Help, I Am A Beginner

Hi. I got a 65 gln tank about 3 mos ago. I have 4 small gold fish, 4 med sized koi and 1 fancy gold fish. Judging by these posts my tank may be over crowded. I am still learning the cycling stuff and just got a PH tester a few weeks ago. My fish seem to all be doing well but my water is constantly cloudy. A day after my change it will go cloudy again. It's very frustrating. I do not have a heater as these fish are able to survive cold temps. I got rid of my real plants due to algae issues so that got better. I feed them 4* a day but small amounts. I don't have an out of range PH so I am not understanding the reason for cloudiness all the time.

 

Welcome to Fishlore! Good job on testing for pH, but you're also going to want to get an API test kit that allows to to test for Ammonia, Nitrites, and Nitrates.

Your cloudiness probably doesn't have to do with your pH. What kind of substrate do you have and what filter are you running?

 

I'm new to the hobby too. We have a 20gal w/ 5 lil ones. 2 mollies, 2 platys and a guppy. I didn't realize how dirty it was in there until I moved the decorations around and it kicked up all the gunk at the bottom. I have small pebbles/gravel for my tank's substrate. I bought a simple siphon in the fish section at Walmart for $9(there are better ones out there tho, for more $$). Found a youtube video on how to use it and voila! Took a siphon to the gravel and it got a lot better, but ended up having to do a 50% water change because it was so cloudy/yucky once it was kicked up.

It's only been up and running a couple of weeks, and I have a heater/filter set up on ours. All plastic plants. I figured the filter would catch a lot of this sort of thing, But we have 5 tiny poop machines in there lol. So, I just have to start making sure water changes are done more often until the tank has a better, more established cycle I guess.

Just make sure that you treat the water you're putting into the tank during the water change.

I agree with Achilles tho, you definitely want a more in depth look at the water. You can get water tested for free at PetSmart/PetCo by using a clean container to bring tank water in and they'll give you a "report card" on all the levels. For now, I don't have the money to get the kits, so we do it this way. I was told the liquid tester kits are more budget friendly than the strips because there's so many more uses in them, but strips are so much easier/faster to use.

Good luck!

 

I just read that having hard water can cause this problem of constant cloudiness so looking into RO system.

Welcome to Fishlore! Good job on testing for pH, but you're also going to want to get an API test kit that allows to to test for Ammonia, Nitrites, and Nitrates.

Your cloudiness probably doesn't have to do with your pH. What kind of substrate do you have and what filter are you running?

I have gravel and river rock mixture. I am using two Top Fin power filters for 45-70 gln tanks.

 

I just read that having hard water can cause this problem of constant cloudiness so looking into RO system.

Good to know about this. Our water isn't super hard, but it's up there a bit. Thanks for that info, Ill be keeping an eye on mine as well.