Hi fellas and ladies, been a while since I posted. Last post I had was about one of my oscars having HITH ( www.oscarfishlover.com/oscar-fish-advice...h/68782-is-this-hith ). For reference, the HITH is about 99% cleared up with just a tiny spot that should be gone within a couple of weeks. My problem is that my tank WILL NOT stop being cloudy no matter what I try. Nor for all of my tank information. It is a 75 gallon with 2 5-6" oscars and one 5" pleco. I feed the pleco a few algae wafers daily and the oscars some Cichlid gold and switch daily between freeze dried crickets, grasshoppers, and krill. For filtration I have a Bio Wheel emporer 280 with just filter pad so there is no carbon, a marineland H.O.T. magnum 250 with the filter pad and Hagen pre cleaner pellets in the media container, a Fluval 305 with filter pads and one tray of Hagen pre cleaner pellets and 2 trays of bio balls, and an undergravel with 2 aquaclear 70 powerheads running in reverse. All filters are cleaned with intervals of 1 each week. The tank contains absolutely zero carbon. For aeration I use 2 marineland powerheads with the air hose. My parameters never change no matter when the water is cloudy or after a fresh water change, they are: ammonia 0, ph 7.6, nitrites 0, nitrates very little to 0, gh is good, and the only one that throws me off is kh is sky high it always had been and i dont know why. I religiously do a 50% water change once weekly but lately have been doing 2 because of the cloudy water. Sorry about the book I just wrote but I think I got all the info in there. So my main question is: Why is my water always cloudy? Any help is greatly appreciated and thank you in advance for your help.

Your water is cloudy because you are having bacteria blooms. Clean your filters half as much and only do a 30% water change a week.

you may not have to even clean your filter that often. Use your test kit. Keep ammonia at 0 and Nitrite at 0, then keep your Nirate at 40ppm or less.

You are seeing the cloudy water because your bacteria is being disturbed too often.

Hope this helps.

Ok I will do that I really appreciate it. I guess I just got so used to cleaning that often to make sure to rid my tiger of his hith. Thanks again for the help.

a high KH is fine, it means you will always have a very stable PH. a good thing. are you sure ammonia/nitrites are 0. thats my first thought with cloudy water.

Sounds like a bacteria bloom, to remove add soemthing like filter aid- it clumps the free bacteria that then get picked up by the filter, this will get rid of the cloudy water but will not solve the cause. I also suspect over cleaning of the filter is probably the reason. Are you using test strips to tes the water? Can you get the water check at a LFS to check your tester is working ok