almost 60 days into cycle

liquafaction

liquafaction

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I am almost 60 days into my cycle. In the last 3 days, my water has gotten so cloudy that you almost cannot see through the water from fron to back (I think 20 inches). I have had spells of slighty cloudy, clear, slightly cloudy, clear............, and now I would say it looks like watered down milk. I did do a 20% water change about 9 days ago, because the amonia levels stayed at 4ppm for so long. I checked the day after the water change, and amonia levels were between 2 and 3 ppm. I checked the amonia last night, and amonia was at .50 ppm. I am still at .25 ppm on nitrites, and 0 on nitrates.

Is this normal for the water to be so cloudy?

Can I expect to see some changes hopefully in the next week?

I am still paranoid about my sand base. I did use playsand, but was not able to use either of the two brands recomended in here.

thanks for the info guys.
 
Is it cloudy because the sand got blown around perhaps? Otherwise it is just cloudy it could be a bacteria bloom, but it seems that after 60 days you should not be experiencing that.

The fact that the cycle took so long is also strange. I've never heard of more than 45 days.

Guy
 
My first cycle took every bit of 9 weeks. My water never got cloudy, though, aside from my first two bacteria blooms. Make sure your powerheads aren't stirring up too much sand, and if they are, aim them elsewhere.
 
the power heads are not srirring up any sand. This has me baffled, now my amonia levels are increaseing again, and the water is starting to clear up.
 
What do you have in the tank? I assume you are fishlessly cycling. If you added a new shrimp or some live rock anything like that, then that would account for the ammonia spike. What is the tank size?
 
The free-floating bacteria that cause cloudy water are not the same as the bacteria that are nitrifiers. They are not breaking down ammonia or nitrites, but are feeding on some other food source.

There is not predetermined time for a tank to reach the balance between bacteria populations and food sources. Due to the variables that differ between tanks (something as minor as pH, salinity, temp, etc) make it impossible to determine precisely why your tank is taking longer to cycle. It's possible that the pH has been shifting, which impairs the bacteria. If your tank has had temp spikes, this too could be causing problems.

Since you are not using an aragonite based sand, I would check the alkalinity and pH--make sure they are within range. If not, adding some buffer in the form of a baggie of crushed coral, or a product like kalkwasser may help. The nitrifiers are strongly influenced by pH, so keeping it stable is important.
 
I checked my ph after reading this last night, and it is way off scale...9.0 according to my test kit. I did not realize that ph was that important during a cycle, so I have not been keeping up with it. Where would I get a baggie of crushed coral, the LFS.

I have also had temp ranging lately from 79 to 84. I was under the impression that was O.K., so have not been trying to control that either.

When you say arogonite based sand does this not include play sand? I do not have the brown patches of (algae?) that a lot of you guys have in your pictures as of now.

Did I mess up? should I start over, or see what plays out?

I did do a fishless cycle (shrimp), and the tank is 100 gal.
 
Aragonite sand is calcium based, similar to crushed coral. As the pH dips, it dissolves the sand a bit, which buffers the tank and stabilizes the pH. There are quite a bit of studies that indicate high pH can inhibit the bacteria. Rather than adding pH, you may need to bring your pH down--8.0-8.4 is usually the target level for a SW tank. Check the levels of the water you use to make the SW, and if it's lower, do some water changes on the tank. Since you have such high levels of ammonia, this won't hurt the cycle process at all, and should help stabilize the pH enough to benefit the bacteria. Check the water you use for topoffs, as well. What salinity are you at?

Play sand other than Old Kastle and Southdown are usually silica based, which is inert at most pH levels (it will begin breaking down at extremely low pH <3.0).

Bacteria are like fish--their metabolism is temperature driven. Swings can inhibit thier production, and cooler temps will definitely slow them down. I'd aim to keep the tank around 78-80. It doesn't sound as though your temp has dropped enough to really cause a problem though, so focusing on the pH will probably be more productive.

I wouldn't start over--just tweak a bit to see if you can get the conditions right for happy bacteria. It's all about stability.
 
The ph of fresh tap water for me is 6.0

The needle of my hydrometer falls between 1.023 and 1.024

So if I get crushed coraline from my LFS, then this should help?

Thanks again for your help

Oh, and I used quickrete play sand, if this helps.

As a silica based sand, I wonder if you could use pool filter sand?
 
Crushed coral RAISES pH. Not what you need. I would try mixing up some saltwater, and testing it. With such a low tap water pH, the salt mix should just bring it up to the 8.1 area, maybe even lower. So, I would suspect that something within the tank--or any other chemicals in use?--is raising your pH to this level.
 
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