I don't think anyone is messing with you that has responded in any of your topics. It can be difficult sometimes to troubleshoot a new tank set up or for that matter any questions regarding problems.
Thanks Dudley; it's just extremely difficult to make out someone's intentions when we're discussing things via an online forum (and I've been burned before by characters who were purposely trying to mislead me with certain suggestions because...well...they either thought it was funny or because they simply could...and this has happened on several sites dabbling in a variety of hobbies, not just aquaria).
I just wanted Loach and others to know that even if the intention was to poke fun at me and mislead with conflicting information, my primary concern was the fish...so I was hoping folks could just understand and appreciate that, whatever they thought of me personally. As it stands, I'm getting different input from the folks here and, for example, the Seachem rep, and I don't know what's right or wrong.
I do remember you saying that you had to clean some filter media because it was all gunked up which may mean that the fish are missing some of the food and it is getting caught in the filter. I would not expect needing to clean filter media on a tank that is only a month or so old.
Yes -- and this was WITH having a prefilter on the AquaClear 110.
I must have been overfeeding, or the fish were producing an abundance of waste -- but when I rinsed out the media in the AquaClear -- that is, the sponge, filter floss and bio rings -- in dechlorinated water, it was pretty disgusting. I was shocked myself to see what had been trapped in there. The Seachem rep told me this could have been contributing to the ammonia traces that continue to this day...
Anyway, I have since taken the prefilter off the 110 because it seemed like there was a bunch of solid waste floating around that wasn't getting sucked up by the filter's intake, obviously (because it was covered by the prefilter).
It is possible that the ammonia reading you are seeing is benign as some people always seem to have a low reading in their tank. Consider buying a Seachem Ammonia Alert to place in your tank which shows dangerous level of ammonia.
Yeah, I can't seem to kick this low level of ammonia, a month in -- it ALWAYS seems to read somewhere between 0.25 and 0.50 ppm, based on the API test kit chart, which equates to a light green color.
Do you see in the picture where the second color box in the ammonia column is a kind of really light green? Our test ALWAYS comes back as a color somewhere between that 0.25 and the 0.50 box below it...
Now, it is definitely a good thing that the ammonia isn't higher -- but I am concerned that this level NEVER went any higher during the cycling phase. Isn't it SUPPOSED to? It's almost like everything has stalled in the cycle, as the numbers just aren't moving. And I cannot explain why I have NO nitrites since almost the beginning (this test only changed ONCE during this month I'm set up, where it went into the very light purple color region, the 0.25 ppm reading).
What color is the haze you are seeing in your tank? It may be helpful to take a large sample in a clean clear glass if you can't tell in the tank. A whitish or gray color is usually a bacteria bloom where as greenish is usually algae related.
Indeed, I understand the differences between the haze colors; this is definitely not an algae bloom -- it's a gray-ish haze, but it's been going in and out in terms of intensity.
Now don't get me wrong -- the tank is NOT hazed over to the point that you can't see the fish, plants or decor like some setups experience. We actually never had a bloom that bad. It's just that the water went from crystal clear over the first couple of weeks to cloudy and hazy, and never really cleared up 100-percent since then.
Here's what the tank looked like the other night (we snapped a pic to send to Seachem); it doesn't look bad, at all, in it, but there's definitely a haze in there that keeps it from being 100-percent polished-looking:
Now THIS pic from the side shows more of what I'm talking about: