Extremely Cloudy Water -fishless Cycle

Hello,
It's been almost 3 weeks since I started cycling my 3.5gal tank. I used fish flakes. I did use stress zyme. Now, tank water is extremely cloudy.
Ammonia 4 ppm, Nitrite 1 ppm and Nitrate 5-10 ppm.

Should I just let it be? Or add more fish flakes until I get ammonia and nitrite 0 ppm?

 

Welcome to FishLore!

Using fish food to cycle a tank can be tricky, because you cannot easily control the ammonia level (i.e. you never know how much ammonia given amount of flakes will produce). Also you don't know how long it will take for the fish food to decompose and start releasing ammonia.

With that said, with an ammonia level of 4ppm, I wouldn't add any more fish food until it gets down to about .5ppm. Then maybe add some more fish food. But better would be to switch over to pure ammonia (i.e. the ingredients should be ammonia & water only, no surfactants, no dye, no perfume etc.). Then just bring you ammonia level up to 2ppm, when it drops to 0ppm, bring it back up to 2ppm again. Onve you have 0ppm nitrites, climbing nitrates and are processing all 2ppm of ammonia within 24 hours...you're cycled.

 

Hello,
Thanks for your reply. I don't have access to pure ammonia now.So I am guessing my ammonia will climb with whatever amount of food is in the tank now. I will stop adding more flakes.

 

Like Jdhef said, no more food until ammonia drops under 1ppm.

 

Yes. Thanks. I hope the cloudiness will eventually disappear. I will use test kit and keep ammonia in check.

 

Once you’re cycled you can vacuum up all of that fish food and rinse out your filter media in old tank water during a water change. It should clear right up.

Cloudiness can be frustrating but as long as the cycle in progressing, don’t worry since it’s an easy fix.

I’ve experienced floating peat while building dirty tanks, bacteria blooms, algae blooms. Every time getting “pristine “ water was a simple matter of the things I suggested above.