All the typical teats come back normal (ammonia, nitrite,nitrate) but the water stays cloudy no matter the water changed or not. The fish tank is a 72 bow front with 4 fish 2 Amazon tiger catfish both about 8 in. 1 armor catfish and 1 pleco. I know the tank is not over stocked or over feed. Any help would be great!! Thanks dave

Hi, I'd love to help you get your tank crystal clear. I've been in the hobby for many years and might be able to help you stabilize your tanks water.
First I will need to know a little more about the water, etc.
How long has your tank been set up?
How often and how much water do you change at a time?
What type filter system do you have running?
Has the filter cycled yet? And do you have filter media/ material like a bio-wheel for the beneficial bacteria to live in so that the nitrogen cycle or "biological cycle" is not destroyed with water changes & routine maintenance?
Could you test your water and give me the ppm readings for nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, Gh, & Kh along with the Ph and temperature of the water?
From the tap, do you have hard or soft water?
What do you use to condition the tanks water?
Do you add anything else to the water?
What kind of substrate are you using and is it planted with live plants?
What kind of food and how often and how much do you feed?
I know this is a lot of questions, but knowing this will help me determine why your water is cloudy and give you the correct advise on how to fix it.

Tank has been up for about 4 months.
I have been doing 75% water changes twice a week until this week went 25%.
I am running a fluval 205 with chem-pure in it and an emperor 400 with 2 bio wheels and a penguin bio wheel 350.
Nitrite-0ppm nitrate-10 ppm ammonia 0 ppm and as for gh and kh I have no clue what they mean. Water temp. 76-78 degrees F ph- 8.6

I have hard well water run through a whole house filter and have a water softener but bypass it when adding water. Should I fill with the softener on?

Water conditioner - api stess coat

Nothing else added

No live plants or wood.

Food-
Wardley essentials tropical flakes for the armor cat.

Ocean nutrition sinkable wafers for the tiger cats

I used to feed once a day but saw a lot of food left over so switched to once every other day

. Gh (hardness) and Kh (alkalinity) would have helped me determine how hard your water is and its buffering capacity - both give an idea about the levels of dissolved minerals and metals in the water such as calcium, limestone, iron and so on. Since your Ph is so very high, more than likely they are both high as well.
OK, there are a few thing that could be going on here. I forgot to ask the color of the cloudiness, I was assuming white or grayish??
Without knowing how your water is softened throughout the home, I can't tell you whether it would be safe to use. There a some that are safe for fish and some that can harm them. RO filters are the only ones I know that are safe.
Have your fish become accustom to the water? If your fish seem to thrive in the water and you don't notice an extra slimy type of film on them and if their eyes look good and clear, I wouldn't start changing the water chemistry. If they just seem to hang around or not eat... Then lowering the Ph by removing the metals and minerals of your water would be better for your fish. Or, if you get a white chalky ring around the water line, then removing the minerals would best (as that could be causing the cloudy water and could slowly kill your fish). I was told by a person once that if hard water is hard enough to destroy pipes, it was to hard to use in aquarium filters and would eventually kill fish. But, I don't know how true that is because I have very soft water.
Establishing a tank is not a quick process, but once it's done... it's done. And, as long as nothing happens to the biological filter (beneficial bacteria) within your filters biofiltration media such as the biowheels, all you will have to do is maintenance water changes to keep nitrates under 40ppm.
Since your water is reading 10 ppm nitrates, that means your tank has established the beneficial bacteria it needs to effectively clean and purify the toxins in the tanks water created by fish waste on its own. This is known as the "The biological filter" or "the nitrogen cycle", its byproducts come from 2 different bacterial colonies. The first bacteria converts Ammonia (toxic to fish) into nitrites (toxic to fish) which is then converted by a second bacteria into nitrates which are non toxic to fish if below 50 - 70ppm in fresh soft water (I like to keep mine below 40ppm because I add minerals to my tanks to harden the water and bring the Ph to 7.6) This number may be different for extremely hard water with a high Ph, I'm not sure...
You have an outstanding filtration system running. It's time to take the chem-pure out of your fuval - it absorbs the ammonia that is needed to keep the cycle healthy - start taking advantage of the good filters you have and let them do their job. It's important for the beneficial bacteria to build strong colonies inside the filters that are big enough to support the capacity of your tank. At this stage, doing large partial water changes is removing too much of the bacteria that has colonized in the substrate or anywhere else in the tank outside from the filters and the chem-pure is absorbing the ammonia and nitrites needed to keep the cycle going steady. This causes what is known as a "bacterial bloom" and the water will appear to have a white or grayish cloudiness to it. This bacteria must be allowed to gather and form colonies. As time passes, enough bacteria colonies will have formed inside the filters which protects them from being removed by water changes. As this happens, your water begins to clear as the bacteria set up home... lol funny but true.
Keep a close eye on the ammonia and nitrite levels after removing the chem-pure. If there is a spike in either one, dilute it with a 10% water change daily until the readings are back to 0ppm.
It may get even cloudier than it is now, before it gets better. If nitrites and ammonia both read 0ppm it's a bacteria bloom, just leave it alone and it clears on it's own (This was the hardest thing for me to realize when I began fish keeping, after tiring myself for months on water changes, I gave up and stopped messing with it, 4 weeks later my water was crystal clear - only till then was I a believer... LOL)
If you had soft water, I would say don't change it until it's crystal clear, but you have to worry about the ammonia and nitrites hurting the fish in hard water. So, please keep an eye on them after the chem-pure is removed.
Let me know how it goes for you. Any questions?

Kae, your aquarium know-how is impressive!

... and I've been an aquarium hobbyist my whole life and was even an aquarium maintenance technical advisor for 2 pet supply catalogues.

Thanks tre_cani :)

Hi Dave,
I'll have to answer your question here. Something's going on with the forum or my PC is being a brat, but I can't send messages...
So, you asked if I've used Nitromax and what I think about it...
I have not used that particular brand, however I have used Nutrafin's Cycle to speed up the process of cycling tanks and find it to be very good.
In the past I tried StressZime and it was useless, a few months later my tanks were full of annoying aquarium pests and I was left to wonder if the stressZime (live bacteria in a bottle) was to blame...