Bizzare cloud??

[jadesabre]

Well after asking all of my friends that know fish, a couple of professors, and some of the oh-so-not-well-informed employees of Petco and Petsmart, one of my friends recommended that I ask here.

First off I have a 29 gallon freshwater tank, with three buenos aries tetras, two cherry barbs, two serpae tetras, two lemon tetras, one pleco (who has died since the beginning of this problem), and one african dwarf frog.

I am a full time college student and my tank is left in the care of my mother while I am away. When I came home in January I found a cloudy white/clear mass covering probably about 30% of my tanks floor. It resembled a cloud of a dead fish left decaying in the tank...but there was way too much and no fish were missing from the tank.

So I vacuumed out the tank and did water changes, and went back to school. Coming home again this past week, it is all back again. This time I just used the net to stir up the clouds and scooped up the floating pieces in the net.

And I am stumped. I have never had this before, and don't know what to do about it. It doesn't really seem to be affecting the tank that much...I have only lost the pleco since it started. But any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[pitt420dude]

Welcome to AA, you certainly came to the right place.

Do you have a test kit, if so tell us what your tank parameters are, as well as how your mom cares for your tank. Is she doing partial water changes?

Is your tank filtered, if so how? Give us all the info on the tank that you can.

My guess is that your mom is not doing gravel vacs, and your fish and frogs waste is just left decaying and forming a fungus or something.

 

[jadesabre]

I know there are water changes done probably every two weeks or so while I am away.

The tank has an undergravel filter as well as a regular filter.

I know she isn't doing the gravel vacs when I am not around, but I did the first time I found the cloud. But within a little over a month its all back again...And over my time of being at school it has gone much longer than that in between gravels vacs and has never had this problem before.