Westyggx said:
Recently I noticed my water has become a little cloudy and it is nowhere near as clear as my friends planted tank. Please see below image. I'm wondering If it's my filtration system? Any ideas would be appreciated, I've looked into the overfeeding etc and it isn't because of that.
OK, had to study that image for quite a while to make any sense out of it since there was not enough data in the post.
Did you take that picture with the filter turned off and with CO2 off? I hope the answer is "yes" because unless it's an optical illusion, I can see white film on the surface and I can't see any rippling of the surface or bubbles from the diffuser. Is that long gray tube in the back that looks a bit cockeyed a spraybar? It also looks like there is an internal filter in the lower left corner. If the answers to these questions are also "yes" then is it a valid assumption that you are using both an internal filter
and an external canister + powerhead on this tank?
All this should have been clarified in the OP. That's because there are la couple of reasons for cloudy water that have little to do with filter media. For example;
1. Dosing certain trace mixes with hard tap water in tank can result in precipitates which cloud the water.
2. Uncontrolled ejection of lipids due to poor nutrition/CO2 can result in bacterial blooms that feed on these ejected products. These bacterial blooms are characterized by a milkiness. The poor nutrition could be caused either by poor nutrient dosing/poor CO2 injection rate or by poor flow/distribution.
It's unlikely that the tank would have been clear on day and then cloudy the next simply due to the need for more filter material. What has been the pattern of water clarity? Is the tank newly setup? Some sediments, such as clay based, naturally produce a lot of particulates even if initially washed, but this usually clears with time. In those cases additional media helps, but that photo doesn't look like a clay sediment. Even so, if you didn't do a good job of washing, and if the tank is young, fish digging in the sediment, or hands moving it around to rearrange plants and so forth might kick up particulates to cause the cloudiness.
Assuming the cloudiness was not due to disturbing the sediment, increased mechanical filtration may not be the answer. If the cause of the cloudiness is either chemical or biological, then stuffing your filter with additional material may actually lead to
more problems due to reduced flow.
In any case, if this is a particulate issue then adding more polishing media will definitely help, but if is not a mechanical issue, then you may continue to struggle with this. All I'm saying is that without more data regarding tank configuration, age of the setup, dosing practice, water type and so forth, we cannot assume one cause or another.
Cheers,
spot on