hi,
I have just brought a new tank for my fish as the old one was looking very crampt, i have got a 16 Gallon tank for my 3 old fish and 1 new fish. I was told by the guy at the pet shop to setup my tank then leave it a week befor introducing the fish. However about 4 days into the week it started to go clody and has been going even cloudier since i introducded my old fish and the 1 new fish yesterday when it was cloudy becuase i have been told by the pet shop that its just bacteria and it wont harm the fish. Anyway this morning i looked in the tank and it so cloudy i cant even see the big black filter at the side of the tankor the plants at the back. the fish seem ok but i have noticed that they come upto the top and gulp in air every now and again. The only thing that i can think of that could be slightly wrong with the setup of the tank is that i used coloured stones that are red i did get these from the pet shop and did wash them thoughly.

I really wanna know will this clear upand if so when. Please can you offer any help asap.

Dan

Hey there and welcome to the board!

The cloudiness is due to your tank cycling. On the left side of the page is a
spot called "Cycle of the tank" which explains what is going on. To alleviate
some of the cloudy look, you can do a partial water change-20-30% of the
tank water. When replacing the water make sure to have the new water close
in temperature to the current tank water. (use your fingers to tell) When
adding new water make sure to use a dechlorinator. This removes chlorine,
chloromine and other heavy metals contained in water.

If you have any more questions feel free to post away.

it looks very clodu now u can only see 2 or 3 inches in the tank i cant even see the back of the tank i will try a partial water changed now.

You are going the right way here, just have patience. PM is right, water changes is the only way to assist the building of your bacteria at this stage. Anything else will just disturb this process and prolong it. The cloudiness might be there for a while, but eventually, like a snip with your fingers, you will suddenly see a big improvement.
I killed my total population of dalmatian mollies a few years back when the water turned cloudy on me, and I paniced and gave them a 100% water change....

If you wonna help it along a bit, try to find additional filter media that you can put into your filter. There is floss around, that you can either get at the pet store or a craft store. Its that white stuff that you fill pillows with....

weird, my tank never became cloudy when cycling. it did get cloudy back in college and I had assumed their water was bad. Next semester I brought my own water and no probs