After soaking driftwood my aquarium is cloudy!!?
Last night we soaked the new driftwood in a bucket for about 3-4 hours until the water turned clear. Then we put the driftwood and a plant in my 55 gallon aquarium. There was nothing else in the aquarium- no fish. Just gravel and filters and water. Then we added a tiny fantail goldfish to add ammonia while we cycle the tank. I am assuming that the driftwood caused the clouding. The fantail is acting very healthy, she doesn’t seem to notice anything. What caused the clouding and will the undergravel filter and small whisper filter get rid of it? Thanks!
Fishless cycling is useless. You need a fish to create ammonia to properly cycle a tank. Also, I want to be able to make sure that my undergravel filter is working and so I needed a fish to feed (old food into filter…) and then everything that goes onto the gravel after a fish is in the tank would be cleaned up. So far everything is working!
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The chemical mix with the driftwood, and the ammonia made it cloudy. That will eventually go away, and especially with the filter. It will go away eventually, and your fish will be fine.
I don’t think the driftwood made it cloudy. I believe this because you said you just added a fish and are starting the cycling process.
What you have is a bacterial bloom, which is a part of the cycling process.
Don’t add any chemicals to get rid of it. It will eventually become less and less cloudy each day that goes by.
Keep doing water changes for the fish that is in there, that’s a must when you have a fish going through the cycling process. Do about 30% everyday to keep ammonia and nitrites low to where they really won’t affect the fish.
Just wondering why you didn’t do a fishless cycle?
From everything I’ve researched, driftwood may need to be soaked for as much as a month to prevent this cloudiness. The quickest way to clean it is to soak it in 3 consecutive pots of clean boiled water for 15 minutes/pot. It could also just be the tank getting started, Most tanks are cloudy the first 1-3 days as all parameters and the gravel and such settle.The filters should make it disappear in about a day or two.
The entire point of fishless cycling is to add ammonia to the tank WITHOUT the fish. This can be achieved by tossing in some fish food and letting it rot, using any organic material (seafood, vegetables, grass clippings, table scraps, whatever), or simply dosing janitorial ammonia. The clouding is caused by bacteria rushing to colonize your filter as the ammonia levels rise. As soon as there are sufficient numbers that have colonized your filter media, the cloud will go away (as the bacteria are now stationary, not free floating). The undergravel filter won’t get rid of it, it will just recycle the bacteria (which are far too small for gravel to remove) back into the water (granted, some will stick to the gravel and colonize the gravel bed).
Do just enough water changes to keep the ammonia levels safe for your fish (0 ppm). Unfortunately, because you have to keep your fish safe, this will take forever, as there will be little or no food source for the bacteria, thus the usefullness of fishless cycling, which (as I explained) is not just letting your filters run and hoping for the best. Also, consider getting some live media from an established tank and putting it in your filter. This will allow already-present bacteria to more quickly colonize your filter and give you a better chance of cycling the tank without killing your fish.
Driftwood usually releases tannin it makes the water have a yellow tinge like soaking tea bags in it would.
It won’t harm the fish and will gradually disappear with normal regular partial water changes.
Introducing driftwood can cause your water to change a yellowish/ brown and will cause your PH to be unstable until all the tannins are released.
The cloudiness is caused by the ammonia from the goldfish in a uncycled tank pretty soon you should see you nitrites and then in two three weeks your nitrates will be high and after another week your tank will be cycled.
Good Luck
it is the driftwood thats causing the cloudy water but dont worry this is not harmful to fish at all and will go away eventually. it happened to my new cichlid tank when i added sand and bogwood the water looked like mud(always turn your filter off as the dust particles can damage filter motor) the water turned clear the day after and waited another 2 weeks before i bought my fish