twice now in the past few weeks i have had tanks (re)cycle. i havent really seen, or at least realized, this before. when they presumably finished (presumably since i dont monitor the parameters) they went from very cloudy to crystal clear in about one day. i cleaned the jaguar cichlid's 55 gravel, and not realizing how close together i was doing this, switched filters, removed the whisper 40 and set up the whisper 60. it still had one whisper 60 going, so its not like i switched all the filtration. anyways the tank unsurprisingly got cloudy within a few days since there was no longer enough good bacteria for the bioload. it lasted a few weeks. one night i thought "it looks a liiitttle clearer". the next day it was clear. the 40 breeder turtle tank did the same thing. a part in the whisper 5 broke. so there was about a week between when it broke and when the part came in. i turned off the whisper 5 and set up a whisper 60. so all the good bacteria in the whisper 5 no longer affected the tank and dried up and died. the whisper 60 was sterile (no good bacteria already established) so most of the good bacteria in their was gone, except what was in the gravel (one reason for gravel). well that tank got cloudy from the lack of good bacteria and started to develop greenwater since the leaves are gone so more sunlight gets in the window and the tank might as well be up against the window as you all can see in the pics of it i think. well i added a dose of algaefix and that cleared up the greenwater that day. it was still cloudy from the cycling. well yesterday i looked at it and it was crystal clear. it is just surprising how a cycling tank can go from cloudy to crystal clear in one day once the cycle is finished. i just thought i would share that.

I've had similar experiences the few times I had tanks go cloudy from a growth of good bacteria in the water column. One day, it just stops and goes clear. Water changes don't seem to help. I did those and added good bacteria and a few times AccuClear but in the end, the tank cleared when it wanted to. It's been a few years since I've had that happen.

i dont agree with the advice a lot of people give about water changes and chemicals and all that type of stuff when cycling. if the ammonia is high but the fish are fine, the fish are fine. and ammonia is less toxic at lower pHs anyways, as i have heard. (that is right isnt it?) i have had the fastest cycles when i dont start doing water changes at the first sign of ammonia over 1.0, or nitrite spikes. im not saying you shouldnt monitor it (even though i dont) i just think cycling works a little better when you let the fish tell you when they are stressed. of course if they need it they are already stressed, but that may mean you put too many in to cycle the tank, which is a different problem that wont necessarily be helped with water changes and chemicals.

The few times I had high ammonia, I did lots of water changes and added good bacteria. I think once I used Ammo-Lock but I don't use that many chemicals in my tanks or ponds.

Ammonia is less toxic at a pH below 7.0 (neutral) or, in other words, in acidic water versus basic water (pH above 7.0).

In all but a few instances, I added so few fish at first that I never had ammonia problems. The main time I remember a problem is when I added 4 neon tetras and 4 dwarf cories to a 3 gallon tank all at once maybe 6 years ago(?). I did 50% water changes for months to get that under control. Even though the fish were dinky, there was too many for that size tank to start. I retired the 3 gallon as it was too much of a pain to clean.