•Water in my new aquarium is cloudy. Should I empty it and start over?
If you’ve just set up an aquarium and you’ve got cloudy water, never fear. It’s perfectly natural!
Bacterial Bloom
As soon as you put fish
into your aquarium they begin to excrete waste in the form of ammonia.
This ammonia is toxic to the fish which is why we use biological filters
to remove it.
Biogical filters work by growing live bacteria that consume the
ammonia and turn it into a different substance that fish can tolerate.
These bacteria need the ammonia to grow and they need the special media
in the biological filters to settle onto.
Because new aquariums don’t have many live bacteria in the beginning,
the bacteria begin multiplying like crazy to consume the amount of
ammonia in the water. This is what causes the cloudy water, this
“bacterial bloom.” If this happens, don’t empty the aquarium because
that is just like starting over. Just wait a few days and the water
will become crystal clear as the bacteria settle into place.
J&M Aquatics and Pet Center 