cloudy water

[donlankford]

I have had my 29 gallon Oceanic BioCube running for 21 days. I started out with just water and live sand for the first 7 days. Tested ph, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate for those 7 days and everything was at zero. Added 2 yellowtail damsels, 1 humbug damsel, and 1 unknown damsel (white with two vertical black stripes.) also have two scarlet reef hermits. They all are doing fine even with the cloudy water problem i have now. Since i have added the fish the water clarity has seemed to get worse. I cant see the back of the tank. i changed 5 gallons on day 15. No change water still cloudy. Changed 8 gallons on day 18 still no change. Changed filter on day 20 still no change. i had a golden brown algae problem for 14 days and is starting to clear up. Is this causing the cloudy water? If not, what could it be that is causing the water to be this cloudy? Need some help please!!! Thanks

 

[BL1]

Do you have any live rock in the tank? You need live rock in order to cycle the tank and provide a biological filter. The problem is you added way too many fish, way too quickly. You should really add only one fish every 2-3 weeks and in a tank as small as yours you should only have 3 fish max. in it. The cloudy water is being caused by the fact that your tank is just being overwhelmed by the sudden amount of fish waste that a new tank has to handle now.

 

[donlankford]

I dont have any live rock. Should i take a few fish out? Or will it eventually clear up?

 

[BL1]

I personally would take them all out and add about 29-48 pounds of live rock and then let your tank cycle. With those 4 fish, I don't see your water clearing up soon possibly ever. It's possible that with the water problems you're having now that your fish won't last very long. Also, the four fish you added are some of the most aggressive types of reef fish there are. It's certainly possible that you'll end up with one fish in the end anyway when they start killing each other.

 

[steeldoc]

+1 i would deffinetly remove the fish. some of the fish stores will hold them for you. then i have always heard that you want 1.25x LR per gallon ( so if you have a 100 gal tank you will want 125 pounds of live rock. also your tank is still very young. good luck.