Why does water in new tank treated with Cycle go through a 24-hr cloudy stage?

Cycle is a waste of your money and may be harmful to your situation. The bacteria in the product "cycle" is not the correct type for our tanks. If it happens to be alive when you buy it (slim chance) it will definately die soon after you put it in the tank. The bacteria it contains does eat ammonia if it is alive, but only until it dies off. The cloudiness could be any number things related to bacteria blooms and reactions in the tank. It probably isn't hurting anything really. The cloudiness could also be from the aloe in the "Stress coat" there are a lot of unneccessary ingredients in stress coat that claim to do things they can't do. If you use stress caot (I used to use it) then consider it nothing but a simple dechlorinator, and use it only at the minimum required dose for dechlorinating. The rest of what it claims is Bunk.

Lastly, given your situation and your fish constant monitoring for ammonia and nitrites will be needed. Light feeding will help (I'd skip every other day) and frequent water changes counteract rising levels of Ammonia and nitrite. If you can find the product "bio-Spira" it does contain the correct bacteria, and it may be helpful if the bottle has been handled properly and isn't too old. Even if you use it, you'll still want to test to make sure it worked. Otherwise water changes are they key . You are technically in a fishy cycle right now, but I think you are already aware of that.
dave

Like daveedka said--bacteria wise cycle is virtually useless. the onlt bottled or bagged bacteria worth buying seems to be BIOSpira. And, that is not 100% of the time.

For a water conditioner all you need is something to remove chlorine and chloramines. It never hurts to also have something to detox heavy metals. Usually the same product does both--you just have to increase dosing amount.

When you did the thorough cleaning of your tank and filter you most likely destroyed the colony of nitrifying bacteria. Your tank needs to go through the cycle all over again. Like Daveedka said, close monitoring of ammonia and nitrite are essential.

Given that you have fish you want to keep it complicates the matter a bit. You can go out and find BIOSpira which should solve your bacteria issue within a day or two.

You can use water changes to control ammonia, by default slowing the cycle--but saving your fish.

You can get ammolock or some like type product to convert the ammonia to less harmful ammonium. The beauty of this approach is that the nitrifying bactreria will feed off the ammonium so the "cycle" sshould not be slowed.

When you get to nitrites youcan once again use water changes--which slow the cycle. Or, you can utilize salt to offset te effect of nitrites on the hemoglobin of fish blood. Salt will help eliminate brown blood disease while not slowing the cycle.

The hazy cloud is also composed of bacteria other than that directly involved in the nitrogen cycle. It also contains aerobic heterotrophic bacteria that feeds off organics in the water column. Basically your "clean up" crew for the tank. It will grow to the level of nutrients in the water column then die off to a sustainable level.

While the bloom is happening it is always good to maintain good surface agitation and aeration of the water. The bacteria involved consume oxygen. Just like the fish. You do not want the fish to suffer any additional stress.

Good luck.

Just some comments for clarification:

For a water conditioner all you need is something to remove chlorine and chloramines. It never hurts to also have something to detox heavy metals. Usually the same product does both--you just have to increase dosing amount.

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Detoxing of heavy metals is largely inneffective, As long as they stay in the tank they will break back down and become heavy metals again. This is one of the claims that many products have that should be considered false.

You can use water changes to control ammonia, by default slowing the cycle--but saving your fish.

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Water changes do not slow the cycle. they will protect your fish without making any difference in how fast the bacteria estabilish.

When you get to nitrites youcan once again use water changes--which slow the cycle. Or, you can utilize salt to offset te effect of nitrites on the hemoglobin of fish blood. Salt will help eliminate brown blood disease while not slowing the cycle.

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Salt (or any form of CL) will help with nitrite poisoning, but since water changes don't effect cycle speed and you will most likely already be doing them to lower ammonia, salt should not be necessary.



As far as the substrate, dark substrates generally bring out the colors in most fish, and fish will definately change colors based on tank decor stress, dominance and several other factors.
Dave