Cloudy Eyes

Question
I recently brought home two fish (who both passed away soon after I got them), my water has been very cloudy (i know it's ammonia) so about a day after I did a water change and added live bacteria that I picked up at the store. I noticed one of my black skirt tetra had a cloud over it's eye...it later died after I removed it from the tank (i guess the water was too cold) things were ok for about a day and then another fish (another black skirt) got this white cloudish look over it's eye, and today I noticed the fish that means the most to me a big angel fish I've had for about a year now, has come down with it as well. He looked fine for a few days so I didn't think he was sick and didn't put him in the hospital 10 gallon tank I set up.



I don't think it is pop-eye as I've seen that on some fish at the place I work at and the eye isn't bulging so much, it's white sort of like someone put a contact lense on the fish.  



My main tank is a 33 gallon. I took an extra 10 gallon I had around and set it up and moved the fish that were affected or possibly affected into the 10 gallon.



I have a huge gold gourami and an angel fish (who got the spots on his eye...they look different on him it's like 2 little circles on his eye rather than his whole eye) that mean the world to me. They didn't look sick so I left them in the 33 gallon. Tonight I moved the angel fish into the hospital tank. Do you have any idea what this could be on their eyes?



I started a treatment on the 10 gallon last night, it's a product called Maracyn it's a powder that has an antibiotic in it. Does this sound ok? and also do you think the bottled live bacteria I put in could be causing my fish to be sick?...



I'm going to do a water change on the 33 gallon tank tomorrow morning just incase it's something with the water even though the levels are testing perfect and it's clear.



I brought some fish home tonight, and put them in with the big gourami as he doesn't appear to be sick neither do they. The hospital tank is on it's second night of the treatment.  

Answer
Hi Krista
First, don't add anymore fish to the tank for awhile.  In fact, it might be best to return the fish you just bought, and just wait until you get the ammonia cleared up and the fish are healthy again.  You don't mention why there's ammonia present, if it's a newly set up tank, then it's going through the cycle process-so the ammonia/cloudy water is normal.  If it's an established tank, then there shouldn't be any ammonia present in the tank, so it's either overstocked, there's not enough water changes being done, and/or something killed off the beneficial bacteria in the tank causing it to go through another cycle.  
What kind of test kit are you using?  If it's one of those dipstick kinds, they tend to not be as reliable as the liquid dropper kinds, and those dipstick ones seem to go bad rather quickly as well.

Now the fish with the eye problems can be one of two things.  First, if the water quality is poor, or if the ph is changing rapidly, that can cause all kinds of problems in the fish-including the appearance of cloudy eye.  
It also could be a bacterial infection, called cloudy eye.  
Hard to say exactly which you may be seeing in your fish, but both will show up in poor water quality, and making the water quality better is usually enough to allow the fish to heal themselves.  Sometimes if it progresses too far, the fish can lose site in one eye(or both if both are affected), but the fish can usually live just fine with one eye.  Maracyn is an antibiotic, it's erythromycin, which is usually used for treating gram positive bacterial infections.  But, most freshwater fish usually come down with gram negative infections....so, go ahead and use the meds, if you don't start seeing improvement, I would recommend going with Maracyn Two instead, which is geared towards gram negative infections.

Another possibility, since you mention something about small white circles, is eye flukes.  I don't have any experience with this, so can't help too much other then to give you a link to read through on it.  But, it's generally more common in pond fish or fish that are kept outdoors because of the different stages and other animals needed for the flukes to get around:
http://www.fish-disease.net/diseases/eye_flukes.php
But, without knowing where the fish were raised from, it is a possibility.  But, with the different fish coming down with it, I'd put money on either the water quality/ph differences or the bacterial infection, or both.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Christy