Lekstil
- #1
Hi!
There's this observation that I've been consistently making in my aquarium, which is that whenever I feed less, the water becomes cloudy. To me that's kind of counterintuitive - if anything I would expect the opposite. It's a white kind of cloudyness, so I assume not algae, but bacteria? So I wonder if anyone has a theory about why this is the case.
A little bit of background: I have a 50 gallon tank, heavily planted, very few fish (~10 zebra danios). My initial goal for this tank was for it to be a no tech, super 'natural', self-sustained ecosystem and as low effort as possible, and at some point I was even hoping I wouldn't even have to feed at all and that the fish could just live off of little critters like daphnia and copepods that live in the aquarium. I experimented with having a "fenced off" area in the tank where the fish can't go and planted the tank so densely (i.e. creating hiding spots for critters) that I was hoping there would be a large enough population of live critters that I wouldn't have to feed. That never really was the case though and I always was feeding the fish at least once a week. For a really long time my tank water was always mildly cloudy.. not so much that it really bothered me, but it was noticeable, especially when looking at it from the side through the entire length of the tank. Some day I decided to feed the fish more often (every other day a cube of dried worms) and noticed that since then the water was crystal clear. I've had a couple of times when I noticed that when I was feeding less, the water became cloudy again, but the most extreme case was recently: I went on vacation and the day I left, the cleaning lady knocked the automatic feeder off of the aquarium, so the fish were without food for 2 weeks. When I came back, the fish were all still perfectly fine, but the water was crazy cloudy! I didn't do anything except start the regular feeding again and within a week the water was crystal clear again.
Does anyone have an explanation for why less food = cloudy water?
There's this observation that I've been consistently making in my aquarium, which is that whenever I feed less, the water becomes cloudy. To me that's kind of counterintuitive - if anything I would expect the opposite. It's a white kind of cloudyness, so I assume not algae, but bacteria? So I wonder if anyone has a theory about why this is the case.
A little bit of background: I have a 50 gallon tank, heavily planted, very few fish (~10 zebra danios). My initial goal for this tank was for it to be a no tech, super 'natural', self-sustained ecosystem and as low effort as possible, and at some point I was even hoping I wouldn't even have to feed at all and that the fish could just live off of little critters like daphnia and copepods that live in the aquarium. I experimented with having a "fenced off" area in the tank where the fish can't go and planted the tank so densely (i.e. creating hiding spots for critters) that I was hoping there would be a large enough population of live critters that I wouldn't have to feed. That never really was the case though and I always was feeding the fish at least once a week. For a really long time my tank water was always mildly cloudy.. not so much that it really bothered me, but it was noticeable, especially when looking at it from the side through the entire length of the tank. Some day I decided to feed the fish more often (every other day a cube of dried worms) and noticed that since then the water was crystal clear. I've had a couple of times when I noticed that when I was feeding less, the water became cloudy again, but the most extreme case was recently: I went on vacation and the day I left, the cleaning lady knocked the automatic feeder off of the aquarium, so the fish were without food for 2 weeks. When I came back, the fish were all still perfectly fine, but the water was crazy cloudy! I didn't do anything except start the regular feeding again and within a week the water was crystal clear again.
Does anyone have an explanation for why less food = cloudy water?
No filters, no media! But really 100% crystal clear water when I feed.