why is my water cloudy with two filters?
Sunday, December 27th, 2009 at
1:40 am
i run two filters on my 40 gallon tank. one is a fluval 205 canister. when i run it on its own the water is crystal clear. the other filter is an aquaclear 70. when i have that one running the water is really cloudy and yellow! i changed all the media and cleaned the whole thing out and its still the same!! should i not use it? it seems to make the water worse =S
Tagged with: aquaclear 70 • fluval 205 • gallon tank • google • running the water • script type • text javascript
Filed under: Water Filter System
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Green/yellow cloudy is an algae bloom. White/grey is a bacterial bloom. Sounds like you’re dealing with algae.
How long are the lights on for? Fish only tank, 6-8 hours, tank with live plants 10-12 hours.
Does the tank receive direct sunlight?
How many fish are in the tank?
How often do you do water changes?
Are you constantly running the 2 together? I would. It won’t hurt.
What are your nitrate levels? Ideally, you want them under 20 ppm. Higher nitrates can cause algae problems. A lot of times this can be corrected through an increase in water changes(at least 25% weekly should be done for a normal stocked tank), not overstocking the tank, doing good thorough gravel vacuums, and not overfeeding.
Here’s a link with a little more info on algae problems:
http://freshaquarium.about.com/od/algae/a/attackalgae.htm
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You probably haven’t cycled the filter. Not only do you need to cycle the water, you need to cycle the filter. I suggest you don’t use two filters, and just stick to the one you have cycled for now, if you want to keep the fish in the tank. However, if you can put your fish in a separate tank for five days at minimum so you can cycle the other filter, I suggest you do this if you want to keep two filters running at the same time in one tank. However you don’t need to do this as the other filter seems to do a good job of it anyway.
Good luck!
What is happening is your tank is spiraling into a mini-cycle. This is because the filter you threw away had good bacteria on it that converted ammonia into a less harmful form. Now that those bacteria are gone, they are colonizing within the water to accommodate the fish wastes.
Please do not throw away old filters. What you should do is add a new filter cartridge in with the old for 1 month so good bacteria can be transferred. If the other filter you have has been running and has cycled then I would suggest to keep this filter and it’s cartridges running until the water clears. It probably will take about a week do clear up.
Yes the aqua clear seventy has a yellowy powder in it…..so as a fish expert i recomend stop using that and use the fluval 205 canister…..
well..i have the same problem…my fish are piranhas,…and are VERY dirty…however…it was ok till last week..it got VERY cloudy…so i did a water change and changed the filters…and SO FAR its still clear..but another thing..if ur light is on alot..thats y…..for some reason….a light on constantly clouds the tank upp..hope i helped a little