Why is my fish tank water still cloudy?!?

[Jessica L Spindler]

I just bought a 2.5 gallon tank for two African Dwarf Frogs yesterday. I did exactly as the pet store lady told me to get them properly acclimated. I wake up this morning and the tank is cloudy. I took a sample to the pet store this morning they tell me there is nothing wrong with the water, but the PH level is a little high. They give me API PH lower solution and to take out 20% of the water and replace it with new water. I did that around 10:30am. It's 8pm and the water is less cloudy, but still cloudy. I used Nutrafin Aqua Plus originally to clean the water to get them acclimated. The tank came with a filter system. I cleaned that properly before use along with the stones at the bottom and I don't see why it would still be cloudy. Now the API PH lower solution seems to be creating bubbles at the top of the tank. Not a lot though. There isn't much in the tank right now. Just pet store rocks and 2 hiding places for the frogs.

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Bill "deranged chipmunk" should be able to help you out.

[Mentat]

Do not use a pH adjuster in such a small tank! Daily changes in pH larger than 0.2 (scale is logarithmic) can cause a problem in the tank. Majority of pet shop employees are there to sell products and they will do so, even without knowing the whole story about them.

Your tank needs to cycle (grow a beneficial bacteria colony in the filter) and that will take around 30 days. Can use a product like Seachem Stability to reduce that to 2 weeks or so. In the meantime, please replace half the tank water daily with treated same temperature water to keep ammonia levels down.

Frogs excrete ammonia which becomes toxic to them (they are living in the water they pee). Bacteria will reduce that to nitrites which are half as bad. Then other bacteria will reduce nitrites to nitrates which is only bad to your frogs in high concentrations. Water changes take care of lowering nitrates. Once your biological filter is "cycled" you can do 25% weekly water changes. Then you rinse the filter's media with tank water during weekly water change. Also, do not replace all the media at the same time. You should alternate replacing the filter pad with the sintered glass media.

Your water is probably cloudy because of dust in gravel/stones or you overfed the frogs and got a bacterial bloom. It will not harm frogs, just let the filter mature, do water changes as described, and it will clear up soon. This site has good info on your frogs: Introduction to African Dwarf Frogs, good luck .

[deranged chipmunk]

hey Jess. Carlos pretty much covered the basics, but you never said what the pH reading was. are you in the city? or the suburbs? my pH in the city ranges between 6.4-7.0 depending on the season. also, what kind of filter?

i agree with carlos to never use chemicals to modify water parameters. to soften water, you can add peat to the filter. it does an excellent job softening water and lowering the pH.

as far as the bubbles go, can you take a pic of the tank and the bubbles? normally, if the bubbles are darker brown with black specks in it, it is from missed particles in the substrate.

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Carlos, I may have to start paging you now as well.

[deranged chipmunk]

Carlos, I may have to start paging you now as well.

not a bad idea. if i hadn't been chatting with another member on the phone today who told me about this thread, i may not have seen it for a couple days. i have been busy setting up a new forum and that's been taking up a lot of my time