Random Bacterial Bloom or Sand Particles?? Help with cloudiness please

Hello everyone,

I've had my little Axies for about 7-8 months now and thankfully they have grown up quite nicely and healthy

Lately though, my water has been really cloudy. Now I've had to change their little caves around as they grew up and last time I changed from 2 separate caves to just one big hide. (Simply because they liked the last caves WAY too much and it was rare when they would come out of there lol)

I have a 20 gallon long tank with fine sand as substrate. I use an Aquaclear 50gal filter with the sponge(just changed this one last week), Seachem Purigen instead of carbon pad, recently added a fluval polishing pad to keep the water coming out of the filter as crystal clear as possible, and of course the little biomax sac to keep the cycle going. Temperature is always around 60-65F degrees.

I do a weekly water change with Seachem Prime to dechlorinate the water, and feed my Axolotls pellets every 2-3 days depending on how hungry they look. And yes I know the pellets also foul the water a bit but trust me they REALLY like the pellets lol so they stay in the water for maybe 1-2 hours tops while they devour them.

Just did a water reading today and came out to Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, and Nitrates around 30-40 which means the cycle is pretty much set. Though I still use a bit of Seachem Stability when I do water changes just to make sure the cycle stays set.

So the BIG question is... why in the heavens is my water so cloudy? Also it seems to clear at random times but comes back once in a while. For example I've noticed that sometimes when I feed them frozen blood worms and they take awhile to eat them, the water will clear a bit... which seems very random to me
Any tips/help is really appreciated!

When you replace the filter components do you change them all at once? It looks like a bacterial bloom. It's probably not the sand if you've had it in the tank for a while.

sully said:

When you replace the filter components do you change them all at once? It looks like a bacterial bloom. It's probably not the sand if you've had it in the tank for a while.

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I did change the sponge and purigen at the same time yes, then added the polishing pad. But I thought the biomax was the one that helped hold the cycle.

Okay well that could be it because a lot of bacteria is held in other parts as well. And with the aqua clear you can rinse the sponge for a really long time before you actually need to replace it. But yeah still sound like a bacterial bloom

sully said:

Okay well that could be it because a lot of bacteria is held in other parts as well. And with the aqua clear you can rinse the sponge for a really long time before you actually need to replace it. But yeah still sound like a bacterial bloom

Click to expand...

Aww man so I'm guessing for now just waiting for the filter to sort of build up again is my best bet to get rid of cloudiness?

It should sort it self out in a few days. If not we can re-evaluate

Your feeding your tank bottled bacteria which is not needed since your tank is cycled (also unlikely it helped anything in the first place). Your cycle will continue to function as long as ammonia is present from your Axolotls (which it will be). Biomax by Fluval doesn't keep the cycle going, it just provides further surface area for bacteria, the Fluval website also claims it 'controls ammonia and nitrAte' not sure how but I would have thought the cycle would control the ammonia just fine and weekly water changes would control the nitrAte.

You shouldn't remove multiple pieces of media from your filter at once, this could crash your cycle by removing large colonies of bacteria. If it is a bacterial bloom it should settle in time

Just my 2 cents!

Thanks for all the tips
But yeah from now on I'll be more careful with the filter media and also not use Stability as much anymore. I just get worried when I do water changes that the cycle could crash you know?
Like tomorrow I'm supposed to do a water change but I dont know if I should wait a bit longer while the bloom settles down, which it hasn't yet, and just monitor the water levels. Or actually do a regular water change you know?

I wouldn't use Stability at all, I've seen more problems using it than not. Your cycle will not crash unless you remove all your water and change filter media incorrectly.

Only particularly large water changes could affect your cycle. If your doing a 30% water change per week then you will have no issue with your cycle. As long as you are monitoring your water parameters you know where your cycle is. You should perform a water change to lower your NitrAte to 10-20ppm, then monitor how long it takes for your NitrAte to rise to 40+ppm, this way you roughly know how often you need to be performing water changes to keep the NitrAte in check.

Hey everyone, just wanted to give you an update on the tank. Just this morning I found the water super clear I have never seen it so crystal clear so I wanted to share it with you guys.
Thanks for all the help!