cloudy tank???

[newb]

Hey there yall, Im having some problems in my 210 gallon tank and not sure why? The water in this tank has become cloudy...pretty much since the beginning of December. First I will give the tank setup...

it is a 210 gallon aquarium
Filtration is Eheim 2262, 4x Aquaclear 110's, Koralia 7 and Koralia 6 for movement.

I have a 6ft. Oddyssea MH light with 3x 175watt metal halides.

I have 12 large Petro Macros and 44 Tropheus Chimba living here.

I do 2x 50% water changes every week. I normally dont clean the Eheim but once every 4-5months. As for the Aquaclear 110's, I clean two of them at a time and rotate which ones Im cleaning about every two weeks. However, I do clean them in tap water and I know this kills the bacteria, but shouldnt the other filters be housing enough to keep the tank from going through a cycle. I dont have any test kits or I would list those results as well. I guess I should go get something for sure. When I change my water, the tank will clear up a bit, but then like 5 days later...it is cloudy again. Could my tank be going through a cycle? I grow a lot of algae in this tank, but it never turns green...could this be affecting the water? Am I over stocked and under filtered, and this be causing the problem? All of the media in the filters is about a year old and just gets cleaned, not replaced...it is the basic media that goes in an AC110 and there are bioballs and ceramic rings in the Eheim 2262. Could it be that I need to replace some of my media with new stuff? what does this sound like to you all.

[gotticgs]

try a uv light it works for me

[nacra99]

Cloudy water may be wither algae bloom or a bacteria bloom

It would be a good investment anyway to pick up a test kit. Test for ammonia & nitrIte.
If there's any, then your tank is still cycling and its a bacteria bloom.
Also, be careful not to be "overly aggressive" when you clean your filter media especially the bioballs & ceramic rings.
These are supposed to grow bacteria on their surface, if you clean them out too much, you may wash away a chunk of good bacteria and may get a bacteria bloom / mini cycle as the remaining bacteria try to cope with the bioload.

If it is an algae bloom, i'd go with gotticgs suggestion. Either that or an army of daphnia.

[wesleydnunder]

Cloudy water may be wither algae bloom or a bacteria bloom

It would be a good investment anyway to pick up a test kit. Test for ammonia & nitrIte.
If there's any, then your tank is still cycling and its a bacteria bloom.
Also, be careful not to be "overly aggressive" when you clean your filter media especially the bioballs & ceramic rings.
These are supposed to grow bacteria on their surface, if you clean them out too much, you may wash away a chunk of good bacteria and may get a bacteria bloom / mini cycle as the remaining bacteria try to cope with the bioload.

If it is an algae bloom, i'd go with gotticgs suggestion. Either that or an army of daphnia.

+1
All algae isn't green

Mark

[newb]

what is a uv light...post a link to one if you can.

[Complexity]

UV Sterilizers: http://www.google.com/products?hl=en...ed=0CD8QrQQwAg

I personally prefer the Turbo Twist 12X 36W. Good price on this one: http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/prod/209855/product.web. Use the 10% off coupon to bring the price down further.

[gotticgs]

+1
All algae isn't green

Mark

true but if Randal has his halides on while he does a water change it will dry out and kill what ever algae is on his back wall turning it white and realeasing most of it in the water

[Complexity]

If it's dead algae, it would be cleared out of the water by the filter. It wouldn't be going on for a month.

My thoughts is it's a bacteria bloom. I'd also get another canister on that tank. What's on there now isn't enough for such a large tank. There's lots of movement, but not lots of actual filtration. The aquaclears are great, but they can only trap so much crud. Another canister is needed. Or even two more canisters.

[cichlid1409]

when you say 'all media is 1 year old', is it all biological media? you should be able to fix this without buying a UV sterilizer.

[wesleydnunder]

true but if Randal has his halides on while he does a water change it will dry out and kill what ever algae is on his back wall turning it white and realeasing most of it in the water

Chris, what I meant by "All algae isn't green", is that often in new tanks or existing tanks where there is an abundance of food for it, algae will bloom which isn't green in color. I'll try to find the article I read several years ago...I think it was on AquaticPlantCentral...but it said that often what folks call a bacterial bloom in their tank isn't bacteria at all, but single celled algae similar to that which causes green water.

Mark

[fshfrk]

Lets build you one of these.

http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=6d5aea030ad74e73134abf9dd41244b6

[TaTeR ToT]

randall, i had this same problem in my troph tank.
it had a almost translucent fog int he water, like a bateria bloom, i got a turbo twist uv sterilizer similar to the one vicki showed but the next size down, and wow!
it completly stopped the problem, this happened when i was runnignmy halides.

i would do these 3 things.

1.) cut down the time you run you halides by 2 hours.

2.) add a second ehiem 2262, as stated you have alot of flow but very little of it is flow over media.

3.) add a uv sterilizer rated fro atleast 2/3 the size of your tank.
the one vicki showed is perfect.

if this doesnt solve your problem, then let john build you an algae scrubber.

if that doesnt work then your hosed,lol

gl.

[fshfrk]

I have 3 unused uv's you are welcome to borrow one. Will need a new bulb though.

[Complexity]

As far as the size of a uv sterilizer, a really small one would work for algae (normally, green water is the issue). It doesn't require very long contact with the uv light to kill water born algae.

If you want to kill parasites, the water needs to stay in contact with the light longer. And even longer to kill bacteria.

That's why I have such a big uv sterilizer on my tanks. When taking into consideration the very fast flow of water running through the uv sterilizer, it was clear that the water had very little contact with the uv light. By getting the larger uv sterilizer, the water was forced to stay in contact with the uv light longer. This compensated for the fast flow of the water.

Another option would have been to slow down the flow of the water going through the uv sterilizer. It's all a matter of the amount of time the water (and, therefore, undesirable pathogen) stayed in contact with the uv light. Either run the water through there slowly or get a larger sterilizer so the water remains in contact with the light longer by design. Or a combination of the two.

But to combat "green water" algae, it takes very little contact with the uv sterilizer. You only need longer contact if you want to actually kill parasites and bacteria in the water.

[myjohnson]

Try doing a lesser percentage when doing a water change or try adding the water in at a slower rate and see what happens.