Tank problem

DonSke

Hi,

I have a 1000L tank. Its my first tank (it was in the house I bought) and I have been runnnig it for a year with about 60 young tropical fish. All was going well. I have a EHEIM professionel II thermofilter unit that has been working well and I have been taking resonably good care to have adequate water exchange etc.
Lost a few fish recently and on advice put a carbon filter in for a week. Also been changing the filter pad ever week for last month. However tank is now very cloudy with millions of tiny particles that I suspect are passing right through the filter. It looks like milky water but I can see that its particulate matter. How can I get this sorted? Is there some coagulant I can use?
Thanks

godtabh

Sounds like a bacteria bloom. You shouldn't be changing you filter pads every week.

I change/clean mine every six months. Water changes are key

kylith

Are you completely changing your filter? If so, or if you're rinsing it in tap water, you would be losing your beneficial bacteria. The milky water could be a bacterial bloom as it tries to re-establish. You should only rinse your filter in tank water.

DonSke

As I understand it the other 3 filter layers in the Enhim professional II is for bacterial support but the fine white filter at the top is for particulate matter filtration only and should be changed often. Perhaps Ive been doing it wrong? I dont change the ohter media, only rince it. However I rince it with tap water........could the clorine in the tap watre be upsetting the bacteria???

Silverfish

Yes, the chlorine in the water will kill off some bacteria, so if you're rinsing it regularly, your tank is probably trying to cycle again. This is extremely dangerous for fish.

When you do a water change, rinse out the media in the dirty tank water - I only rinse mine out once every 6 weeks or so.

The fine white filter floss I'd change weekly, but that's because I keep goldfish and its just completely manky.

You probably need to step up the water changes by a lot for the next while to reduce the toxins in the water. I had to do this once, daily water changes of 25%. Dunno how you'd manage that with a 1000L tank.

Get yourself an API or Nutrafin test kit and test the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels. You want the ammonia and nitrites at 0ppm, and the nitrates under 20ppm.

Alkers

DonSke wrote: »

As I understand it the other 3 filter layers in the Enhim professional II is for bacterial support but the fine white filter at the top is for particulate matter filtration only and should be changed often. Perhaps Ive been doing it wrong? I dont change the ohter media, only rince it. However I rince it with tap water........could the clorine in the tap watre be upsetting the bacteria???

You don't need to rinse out the filter media. Every week do a 10% water change, or 20% every fortnight, replacing the water you take out by a slightly larger amount of tapwater (as close to tankwater temp as you can manage and you need to treat it to remove the chlorine etc.) If there is a very thin and fine sponge in the filter - I suspect this is to remove any fine particles in the water and not for bacteria, they say to replace these with every water change but you can wash them out under a powerful tap and get much more mileage out of them. You only need to go near the larger sponges (for bacteria) in your filter occasionally (squeezing them out old tank water when doing a water change), so only do this if you notice a reduction in the filter flow or else if you have more than one sponge in the filter you could squeeze them out one at a time every month or so.
Do not use neat tapwater to clean the bacterial sponges.
You will probably have to cycle the tank again now but once you get it up and running, it isn't much work to do the weekly water change (1,000L is a lot though!)

DonSke

Thanks All,

I'll do as suggested and let you know in a month how it went. I'll try to put up a before and after pic and in the meantime move my fish into a 100L quarantine tank I have running.

Regards

kylith

Is your QT tank cycled? If not then you'll havethe same problem with that.