NOOB question = Cloudy Water during cycling

Are the powerheads stirring all the substrate up by any chance? Perhaps
they need to be repositioned?

The fact that the mollies are having babies leads me to believe that your
quality is good - fish dont usually have babies in bad water.

I dont think you have to worry about bioload - you would have loads of
ammonia etc. if it was upset...

~m


"Noah Body" wrote in message
...
Just a simple question... I am cycling a 15 gallon nano tank. For the
first couple of months, I just let it run without anything in it, and then
I added two mollies. But the water never has lost it's whitish,cloudy look
to the water. I have crushed coral for a substrate. Now that I have added
130 watts of proper Compact Floresent lighting to the tank, there is green
algae growing on the glass and bottom. I was told not to do a water change
becaues I will screw up the cycling process. What do you think is making
the water remain cloudy for these long months?
I don't have all the test kits yet, but I do have a ph and nitrate and
everything seems fine. One thing I have now is babies... the two mollies
have had babies... 15 are still alive. I'm also thinking that I should
remove the babies because that might be putting too much of a bioload on
the cycling tank, they are roughly 1 inch long now.
I have had tanks for years by the way, but all freshwater. I have an
80 gallon, 15 gallon and 1 gallon setup, but this is my first nano tank
setup, so untill I find out what is causing the cloudy water, I don't want
to add any coral yet.
If you have any idea as to what to check/change to remove the
cloudiness from my tank, please reply. thanks in advance.

Caper
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Thanks for the reply Mike. I have very little circulation simply
because I don't have anything in the tank to block the flow, so it's just an
AquaClear 150 with only the sponge in the media chamber, and a sponge on the
intake. I do notice that there is a fine, fine white gunk in the sponge,
which I assume was the fine's from the crushed coral. But I did rinse the
coral substrate untill it was almost clear, but the instructions said to
NOT wash untill the water ran clear. I own a diatom Filter, so I'm going to
run that for an hour and see if it clears it up. If it does then I know it's
a particulate problem and not effects of cycling.