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What to do when you overdosed your fish tank with Seachem Clarity

Seachem Clarity is used to make your cloudy, dirty or milky water look clearer by clumping together any free-floating microscopic particles into bigger clumps. These clumps will then be picked up by the mechanical filtration.

If you accidentally added too much of this solution in your tank water, then you can take a look at this guide at Aquarium Blueprints to see what you can do to make the aquarium safe again for your fish and other aquatic pets.

Quick Summary

While overdosing Seachem Clarity in your fish tank will most likely won’t cause any health issues, it may cause for fish to become more stressed.

If you see that your fish are acting more stressful, then we recommend doing a water change in proportion to how much you overdosed Clarity.

If, after a watch change, your tank water still appears to be cloudy or milky, then you should be able to safely use Clarity again. As long as you follow its recommended instructions, then you don’t have to worry about overdosing this solution.

How to tell if you overdosed Seachem Clarity

Overdosing Seachem Clarity should not cause any major health issues for your fish. With that said, your pet fish may become more stressed if you added way too much of the solution.

For the uninformed, Seachem recommends that you use 5 mL (which is a capful) of Clarity for every 20 gallons or 80 liters of your tank water volume.

We recommend that you look for the following signs of stress to see whether or not you should take action after overdosing your tank with the product:

  • Head or body twitching
  • Gasping for air, especially on the water surface
  • Suddenly darting all over the tank without being provoked

How to make your tank safe again after overdosing with Seachem Clarity

If your fish or other aquatic pets seem more stressed after your overdosed Clarity, then we recommend that you take the following steps:

1. The first step we recommend taking is to do a water change.

If you only overdosed Seachem Clarity by a little amount, then you only need to swap out a small percentage of taker. For a severe overdosed, try to swap out as much of the tank water as possible.

2. When removing water from your fish tank, we also recommend rinsing your filter media with the water you removed from the tank.

3. Next, you need to add new water back into your tank.

If you are adding back in tap water, then you should use an aquarium water conditioner so that it can remove chlorine and chloramine. Otherwise, these two chemical compounds will end up causing more issues in your tank as both can harm for aquatic pets as well as the beneficial bacteria you have for your biological filtration.

4. If your tank water remains cloudy or milky, then you should be able to use Clarity safely again after 24 hours. This time, make sure you dose the recommended amount.