Cool thanks...and thanks for the link to that website too...i'll put it on order soon as i get paid again...just finished my last car payment so i'm tapped right now...i'll let you all know what my numbers are tomorrow night from the pet store. Thanks again for all the help...talk to ya tomorrow.
Cloudy Water
- Thread starter FishNthings
- Start date
Okk....no clue what any of this means...but i know my ph is low, here are the numbers i got tonight... Ammonia .25ppm, nitrite 0ppm, nitrate 40ppm, alkalinity 40-80ppm, ph is around 5.8. I've gone through a entire bottle of "proper ph 7.0" for the past year and it hasnt changed a thing...its been 6.6 down to where its at now, but i asked if any of these numbers would cause cloudy water and he said no....so what do you all think? Its getting cloudier by the day and i just did a water change and cleaned my filter last saturday. Any ideas? ive been dealing w/ this on off cloudyness for a year now.
IMHO id stop using proper ph and deal with the ph your tap is.(maybe its the proper ph stuff thats clouding your tank) also if it was me i would keep doing water changes daily or every other day until i got a 0.0 reading for ammonia and nitrite. i think your nitrate reading is to high, i keep mine under 10ppm. then once your readings are up to par maybe your water will clear up.
If your tank was completely cycled you would have o ammonia, o nitrite, and some nitraters. You said you clean your filter, how do you clean your filter? If the coagualnt stuff you put in your tank makes the water clear, then there may be something in your tank giving off particles. What is your cave made of? What kind of substrate do you have? Unless you are doing soemthing when you clean your tank to cause a bacterial bloom, which is a possibility since you do have ammonia in your tank water, it is possibly one of your tank decrations or your substrate giving off particles. Could it be algae, your nitrates are kind of high, not in the danger level but still high. Seeing how the clear right stuff, or whatever the name was it is a coagulant, worked I would kind of lean moer toward the free floating particles in your water.
One thing to add about using ph up, as the poster before me said stop using it, and i would never use it agin. The fish will acclimate to whatever your ph is, its better for it to be low and stable, than to be fluctuating all the time. If you must have a ph of 7 use seachems neutral regulator, it has buffers in it to buffer your water so it can maintain a stable ph of 7. You just put in in the water until you reach 7 and then when you do watr cahnges add the amt the bottel says to each gallon you put back.
One thing to add about using ph up, as the poster before me said stop using it, and i would never use it agin. The fish will acclimate to whatever your ph is, its better for it to be low and stable, than to be fluctuating all the time. If you must have a ph of 7 use seachems neutral regulator, it has buffers in it to buffer your water so it can maintain a stable ph of 7. You just put in in the water until you reach 7 and then when you do watr cahnges add the amt the bottel says to each gallon you put back.
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hi this may help I had a similar problem with my water also. It was the gravel I was using. It was constantly grinding it self up. Painted gravel helps fix this.
Gravel i have is painted, the rest of the decorations in the tank i have the same exact stuff in my 10 gallon, only thing different in my 30 is the ship wreck, which is plastic. As for cleaning my filter, i dont use anything other than the old tank water i siphen out. I have the original bag of charcoal in the filter so i will try that, although i thought that was only to help take the smell away, but i will try it today..other than that, i will stop using the ph stuff, even though i did already think of that and i stopped using it as one of my troubleshooting ideas, and for 3 months it still didnt make a difference. How do you all go about getting the rest of the numbers that should be at zero down? Thanks again for the help.
I just treated the water before bed last night w/ "accurel" droplets, said to use two to three drops per gal. so i did 2 per gallon, this morning, crystal clear. Does this change anything i should be considering, the bottle says to use weekly to keep the tank clear but i dont want to use chemicals all the time, i shouldnt have to. ANy other ideas?
What's listed for the ingredients in the Accurel?
You say your 10 gallon is clear. Maybe the 30 gallon doesn’t have an established population of planktonic life, which all help to keep water clear. (Jungle’s Clear Water contains potassium permanganate, that could have had an effect on your biological filter or such plankton, although it is in a dilute form, so I’m not sure, but it is used to disinfect plants.)
How about hovering a gravel vac over the gravel of the 10 gallon and siphoning out a couple cups of water – not a regular gravel vacuuming where you get dirty crud, but just a bit of floc that would contain happy things like protists and copepods, etc. Maybe this would start a colony in the 30 that would help keep it clear.
You say your 10 gallon is clear. Maybe the 30 gallon doesn’t have an established population of planktonic life, which all help to keep water clear. (Jungle’s Clear Water contains potassium permanganate, that could have had an effect on your biological filter or such plankton, although it is in a dilute form, so I’m not sure, but it is used to disinfect plants.)
How about hovering a gravel vac over the gravel of the 10 gallon and siphoning out a couple cups of water – not a regular gravel vacuuming where you get dirty crud, but just a bit of floc that would contain happy things like protists and copepods, etc. Maybe this would start a colony in the 30 that would help keep it clear.
FishNthings said:
I'd go without the Accurel for a couple of weeks and keep the charcoal, just to see if the tanks stay clear by itself. I use charcoal all the time and my tanks stay crystal clear. One benefit of using charcoal is it give the bacterial another place to colonize.
N.
