Originally Posted by
DJW
When I have had new tank cloudiness, it usually lasted 7-10 days. It has something to do with the populations of different bacteria finding a balance. The worst cloudiness I ever had was after cycling a tank up to 5ppm per day of ammonia. The water was clear until I added fish, then a couple days later the water would start out fine after a 90% WC and then 24 hours later it was awful. I figured that 5ppm/day was 3 times as much BB as the bioload of fish needed, so excess bacterial plaque or film was sloughing out of the sponge filters and feeding the bloom. The bacteria are blooming because there is something in the water to feed them. I gave the sponge filters a light squeezing and it got better.