Category Archives: Cloudy Fish Tank
Clearing Cloudy Water In A Marine Aquarium
This article is a follow up from the previous post entitled “Love Your Pets – Feed Them Best”
When it comes to maintaining a saltwater fish tank, one of the commonest problems that many enthusiasts face is clearing cloudy water. Nothing beats admiring the beautiful, colorful fish swimming in a well decorated marine aquarium but how can you do that if the water is cloudy? What I hope to do in this article is to guide you on what turns your saltwater fish tank cloudy in the first place and tips on clearing cloudy water that you could use instantly.
Clearing Cloudy Water
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When clearing cloudy water, it is first best to understand how the water got cloudy in the first place. There are three main causes of cloudy water; bacterial blooms, algae growth and debris from decorations. Knowing which type of cloudy water you are facing will making clearing cloudy water so much easier.
Why Clearing Cloudy Water Is Important
Bacterial blooms make the water a whitish tint. This is usually the result of over feeding your fish or allowing plants or dead fish to rot in the tank.
Algae growth makes the water a greenish tint. This is usually the result of placing the tank in excessive sunlight and too much nitrates in the tank.
Debris from decorations usually make the tank water a brownish or yellowish tint. This is the result of not properly washing new decoration before putting it into the aquarium.
Tips On Clearing Cloudy Water
Check the population of fish in your aquarium. The ideal population in a saltwater aquarium is one medium size fish for every 8 to 10 gallons of water. Maintaining the ideal level of fish in a tank will allow the fish tank filters to properly function in filtering the tank water.
If your filter causes too much water circulation, turn it off for a while each time you feed the fish to allow them to eat the food completely. And always feed a little at a time. Over feeding will cause the food to rot in the aquarium water, promoting excessive bacterial growth.
Ensure that the fish tank filters that you use is suitable for the size of the tank that you have. Too small and it would not be able to filter the water properly. Too large and it will cause too much water movement and affect the fish.
Clean the filter media weekly or bi-weekly. This ensures that the filter media is not clogged and function to the maximum capability.
Do proper water changes each week. This will control the amount of bacteria and algae in your tank.
If you are affect by algae growth, ensure that you do not have the tank placed in a location that experiences too much sunlight. Remember, algae is a plant and it thrives on sunlight.
Finally, before placing any decoration into your aquarium, wash it thoroughly first. This is especially important for driftwood. These usually shed a brownish or yellowish dust when the are dry which can cause cloudy water.
Tools You Need For Clearing Cloudy Water (Click for details)
These are some of the simplest tips that you can use immediately when clearing cloudy water.
What Causes A Cloudy Fish Tank
This article on cloudy fish tank is a follow up from a previous post entitled “Tropical Fish Breeding | Which Is The Easiest Fish To Care For?“.
The reason why anyone would want to have an aquarium is to admire the beauty within. Nothing beats sitting quietly before a fish tank, watching colorful fishes serenely swimming between swaying plants, playing tag with one another. Nothing more exciting then watching them lay their eggs, protect them and then watching the little ones hatch and swim around.
But this beauty is easily marred with a cloudy fish tank water. For most people, the sight of cloudy fish tank water makes them fear for the life of their aquatic pets. But before you attempt to clean up the mess, you do need to identify the cause of the problem before you can decide on your next steps.
It is easy to identify the cause from the color the cloudiness takes on. Generally, the cloudy fish tank water can be whitish, greenish or brownish.
Whitish Cloudy Fish Tank Water
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Fish tank water turns cloudy with a shade of white because of bacterial blooms. This is when there is a sudden increase of bacterial colonies in the fish tank. Bacteria thrives on the nutrients in the water and colonies can increase very fast in nutrient rich water.
Brand new aquariums a susceptible to cloudy fish tank water. This is because the ecosystem within the tank has not had a chance to stabilize yet. But if your tank is not brand new, the main reason why the water is cloudy is because you might be overfeeding the fish. Food that is not consumed with dissolve and make the water nutritious for bacterial colonies.
Bacterial blooms are not harmful to the fish. You could just wait it out and the water will clear in a couple of days. In the mean time, limit the amount of food that you give the fish. If you’d like to speed up the process a bit, do a 20% water change, but never change the entire tank of water.
Green Cloudy Fish Tank Water
This is due to algae bloom. Again, it is more unpleasant to look at rather than harmful to the fish. And just like bacterial bloom, algae bloom is also a sign of excess nutrients in the water.
Just wait it out and the water will eventually clear. Do a 20% water change to speed up the process. Do not try to kill off all the algae at once as this will cause a greater imbalance to the water.
Preventing algae bloom is extremely easy. Just keep enough aquatic plants in your fish tank and the plants will compete with the algae for nutrients, preventing them from blooming.
Brownish or Yellowish Cloudy Fish Tank Water
When the shade of water are these or any other colors, then it is due to contaminants and not biological blooms. There are numerous reasons for this but it is generally due to something that you may have added into the tank. It could be due to a new driftwood that’s reducing tannins into the water. It could be due to new gravel that will release particles when you first soak it in the water. It could be due to decaying plants or too much fish waste.
This shade of cloudy fish tank water is not good for the fish and will not clear off by itself. Do a 20% water change along with activated carbon which will work on biological waste. Do this every other day until the water clears. Usually it would by the second or third cycle.
These are the easiest and safest ways to clear up cloudy fish tank water. Generally, fish do not die when the water gets cloudy. But if you do see your fish dying it is not because of these reasons but because of a chemical contaminant, your fish are poisoned. This would require a total water change and we will look at the steps for this in a future post.
Some Tools You Need For Cloudy Fish Tank
After knowing what causes a cloudy fish tank, let’s look at ideal fish tank filters for a small aquarium.
