I bought a 20 gallon filter system and a 5 gallon fish tank how long dose it take to make it clear?

Question

I bought a 20 gallon filter system and a 5 gallon fish tank how long dose it take to make it clear?

Answer 1

http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/biolog...

Here is a good place to start.  Over filtering is as bad as underfiltering a tank.

Unless your 20 gallon filter can be turned down, it is going to over filter your tank.

Your tank is going thru a bacterial bloom right now.  What is happening is the beneficial bacteria are growing causing the water to look cloudy.  Depending on where you are in a cycle, if you added fish will depend on when it will clear.  Bacterial blooms happen where there is a disturbance in the biofilter.  Running excessive filtration won't clear it up.  It needs to establish on its own.  this could take a day or it could take a week.  Depending on your particular tank.  No worries, the bloom will settle and the water will clear.

Answer 2

this would depend on the status of your cycle since the tank is cloudy I am betting that it is going thru the cycle process which the filter can not clear up it will happen once the tank has finished building up the needed bacteria it needs I think you should check your water conditions for ammonia and nitrite's during the cycle they will get quite high causeing the tank to get cloudy once they drop back to 0 the tank will clear up

Answer 3

Your tank will be fine by morning.  You have 4x the filtration needed on the tank, which should be okay.  

Answer 4

about an hour or two, But I would STRONGLY recommend a smaller filter for a smaller tank...

Answer 5

well first off, you should have bought the appropriate filter system for your tank. but it should only take about an hour or so, but you make want to purchase a smaller filter. they provide different size filters for a reason!

=]

Answer 6

Your tank still has to cycle.  Once that is done it will clear up.  Beware of what ish you put in there though...the filter you have may cause a lot of turbulance and churn the water a lot...That is a big filter for such a small tank...I think it's great for filtration...but make sure you get a couple of fish that like fast water and dont need slow water or a less active tank.

Best of Luck!