I need help, cloudy water and I don't know why??????????

[skyguynca]

Ok, I have been raising and breeding seahorses and pipe fish for a while now. Started out with a Pair of Brazilians, Erectus, Kuda's and Dwarf's. I lost my Kuda's and one Brazilian to Vibro, however the rest are doing fine and my erectus pair breed non stop. 4 broods already this year! My fry tank is never empty. My 4 Dwarf's number 25 and the same with the pipe fish, started with 2 now have 12.
Anyway during weekly testing of my water my nitrates were a bit high, 40PPM. Everything else was zero or too low to register. Well did my normal water changes of 20% with conditioner, bio spira, natural nitrate reducer both from instant ocean. Did the water change and the next morning tested my water, now it was 80PPM nitrates?? HMMM I changed out the filter for new ones in the sump refugium, I use bags of nitrate rock and activated carbon on several mats of also activated carbon, amonia reducer and nitrate reducer. Did another water change this time 50% and yep same conditioner, bio spira and nitrate reducer.........well my water went cloudy.
Now I am not talking so thick I can't see through it but pretty darn cloudy. Waited a day still cloudy and nitrate test now shows 160PPM+ and .25PPM amonia. Well I started looking thru every rock and crevace but no dead fish, all accounted for and swimming but my Brazilian is now showing signs of stress.
So today I did another water change, 70%, finished it a few hours ago. This time just water conditioner is all, the water went cloudy as soon at it was put in the tank.
I don't know why it is so cloudy, it is like very diluted milk, but all my tests are .25PPM Amonia, 8.2 PH, 10PPM Nitrates, 0 Nitrites and water temp 74............I don't know what to do now or how to clear up my water. All water changes I almost completely emptied the sump too.
HELP PLEASE

 

[novahobbies]

If I had to guess, I'd say you had a bacterial bloom and die-off. A large bacterial bloom may have kicked off from the bio-spira, caused the milky white cloudiness, and as the bacteria populations went back to normal (i.e., died off) your parameters went off and you got your increase in nitrates. As the die-off progressed, it overloaded the living colonies' ability to process ammonia into nitrite, so you got your slight ammonia reading. How old is the bottle of water conditioner, and what type/brand is it? Water conditioner DOES go bad, believe it or not. There might be something in there right now that the bacteria considers "food," or on the flip side, something that's actually KILLING your bacterial filter.
Since I don't run breeder tanks, I can't be sure of your procedures....but my assumptions above are based off of your description of the timeline of events as well as what I've seen and read in tanks that had bacterial blooms during vodka dosing.