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Why is it not good to do a 100% water change?

It tends to disrupt the balance of the tank, and can lead to a die-off of the beneficial bacteria.

What happens if the beneficial bacteria all die off. Sorry for the dumb question.

The bacteria convert ammonia into nitrites and nitrites into nitrates, so without them you would have a spike in ammonia levels.

Thank You!

-- You are trying to get the tank balanced and the start up or the bacteria getting out of balance causes the water to get cloudy. You will have to do 50% water changes until it clears up.

mikee, please either type the full name of the person you are replying to, or omit it entirely. I'm guessing you didn't catch that, but I had to take it out.

jen-o -- I do that with all my post unless the name is too short. Just my sign on -- Mi - ee

You can still do 100% water changes. I do them about once every 6 months. Just keep the biomedia in a bucket of tank water while you do the change. I've never had a problem cycling the tank this way.
Even Frankie's tank, which was 100% new tank, water, and even new filter media besides a handful of biomedia from Ralph's tank I had no trouble cycling.
The ammonia level never rose and I had no new tank syndrome But maybe I'm just lucky

I do 100% water changes as well. With larger tanks, this is rather infrequent (2-3 times a year, I think, but it depends on what water testing tells me). The smaller the tank, the more frequent the complete water change. (I try to change the water in 10-gallon tanks every week to week and a half.)

B-dog -- You are lucky. You must change it fairly quickly as the bacteria will die if you don't get it up and running ASAP. They don't last long if they are without oxygen and or circulation. You must have a large filter pump to get away with this. I have done it a few time without getting cloudy, but not often. A 50% change in the norm. M.

mikee wrote:-- You are trying to get the tank balanced and the start up or the bacteria getting out of balance causes the water to get cloudy. You will have to do 50% water changes until it clears up.

Whenever I do this it never seems to work. It gets worse, as far as the cloudiness. I can't figure out whats up with the balance in my tank.

I did a 50 percent change last night and today I come back from work and its soo cloudy I can't even see my turtles.

My water also has a terrible smell. I'm losing hope in my filter which is a XP4.

Petrucci_M3 - something's wrong. You shouldn't have to put up with a constantly cloudy tank. Unless the tank or filter is still relatively new. How long have they been up and running?

I have an XP4 as well. I wasn't having cloudiness problems, but the filter was stopping, so that might have something to do with your problem as well. I took out the fine filter pad, which was clogging the filter and causing it to stop. Maybe that would help? Just a suggestion.

Petrucci_M3- Do you have any bio media in the filter? If you don't have one already, get yourself a freshwater master test kit and see what's really going on with your water. We can help with interpreting the test results if you get confused (i found it quite confusing at first)