Cloudy tank won't clear up

To me yellow/green indicates an algae bloom not bacteria. The slime also says algae to me. I know when my pond goes through green water the surfaces are SUPER slick. Green water algae loves ammonia and is quite good at removing it so your tank is actually trying to save itself naturally.

Could a nerite snail have died without you noticing? They do die sometimes just from getting stuck on their back. Take your marimo ball out and squeeze it in a bucket with tank water, it COULD be so dirty that it caused an ammonia spike but unlikely. You should squeeze out your marimo ball as part of your maintenance btw, maybe once a month or so.

Instead of swapping out the media just add some more that you know is cycled, even if you temporarily have to add a second filter.

I'd suggest using prime to lock up the ammonia, to protect your critters and possibly starve the algae (I am unsure about that though because I know the ammonia is still accessible to the nitrifying bacteria when prime is used). And/or adding some (lots actually) fast growing floating plants. Floating in particular cause they do double duty pulling out nutrients (and have access to atmospheric CO2) and blocking some light. Fast growing stems can be floated as well like wisteria, pennywort, hornwort etc. And even if it is bacterial this method will help.
 
Oh yeah, during the week before you added the Betta how did you provide ammonia for the bacteria?
 
myswtsins said:
To me yellow/green indicates an algae bloom not bacteria. The slime also says algae to me. I know when my pond goes through green water the surfaces are SUPER slick. Green water algae loves ammonia and is quite good at removing it so your tank is actually trying to save itself naturally.

Could a nerite snail have died without you noticing? They do die sometimes just from getting stuck on their back. Take your marimo ball out and squeeze it in a bucket with tank water, it COULD be so dirty that it caused an ammonia spike but unlikely. You should squeeze out your marimo ball as part of your maintenance btw, maybe once a month or so.

Instead of swapping out the media just add some more that you know is cycled, even if you temporarily have to add a second filter.

I'd suggest using prime to lock up the ammonia, to protect your critters and possibly starve the algae (I am unsure about that though because I know the ammonia is still accessible to the nitrifying bacteria when prime is used). And/or adding some (lots actually) fast growing floating plants. Floating in particular cause they do double duty pulling out nutrients (and have access to atmospheric CO2) and blocking some light. Fast growing stems can be floated as well like wisteria, pennywort, hornwort etc. And even if it is bacterial this method will help.
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Alright, i searched the tank and all 3 snails are accounted for and alive, did a water change and scrunched out the moss ball. I did notice that many of the leafy plants in here are filled with holes even though they're all still green. Can decaying plants cause an ammonia spike? I know that there were springtails, detritus worms and copepods at one point, all before the tank got cloudy (though i still see the copepods that my betta snacks on). Could they have any effect on this at all?

Lucky for me i have enough wisteria to last a lifetime as well as a bunch of what i believe is red hornwart (i still don't know what it is exactly but it looks just like it and grows super fast.). So i'll float some of those in here like you suggested and put some prime in.

Oh and i used flakes and put a couple nerite snails i had already to serve as the source of ammonia before my betta.
 
Decaying plants can cause ammonia to increase but I find you need a fairly big die off of plant material to see an increase in ammonia.

I feel like that is a lot of "bugs" for such a young tank. But I have no theories on that.

Good luck, hope the extra media and floating plants do the trick for you! And remember the cloudiness is just a symptom, you're real issue here is the ammonia.
 
OrionGirl said:
Where did the plants come from to import that much microfauna?
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i got the plants from my lfs, which keeps all of their plants in a huge tank to display them. Rather than individual packaging with no water like you'd see at petsmart or something. When i first got the wisteria i saw the springtails but i thought they were baby shrimp at the time. So i thought, heck yeah, free shrimp! and put them in with the plants. I never noticed copepods or detritus worms in my 40 gallon, but it's also much bigger and harder to see little things like that.
I figured they're all harmless enough, and actually a bit beneficial in what i've read? My betta definitely loves hunting them down and snacking on them.
 
They're usually considered a pest, and while not bad, not really the sign of a maintained tank, particularly any sort of worm. Scuds and daphnea I can see, and springtails are pretty much every place...but either way, it's odd to import them in much volume without a specific effort to do so.

It makes me wonder what else was brought in. How were the plants in there? In pots? What kind of plants?
 
OrionGirl said:
They're usually considered a pest, and while not bad, not really the sign of a maintained tank, particularly any sort of worm. Scuds and daphnea I can see, and springtails are pretty much every place...but either way, it's odd to import them in much volume without a specific effort to do so.

It makes me wonder what else was brought in. How were the plants in there? In pots? What kind of plants?
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Some are in pots, things like carpet plants. or they come attached to driftwood and rocks already. otherwise the bigger ones are just in plant substrate as if they were in a normal tank.
 
It may have something to do with using plant substrate and dosing flourish twice per week. Is your sister's tank similar in this regard? Excess nutrients can feed bacteria and algae; and could be contributing to the bloom. I'm not sure you need twice weekly flourish (assuming this is flourish the fertilizer and not the carbon supplement) with a plant substrate.
 
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