Bacterial Bloom?

Okay so my cycling story is quite confusing...

My cycle went off as normal, ammonia spike, nitrite spike, nitrate spike, etc etc... After all of that my ammonia stayed at 0.25 and nitrite at 0, and nitrate 20-40, what confused me was why the ammonia wouldn't go down to zero.

After a week or so of the same readings, my ammonia spiked and so did my nitrite, AGAIN. I didn't understand this but I'm at the spot after this has happened, now my ammonia is back to 0.25, nitrite is at 0, and nitrate 20-40, why is my ammonia not going down to zero???

Also the main question is in the last couple days my tank has gotten cloudyyyy, and by cloudy I mean I could barely tell where my wild type was when I went to feed him today, he was behind his hide but I could just barely see him. The cloudiness isn't a problem for me if its just a part of the cycling process and would be called the "bacterial bloom" or whatever, that's what I'm wondering, is it a bacterial bloom or is it something else? My readings aren't bad and also one thing I should mention is this is the first time that the tank has gotten cloudy since starting the cycle, unless you count when I tried cycling with fish food and that ended up making the tank cloudy because of the food, which didn't end up working anyway.

Thanks for all comments in advance, I appreciate it greatly!




These are the two inhabitants of the tank currently, their names are Max(golden albino) and Darwin(wild type) and its a 40 gallon tank with 80 gallons of filtration on it, that being the Penguin 150B and 200B I think is what they're called, the HOB filters. As a side question, how do my Axies look? They've been cycling the tank for me, I have been priming to keep the levels not as toxic and changing water daily to bi-daily to get the toxic levels out after the prime effect dissipates.

Have you tried testing pure water for ammonia? Some test kits show 0.25 ppm ammonia even if there isn't any. But you should try to figure out why the ammonia and nitrites spiked again. Did you do a big cleaning or something else that might've upset the cycle? Or did you feed your axies more than before? The cloudiness is probably just a bacterial bloom. Water changes and cleaning out any wastes, food and dead plants will help.

keiko said:

Have you tried testing pure water for ammonia? Some test kits show 0.25 ppm ammonia even if there isn't any. But you should try to figure out why the ammonia and nitrites spiked again. Did you do a big cleaning or something else that might've upset the cycle? Or did you feed your axies more than before? The cloudiness is probably just a bacterial bloom. Water changes and cleaning out any wastes, food and dead plants will help.

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I tested my tap water it has 0.5 ammonia in it and , it could just be my test kit you're right.

I haven't been feeding anymore than usual, I just feed them however many earthworm halves that they like, which is usually two big nightcrawler earthworm halves each, so 1 full nightcrawler.

I haven't changed anything, I cleaned the filter pads which were filthy as I was too scared to clean them while cycling/ just finished cycling, of course in dirty tank water after a water change, and the buckets of water turned into extremely murky water so I figured that helped. I also use the Fluval Biomax filter media in my filters, and two other cartridges that are in the filters that came with em.

I spot pick the poop and I only use fake plants, I included a picture of their setup as well. The picture is before it got cloudy, it's an older pic but the tank looks exactly the same!

Cleaning the filter pads might've caused the spike. Even if you just gently wash them in old tank water you can lose some of the bacteria and that will cause a spike in ammonia and nitrites. Luckily the cycle picks up pretty fast after that.

keiko said:

Cleaning the filter pads might've caused the spike. Even if you just gently wash them in old tank water you can lose some of the bacteria and that will cause a spike in ammonia and nitrites. Luckily the cycle picks up pretty fast after that.

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It spiked before I did that, the thing that made me want to rinse them off is someone suggesting that in another post I made after the spikes.

AxolotlboyxD said:

It spiked before I did that, the thing that made me want to rinse them off is someone suggesting that in another post I made after the spikes.

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Well I guess it's just a mystery then. Might want to keep testing the water a bit more often than usually for a little while to make sure it doesn't spike again.

For sure every day to every other day my water will be tested!