New 6ft Tank Cloudy Water Question?

[bartek]

I started setting up my 6ft (6x2x18) back on the 14th March and it has had DW, ADA and water in it since then. I also has a few plants including a extra large amazone sword, java fern and moss. Lighting atm is 4ft Aqualina unit with 4 compact flouros (220W in total).

I ran it with a few small internal filters for a day and then attached a mature eheim 2217. I added a second mature eheim 2217 on the 19th March and also did a 50% water change.

I have tested the water regularly and I had ammonia at first and a little nitrite but for the past 3 days or so Ammonia and Nitrite readins have been zero and mitrate is at 5ppm and not going up or down.

PH is around 6.6.

I am using Cycle as the biostarter and have had 2 white clouds, 3 columbian tetras, 10 glass shrimp and 3 mystery snails in the tank since about the 19th March.


Problem is that the water is still very cloudy. At first and form past experience I thought that the cloudiness was because of the ammonia and indeed since the ammonia dropped to zero the water cleared up but still remains quite cloudy.

Any ideas why this is so? Do you think I just need to wait and it will sort it self out. Would adding some more fish such as a group of tetras help?

Im not too worried I just would have expected the cloudiness to have disappeared once the ammonia did.

[ILLUSN]

my 1st guess is a bacterial/ algal bloom, then again
ADA amazonia has a habit of doing this to tanks, try popping a carbon pad into each of the 2217's or adding a pouch of biochem zorb/ chemi pure/ purigin/etc to see if that polishes out all those nasty particals, once its clear you can remove the chemical media, if it comes back then your stuck with a cloudy tank till you change your substrate.

[bartek]

My previous tank had ADA and it did the same thing when I set it up originally. Back then everything was new and I attributed the cloudiness to ammonia and not so much the ADA as I had ammonia levels for the whoel time the water was cloudy.

This time I now have zero ammonia but the water is still cloudy.

ADA does leach nutrient into the water so it maybe an aglea bloom I guess. I think I have a small bag of purigen at home and active carbon si ill pop them in overnight and see what happens.