Cycled tank clouding up

[marine fanatic]

Hello,
Out of curiosity, what causes a cycled tank to cloud up again? I have not added anything new to my 8 month old tank and yesterday the water started to cloud up on me. The ONLY thing I have done is rinse out the filter media in my emperor 400's....I was careful not to disturb the bio-wheels and everything was cleaned with warm water only. After I assembled it back together, the water immediately started to cloud up on me. I tested my water and my ammonia jumped up to .50ppm
Very odd, there are no dead things in the tank and all the critters seem to be doing ok but the cloudiness has me rather alarmed.
Today I was going to perform a water change but I wanted to see if anyone here had some thoughts as to why the water would cloud up like it has....any thoughts/help/suggestions????
Thanx

 

[marine fanatic]

Anyone?????

 

[broomer5]

Never had this happen on a saltwater tank, but it has happened with my freshwater's.
I imagine that even though we "think" these filter pads are primarily for mechanical filtration - if not cleaned regularly - they do indeed become populated with bateria and act as a biological filter.
Rinsing out and killing off these bacteria can cause a jump in ammonia - if this filter material was function as a bio-filter.
With a sudden jump in ammonia - there's a lot more fuel available for bacteria to consume - and may lead to a sudden bacteria bloom = cloudy water = mini cycle.
How often do you clean out this filter media in your emperor 400's
How many emperor's do you have on the tank.
If more than one - try rinsing out only one filter media at a time - with a week or so in between.
I'm making an assumption here by the way.
I don't know if this is 100% true with your tank.

 

[marine fanatic]

Thanx for the reply broomer5,
I have 2 Emperor 400's and I have been cleaning the filter media about once every 2 weeks. The Emperor filter has 2 active carbon pads and 2 media pads which have a mesh on one side. This is what I clean every 2 weeks since it is there where the filtered debris reside. I have been doing this for well over 5 months now and never had this problem before. It's very strange looking at my tank now since it looks exactly like a new tank (cloudy water). My ammonia has dropped a bit since my original post, I am down to about .25-.30 so at least it is declining. The water still has a foggy haze in it...to the point I cannot see through the tank looking from the side.
The main reason I clean the media pads is that if I do not, they build up so much debris after a while that the bio-wheels will actually stop rotating, according to Marineland's Emperor manual, this is what I am suppossed to do and that if the wheels stop for a long period of time..the bacteria can perish (apparently this is where the majority of the bacteria lives).
Sorry this is so long, just concerned that my once crystal clear tank has now turned into a movie script for "The Fog II"

 

[marine fanatic]

broomer5,
By the way..in case you think of this....
I was extremely careful with the bio-wheels when I cleaned the filter. I kept them in the tank and they were not jarred or bounced around. I looked at the filter manual again just to be sure and it is exactly what I am suppossed to do...
"Clean the filter media pads once every two weeks with room temperature water by gently rubbing the pads with clean hands until the water that runs through them is clear."

 

[broomer5]

Marine Fanatic
It does seem odd that you've been following this cleaning routine every 2 weeks for last 5 months - and just now are seeing this cloudy water condition WITH measurable ammonia present.
Prior to cleaning these filters:
If we
Rule out a recent water change.
Rule out adding any alkalinity or calcium supplements.
Rule out a change in feeding - the amounts and types of foods and the feeding schedule.
Rule out any new additions of fish/inverts.
Rule out any dead decomposing plants or animals.
If we assume none of the above has changed - and the ONLY thing you recently did was clean out the filter(s)
And ...
You show ammonia
And ...
You have cloudy water
Again - I think for some odd reason - this time the bacteria populations may have been disturbed.
If any of the the other things mentioned above have changed - then all bets are off - and the cleaning of the filter(s) could be coincidental.
I'll make a guess here - and guess that after a few days your tankwater will slowly begin to clear up again, your ammonia will drop to zero, and things will look like they normally do.
Let us know how everything turns out Marine Fanatic

 

[uvmfish]

The same thing happened to me about a month ago. Except my parameters were fine. The whole tank got cloudy and yellowish. I eventaully shut the lights off except for four hours a day. After 3-4 days the cloudy water started to clear and is perfect now. I now have the lights back on a 9 hour schedule. The whole process took about 2 weeks and I was afraid things would die but all made it! Luckily I did not have any light sensative creatures. Good luck!

 

[uvmfish]

I just noticed two things about your sig that had me curious. First you have a snowflake and many inverts. I wasn't sure if this was possible. I think snowflakes are great but thought they would turn my shrimp into lunch! How long have they been together? I would be interested in getting one if they can live together! Next I noticed you are from Moorhead, I lived there for about five years, while I was an undergraduate! Nice city!

 

[marine fanatic]

Broomer5,
Cannot explain it man but this morning the tank was crystal clear again. It is odd that nothing was done differently and this time it clouded up on me but it DID clear up and my ammonia has dropped to almost zero. Thanx for your help
UVMfish,
I keep my snowflake WELL fed and he has left all my inverts/fish alone. I arranged my tank so that there is a lower side and a higher side of live rock and the inverts all like to be up higher and the eel loves the lower areas. I feed him quite a bit until he is sated and maybe I just have a docile one because he has never shown any aggression towards the other critters.