Cloudy Water Issue..

MEAlston wrote,
I've had the tank setup for 16 days now....
This pm (when I turned on the hood lamps) I noticed the
water was very cloudy. .....

A cloudy milky white color would be a bacterial bloom - your tank is
cycling. Cycling (nitrogen cycle) is the biological process that turns
fish waste and uneaten foods (ammonia) into nitrite and nitrite into
nitrAte. ((Nitrosomonas bacteria eat oxidize ammonia (uneaten foods and
fish waste) with the by product, nitrite. Nitrobacter bacteria consume
nitrite - end product is nitrAte, which is removed by weekly water
changes)). What your seeing is the population explosion of the
bacterias - harmless and will go away as soon as the bacteria colonies
"catch-up" to the food within the tank.

The tank was setup
using Hagen's Cycle....

Waste of money - tank would have cycled without the use of Cycle just
as fast as with it!

I don't have the vortex
diatom unit ordered yet.......

If the water is turnning a cloudy green in color, it's an algae bloom -
your seeing the algae spores. Green water is due to very high plant
nutrients within the water and too much light or direct sunlite. It can
be filtered out with a diatom filter or micron cartridge filter, or
killed with an ultraviolet sterilizer......... Frank

my fish bowl appear to be cycling! i just got home from work and
noticed the fish bowl is VERY cloudy so did a water test:

ammonia 0.25
nitrate 0.25
nitrite 5

think it's because I washed everything out in hot water yesterday...but
didn't think it was cycled in the first place. Going to do a 50% water
change now to bring the ammonia and nitrate down and more tomorrow if
nesscary.