue moonlight for night time ?
 
If there's no live plants you only want the light on for a couple of hours otherwise single celled algae will grow instead.

If it's not algae, then it could be dye from the gravel.
 
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I can't work out from what's been said if the tank light is on all night? Fish need several hours of total darkness in every 24 hours so the light should be off overnight.
 
If there's no live plants you only want the light on for a ocuple of hours otherwise single celled algae will grow instead.

If it's not algae, then it could be dye from the gravel.
The gravel has been SCRUBBED LOL. So just do water changes til it clears up?
 
You can scrub the gravel all you want but sometimes the paint on the coloured gravel doesn't set properly and they leach colour into the water. But if the lights are on all the time and there are no live plants, it's probably algae.
 
Hello! I myself have a 5 gallon glo tank and experienced the same issue with cloudy green water. After doing endless water changes, buying a completely new filtration system, and cutting back on light exposure, i found this product at my local petstore called algae fix and my month long problem was cleared up within hours. hope this helps
 
One quick solution to this is to get a UV sterilizer. It slowly pumps water from the tank. sterilizes the water with UV light and then returns the water to the tank. The bacteria or algae causing it will be killed by the UV and the water will clear in a few days or even overnight depending on the UV filter size.

Another option is to put a filter pad in the filter that can filter out the very small bacteria particles from the water. You would have to replace the pad once every week or once a month due to it clogging up. I had this problem once and Used a plastic fiber pad made by 3M called Synthetic steel wool. Manufacture number is 10119NA. The white supper fine version has no abrasive in it . IT will go into the filter white and come out brown. You can rinse and squeeze out some of the buildup in it and reuse it. But eventually the paid will have to be discarded.

These steps may help but by themselves don't always work:

1. Reducing light levels can help so having a light with a dimmer can be helpful.

2. More water changes can also help to reduce water lnutrient levels. But if the nutrients are common from your tap water it won't work. The basic goal of water changes is to reduce nutrient levels enough so that the bacteria or algae cannot grow.

3. is Get a floating plant such as salvinia or water lettuce or frogbit. These would block out some of the light and compete against the bacteria or algae to for the nutrients in the water. I would not recommend using duckweed because if can be impossible to eradicate once it is established in a tank. The plants I linked to are much larger and can easily be removed by hand.
 
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