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What Causes A Cloudy Fish Tank


This article tells you about What Causes A Cloudy Fish Tank. 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.

What Causes A Cloudy Fish Tank

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

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.

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