# Cloudy water - No ammonia or nitrites!



## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

A bit of background:

I set up this tank for my RCS, and used plants and filter media from my cycled tank. Water tests show 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and ~5ppm nitrate. This to me says that the tank is cycled. The filter is a DIY sponge filter. The tank size is 16 gal and houses (now) 14 RCS.

So the other day, I threw in some bits of broccoli and apple peels to feed the shrimps, and left it over night. The next morning, I noticed that the water became cloudy white. I removed the apple peel and left for work, expecting it to clear up. When I got home, the water was still cloudy. So I tested for ammonia and nitrite: both came out 0.

Puzzled, I did a 20-30% water change. Shortly after the water change, I noticed a dead shrimp. I'm sure it die after the water change because I had carefully inspected the tank for any casualties previously. The shrimp was also recently dead as its tail proceeded to curl up in the next few minutes. I removed the dead shrimp.

The water change made the tank slightly less cloudy, but when I looked at it this morning, it became even more cloudy.

Is this a bacterial bloom? If so, why is there one when I can't detect any ammonia or nitrite? Should I be worried about the shrimps? Why do you think that shrimp died?


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## Zebrapl3co (Mar 29, 2006)

That sounds to me like a bacteria bloom.
How long was the tank cycled? If it just finnished cycling, it's still far from being treated as if it's an established tank. Any bad calls can easily send it into a cycle again. Were any of the food cooked? Cooked food decay at a much more rapid rate that raw.
What kind of test kit did you use? And when obtaining water sample for test, try getting water that is deeper that 6".

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