stoneydee
Aquarium Advice Freak
This is going to be a long one, but I need input. Before Christmas, I decided to convert a 37 FW tropical tank to a gold fish tank. There were only five tropical fish in the tank, it was cycled, and water parameters were consistently good, with ammonia readings of .50 or less. The substrate was combination sand/small gravel. Lights are on twelve hours a day.I decided to replace the substrate, since I like larger river rock for goldies' substrate so I don't have to worry about small gravel getting vacuumed up as they graze on the bottom. Since I didn't want to have cycle again, I replaced the substrate, half and half, over two weeks, tying a couple of good cupfuls of the old substrate in a pantihose to lay in the bottom of the tank. I continued to do my water changes. I kept fish in the tank during the process.
I kept the seed substrate in the tank for four weeks before I took it out. During that time, the water conditions in the tank stayed the same as they had been before. I adopted out two of the remaining fish in the tank, getting ready to move the other three to one of my tanks.
Then came the cloud, which has now lasted since the middle part of February. Water quality was still good (proving the water can look like crap and still be "good" water). It's not algae bloom, the algae conditions in this tank are the same. . . I scrape a little off the glass with each water change, mostly at the top where it's closest to the light. I moved the last three fish into another tank last Wednesday and turned off the light.
It's getting worse. . . do I break the tank down, clean it and refill (but keep the substrate and biofilter wet in tank water), or would a diatom filter help? My LFS has one, and the owner's told me if I needed to borrow it, I could.
And where did I screw up? The water in this tank has always been crystal clear (even when it needed a water change).
