unusual problem

I have been having problems with my water for a while and thought maybe one of you could shed some light on this for me.

I have a trigon 190 with internal filter and tetratec 1200 external. It houses 3 goldfish 1 weather loach and 9 frogs. Unfortunately my first fish (goldy) one of the goldfish wasted away and died on me, soon to be followed by a bigger goldfish and 1 large brown frog (sadly). The goldfish was scraped and a very small amount of whitespot was found but it looked like a secondary bacterial infection that liquified its insides. I have treated with salt, melafix, protizin, Azoo for gram positive and gram negative bacteria and Kasuri organics. Some improvement was seen with the melafix but it was short lived. I am now trying sterazin which I couldnt get for ages and cant see any major improvememnt.

I have changed water like it is going out of fashion all over a period of a few months. I have tested the water and all is normal. PH 6.8 Amonia 0 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 100 (which is normal). However, there is a smell off the water like organics and then the water went cloudy. I changed 100litres thinking this would help but it didnt. I thought then that I was after knocking out my filter. Nothing has been added to the tank for ages and the only live thing that I can think of that would have entered the tank was some meal worms and peas which were cooked and shelled.

I shut down the tank eventually and took everything out. I washed all the sponges and everything in the tank and started again with filter media from another tank and cycle. When I filled the tank back up again its still cloudy and the smell is back. I am now at a loss so any advice is welcomed.

Thanks

Nessa

Hi Goldy,
Did you test your tap water to make sure thats alright?

GB

goldy gerryberry is onto something, the council could have added something to the water supply thats affecting your tank..check it out with them

I had been testing it up until this week. I will test it again and let you know. So far though it has tested ok and the problem is an ongoing one. Any water that I leave to stand is clear and goes cloudy in the tank but again the cloudy is only recent.

will test and let you know thanks for the reply

Nessa

Im in north county dublin and have a similar issue. Started new 300lt tank with 50% RO and 50% tap water. After three days pH was 8 and the water goes cloudy. It also smells like organic matter. Dont know if it could be related. I assume with a pH of 6.8 your not in north county Dublin, but I think my problem is related to something that was in the tap water over the last week or two.

hi pugy

I am on the southside and the water here comes and goes especially in ph. it would be typical that i do a huge water change when the water is crap. I hope your problems didnt lead to loosing any fish. I will test teh tap water again. has your problem resolved itself yet

Hi goldy have same problem with my goldfish in smell is bad i did a water change last night . all test ok. but 2 weeks ago i had the cloud and smell i cleared out tank got another filter small mini and it has worked water is clear . when i test my tap water sometimes ph and amonia are a little high

Hope your fish and frogs ok ,

my frog attacked my bigfish had to get give him away
best of luck trish

goldy, I had no fish in it, was only cycling the tank. Started again:(

Oops, should have noticed, but my tank is tropical. Sorry.

The cloudy water recently good be an algae bloom caused by that thing we saw in the sky for a while recently... Think it was called the sun Can't see it today though..

My tank always has that 'organic' smell.
Those nitrates are very high though - 100 is huge!!

Thanks for the advice guys. The tank is in sunlight kind of so maybe an algae bloom. I have a 1200 external filter in it and the jewel internal running too so I am not sure about another filter but I am sure it cant hurt to try it out. Nitrates are usually quite high with this mix and always have been right from the start when they were all in a little plastic tank on the counter. The frog give off a lot of waste and now that they are bigger so has the waste...

Anyway I will hopefully have more time over the weekend to play with the tank again so I will try out all the suggestions and see if it makes any difference.

Thanks

hi nessa
when u say smells like organics, do u mean organic aqua or organic as in manure?
as both goldfish and frogs create a lot of waste i would reccomend regular smaller water changes 2/3 times a week rather than
the norm. the addition of polyfilter would also help to reduce the excessive nitrates and bacteria, which are probably causing the cloudy water.

hi dered

teh smell of organics is like leaves and things not quite manure. I have tested the water again and its fine ph 6.7 ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate is now down to 30 temperature is 23. I have tested the tap water and it is ph 6.8 ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 10 and it is clear. I have left some water sitting to see would it cloud over and it doesnt. When I change the water in the tank it remains cloudy although it looks like it is clearing a little bit.

I have just finished treating with sterazin so I will be doing another large change and then I will be changing small amounts over the next week to see will it clear up. One goldfish is showing black marks in the gills and on his body like he is bruissed but apart from that all is ok in the tank.

I figure that when the filters mature a bit more that hopefully they will start clearing the water up. Other than that I am mystified. By the way I have used the same tap water (treated) in other tanks and it has not gone cloudy just in that one tank???

thanks for the replies

nessa

Hi Nessa,

It appears to me that you have an algae bloom. Are you i=using the same tap water in the other tanks? Try some carbon in you filter and PClear. I was palgued with it during the first few moths as my tank is near the window. But by using the two mentioned it cleared it up nicely. BTW dont use the 2 at the same time. Put the PClear in and a few days later put in the carbon!!

Let us know how you get on.

I will try the carbon and see how that goes. I have never used PClear before. Hopefully it will sort it out. The goldfish that was showing the bruise like markings has healed up quite quickly so I think that my filters must be starting to work a lot better.

Thanks for the reply

Nessa

Nessa if the water is not clear by Mon/Tuesday give me a shout. I will give you a diatom filter to clear the water.

thanks for that. I have put the carbon in the filter so I will wait and see what happens. I will let you know