API Root Tabs and Cloudiness

[AliSab]

Long story short, I have used root tabs for the first time. I only used one and buried it in the sand right at the root of my crypt. That was a couple of days ago. Now I've observed that the water is noticeably cloudy and, for what it's worth, one of my yoyo loaches seems to not be moving. When I left for work this morning it was between the glass and potted plant I haven't planted yet, and when I got home from work 12 hours later it was in the same spot. Don't know if is connected, but thought it was worth mentioning.

So as far as I know, the only difference is the root tab that I put in a couple of days ago. Last month I changed my substrate from gravel to sand. But... That was a month ago.

Overall, it's a 30 gallon planted tank with 6 otos, 6 rummynose tetra, 4 yoyo loach, and 1 rubber nose pleco. The filter is an aquaclear 50 and there is a bubbler.

Thanks!

 

[toolman]

The root tabs shouldn't be a problem, what are your water tests showing?

Many planted tanks have root tabs every 6" or less all around the tank.
What is your filtration, have you cleaned your filter lately?

A lot of times cloudiness is a bacterial bloom if white. If greenish can be green water (basically algae).

 

[AliSab]

The filter is an aquaclear 50 and is due for a new charcoal insert this weekend.

The cloudiness is white. If it is a bacterial bloom, how do I manage that? I did a partial water change earlier tonight and will do another one tomorrow, and plan on doing a 50% water change on Thursday because I'll be home from work and will be able to spend a bit more time on it.

 

[toolman]

Bacterial blooms will usually go away by themselves. Do you check your water, bacterial bloom usually occur in cycling tanks. You may be having a mini cycle, how often to you clean your filter. When you clean the filter just swish around in the bucket of water you just siphoned from your tank and put back in filter. Don't replace them until they fall apart. That's where your bacteria lives.

 

[AliSab]

The loach died

 

[AliSab]

Bacterial blooms will usually go away by themselves. Do you check your water, bacterial bloom usually occur in cycling tanks. You may be having a mini cycle, how often to you clean your filter. When you clean the filter just swish around in the bucket of water you just siphoned from your tank and put back in filter. Don't replace them until they fall apart. That's where your bacteria lives.

Yeah I was actually thinking about rinsing the media because I hate how gunky it gets.

The booklet that came with the filter said that charcoal to replace every month, the sponge every 3 months, and the top layer (which name escapes me atm) every 2 months. Should I throw the booklet in the trash?

 

[toolman]

Not quite that bad, but definitely don't change the ceramic pieces(forget their brand name) ever, unless they crumble to dust.
There's a bigger version of these that comes with canisters it's called biomax. Also don't change the sponge, just swish it and the ceramic media in water from water change before you toss the water then put them back in the filter. You just want to get any debris off. The sponge you can squeeze out pretty good, my water usually gets pretty nasty when I do this.

Most people with planted tanks don't use carbon in their tanks because it takes out nutrients the plants can use. I replaced the carbon with seachem Purigen, it does the same thing but it doesn't take out nutrients. Purigen is also reusable, there is a simple procedure to recharge it.

There are three types of filtration. Mechanical, chemical, &biological.

Mechanical is the sponge on the bottom, it removes any/most of the debris or dirt.

Chemical is the carbon or Purigen, that removes chemicals, smells, or medicine from the water. The only time I use carbon is to remove medicine. Purigen will remove tannins from water, if you have driftwood. That's why I like it.

Biological is the filter media that houses your beneficial bacteria. There are many different kinds, but what came with the filter is OK.

I believe you may have ammonia from changing your filter that caused your loach to get sick

 

[AliSab]

The top layer is the biomax that you were talking about. I'll look for the purigen, I plan on adding some driftwood as it is.

You're right about the ammonia, I just did a test and I'm waiting for it to develop buy already it's showing about 2ppm based on my test kit. Is that enough to make fish sick? Usually it is at 0 or .25 ppm.

 

[toolman]

Any ammonia and nitrites can be bad 0.25 is toxic to fish if not taken care of.

Seachem Prime detoxifies ammonia and nitrites below 1ppm.
Here is a good rule to follow..

If ammonia +nitrites =<1ppm dose prime per instructed on bottle.

If ammonia +nitrites are > 1ppm dose prime and do a 50% water change.

Either way prime detoxifies the water for 24hrs so retest in 24hrs.

It appears your tank is cycling because 2ppm is a lot. I would do a large water change (50%+, 75% if possible). If you have prime I would recommend using it, up to a x5 dose can be used in an emergency.

 

[AliSab]

I was able to do a 50% water change this morning before going to work, and I'll do it again tomorrow. Rinsed out the filter media too. Aquaclear has an ammonia insert that is supposed to pull ammonia from the water. I'd like to put that in my filter for the next few days.

I've never used prime before. I'll pick some up on my way home.

What would cause the tank to begin a cycle? The environment in the tank is about a year old and the only major change that was made was the substrate more than a month ago. The fish were in another tank for a few days while I made sure the water was stable for them. I haven't added a large number of fish in one go, and the only casualty I've had has been a rummy that came to me in poor condition already. I'm careful with feeding, never giving them more than they can manage. The loaches eat like little monsters so the substrate is pretty clean. Water changes are regular and devoid of drama.

 

[Potluck]

Don't use charcoal with plants, if anything use purigen, charcoal has be studied and does take nutrients out of the tank your plants need, purigen doesn't and is reusable (bleach dip, wouldn't know how though as I use nothing), as far as cloudiness as mentored you could of disturbed a pocket that was trapped under the sand. I believe sand needs to be disturbed every week so that it doesn't build up pockets not 100% sure though.

Holy mackerel that's a very high amount of ammonia, your tank is going through a cycle, what water conditioner do you use? Do a 20% water change do not touch the filters just straight water and treat the new water with PRIME, check water a couple hours later for ammonia. Check everything ammonia,nitrite, nitrate, pH.


Sorry for the loss of the loach but for future reference you should never have to do more than 30% weekly or bi weekly, filters should be cleaned about once a month depending on your bio load and only cleaned in fish water taken from the tank NEVER from the tap, also don't let media dry out, on an aquaclear 50 the ceramics are smaller (don't take them out) but honestly I would get a second aquaclear 50 and run 2 filters but on the second filter run biomax, I repeat as this is important so Not take the other media out of the current aquaclear 50.

 

[AliSab]

Okay so I get that it's going through a cycle but what I don't quite have figured out is why the cycle started. I'm going to get some prime tonight and if they also have purigen I'll grab that too. It's petsmart though, so if it's not there I'll go to my more reliable/preferred, albeit further, big al's.

 

[Potluck]

Carbon is really non essential except to remove meds after treatment, removing the carbon wouldn't of caused the tank to cycle, there's many things that can cause it to cycle, the more common ones are tap water changes as your tap water never stays the same really, another thing is no conditioner for the new water you put back into the tank, also filter cleaning in water that's not from the tank you removed it from.. example: if you took the media out and ran it under tap water you just washed all your beneficial bacteria off and or killed it which is what keeps the tank in balance, another thing is if you let the media dry out, I always put my media in fish water when doing a partial water change so it keeps it wet and the same temp as temp will also kill beneficial bacteria so I've heard not 100% on that, and sand as I've read further into it should only be stirred if plantless as if you stir it and disturb the anaerobic layer you can release hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) that could kill everything in the tank.

I do not run carbon or purigen or anything in my tank and my water is crystal clear, but my filters are also modified with filter floss

The last pic is after I rearranged everything and took out the fake plant, it's actually a blurry pic grrr didn't realize it lol

 

[Toad]

Just out of curiosity, what is the amount of charcoal vs other media? Because if there was more charcoal than ceramics or sponge it may have had more bacteria than the others, and that could crash the tank, especially with swapping all the substrate too.

 

[AliSab]

Just out of curiosity, what is the amount of charcoal vs other media? Because if there was more charcoal than ceramics or sponge it may have had more bacteria than the others, and that could crash the tank, especially with swapping all the substrate too.

1/3 charcoal, 1/3 biomax, 1/3 sponge. I removed the charcoal this morning.

 

[AliSab]

So I've just gotten home form work and the first thing I did was test it for ammonia. Good news is that it's decreased to .50 ppm after the water change this morning. Bad news is that I still have ammonia at .50 ppm...

I was able to pick up prime before getting home and have dosed the tank. I'll test it again in the morning.

The fish seem to be as active as they usually have been and the cloudiness has decreased substantially. I take that as a positive sign. I can only see two of my remaining loaches, so I'm hoping the third is just hiding somewhere and isn't *ahem* sleeping with the fishes.

@purigen your tank is beautiful and I hope that mine will also be as such once this little rough patch is over. Thank you for your advice.

 

[AliSab]

Also, before I forget, I was reading about bacterial blooms as toolman had suggested that was the cause of the cloudiness. What I read told me that these blooms can cause a big spike in ammonia, and because now I strongly suspect this may be behind the ammonia levels my next research topic will be what causes a bacterial bloom and if anything I have done fits in with those specifications.

In other news, I'm chucking the ammonia alert tag I have in my tank. It failed spectacularly.

 

[Potluck]

I'm glad it came down and that the ammonia is at 0.5 ppm the prime will lock that and make it unharmful to the fish it turns it into ammonium wich is way less harmful, prime is the best water conditioner out there hands down, if you do pwc's with a bucket you only treat the amount of water your putting back into the Tank for example you do a 10 gallon pwc you use 1-1.5 ml of prime treating the water in the bucket before you put it in the tank , I always go half a ml over. Ty for the compliment on the tank is still a work in progress

 

[toolman]

Glad to hear that your ammonia went down. Good job researching, nobody knows more about what's going on in your tank than you do. We all have an opinion but you are there and educating yourself is the best thing you can do. Then you can tell us what happened and we learn also while helping you. That's what this forum's all about.

 

[AliSab]

Okie dokie, so I just wanted to take some time to offer a quick update on what's going on.

I ran another ammonia test yesterday morning and it came at .25 ppm. So that seems to be decreasing.

Just for fun I decided to do a nitrate and nitrite test. Nitrite is at 2 ppm and nitrate is at 10 ppm. I'm not too concerned about the nitrate because my understanding is that it is beneficial to the plants. But it would seem that the tank is indeed cycling and possibly nearing the end of the cycle (I'm hoping anyhow).

Now, I also have a 10 gallon planted with a similar set up that I've had for approximately 3 months. I let it run fishless for a few weeks, continuously testing the water until I was satisfied that the ammonia and other levels of the tank were stable. That tank became the permanent home to 4 false jullis, 5 cpd, 5 small assorted snails, and 5 cherry shrimp. I noticed a bit of cloudiness a few days ago, around the same time that I noticed it in my main tank. So, again for fun, I tested this tank in the evening of the first day this thread was started. What do you know, there was ammonia in spades. Cue emergency water change, a dosage of prime, and a removal of one dead shrimp.

With this tank, I realised the problem was over feeding. Foolishly I had entrusted the feeding of these fish to my sister while I was at work and had specified the amount to put in the small tank, but she had other plans and decided to put more. She is no longer feeding them. To add insult to injury, she doesn't understand why I'm upset about one dead shrimp. Anyway.

I've dosed both tanks again with prime, as I had read that it loses effect after appx 48 hours. I've also introduced purigen to my main tank and will be putting it in my 10 gallon as well.

I had also found a very helpful thread about cycling with fish that I will post the link to for others to read (link below).

Thanks everyone for all your help and advice!

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f12/fish-in-cycling-step-over-into-the-dark-side-176446.html