Surprise Surprise, MORE trouble...

[shazam26]

Wow, I am nearly at wits end here people.
It has been only 3 days since I last syphoned the bottom of my tank and did a 20% water change. Last night my tank was very cloudy- I discovered my ammonia levels were atrociously high (the hunch is it's due to the condition of the tap water here) I had to do an emergency change. I left 3 inches of water in the tank and filled it up with pure bottled water. The fish seem fine now but I woke up today and now the tank is cloudy AGAIN. The filter is working fine, there'd brand new aqua clear foam in it. What on earth could be the problem?
I'm about to check the ammonia levels again.

[shari2]

If you put a brand new sponge in the filter the bacteria are trying to colonize it. I'd slow down the water changes to small (10%) every other day or so, but only if you see nitrite or ammonia. If they are at 0, leave the tank alone so the bacteria can colonize and it WILL clear. Honest.

Just on the off chance that your ammonia might be coming from something other than the tap, did you check all the nooks and crannies for decaying plant matter, or fungusing food, or possible dead snails (don't know if you have them), or anything that could be rotting and creating ammonia? Do you have any old wood, or other items in the tank that could possibly be decomposing? what about the substrate? Could anything be buried underneath of it, or inside decor, or under decor?

Just trying to help. Don't remember if all these questions were asked or not, so thought I'd mention it...

[shazam26]

Thanks hun:) I think what I'll do is put the fish in a separate tank, take out the decorations and rinse them, and go through the WHOLE tank, every rock and piece of gravel. LOL It'll be spic & span in no time.

[shari2]

Whatever you do DON'T rinse them in tap water!

Just remove some of the tank water to a clean, never been used to mop the floor or hold anything that would harm fish, bucket and wash off the decor in the bucket. you can brush it with something that has never touched anything like cleaning supplies or other stuff that you wouldn't want in the tank. But if your tank is simply cycling (which it sounds to me like it may be) then destroying all the bacteria you have built up so far would be a VERY BAD idea.

And keep the clean decor wet. In fact, if the decor isn't rotting or somehow 'going bad' don't brush it at all. Just remove it to a clean bucket with clean water while you search through the tank. You don't want to destroy the biofilm that is present cause that's where the bacteria are.

[Martin Thoene]

'Xactly......look for anything obvious that might be causing a problem, but don't go ballistic. You're doing investigation....don't scrub down the crime scene.

Once you get it all back together again, feed the fish extremely sparingly for quite a few days. The tank obviously went into a mini-cycle and something is overpowering the available good bacteria. You have to let them build up in numbers.

Martin.

[Xirxes]

I am running into the same problems...

I have a 30G eclipse tank that has been running for about 2 years with 2clowns, 2kubatai, 2 gourami, a red tailed shark and one remaining zebra danio.

I was not able to do a water change for some time, due somewhat to laziness but mostly to the fact that my RO/DI unit was at my parents for their 150G total system reef tank (water evap HOG!) I would guess 2 months without a water change.

I then saw that the water was cloudy, and did a 20-30% water change, and adjusted the new water to 7.0, as well as changing the blue carbon filter.

After this change, the water was MORE cloudy. Read this post here and checked my NH4: 2.5!!!

I have repeated this 30% water change 4 times over the last three days. Water is still cloudy, all fish alive and seemingly well(i hope), no snails and all of my water changes have been gravel vac'd. I dont see anything that would be seeping ammonia, yet after 4 30% water changes, water is still cloudy and tank is at .75 NH4!

Should i consider chemicals at this point? Or should i continue with 10-15% water changes once a day? I don't mind if its cloudy for a while, but i want the fish as healthy as possible.

I only use RO/DI and i have tested it: 0ppm TDS, 0 ammo, 0 chlorine, 0nitrate, 0 nitrite.

Any advice would be aprreciated.