Cloudy white water, hydras, snails, etc.

[cowman345]

My 75gal Planted tank has been going a couple weeks now and has seen LOTS of growth, esp my rotala, anacharis, glosso and ambulia. My glosso bed is beginning to grow horizontally and filling in nicely.

I do have a couple questions though. After discovering a gross error in my fertilization I ended up with my phosphates through the roof... through a couple water changes and PhosBan which i'm still running in my filter, I have phosphates at zero.

My nitrates were getting out of control too, now they're at about 5-15ppm I'd say... but I have a white cloudy bacterial bloom. What gives? Any ideas?

Also, I have a grand proliferation of life in my tank including waterfleas, tons of snails which don't seem harmful (pond snails, i think), and even hydras and various worms and bugs. Is this cool? or undesirable?

-dave-

 

[czcz]

A lot of your problems come from over feeding. If you have been generous try cutting back a bit. I would be worried about bugs and would try to id it. (I do not have a link to such a site.) HTH

 

[azn_fishy55]

I think you should provide a pic of the bug but anyways there are not safe for small fish.

 

[cowman345]

Well, I don't have any fish... so I don't "feed" the tank. Only trying to establish stable fertilization at the moment. I'm running one filstar XP3 with 20 biochem stars and several layers of mechanical media. Do I need more filtration? This seems like a bacterial bloom, so that leads me to believe perhaps I don't have enough biological filtration...

-dave-

 

[malkore]

an XP3 is fine for filtration...heck I ran an XP2 for almost 2 years without problems.

phosphates at 0ppm is bad. you need a 1:10 phosphate to nitrate ratio or you're skirting the edge of an algae bloom.

Its 100% normal for a new tank, even a planted one, to have a bacterial bloom. It's part of the cycling process.

However, your main problem is, you have no fish, thus nothing is creating ammonia, no nitrite...therefore bacteria to convert this will be slow to form.

On a new tank, you should NOT be fertilizing much for the first month anyways. Fill tank, add plants, add fish (partial stocking) and go.

 

[cowman345]

Ok, well I have ammonia, nitrate, nitrates due to decomposing leaves, decomposing snails here and there, etc. Sooo.... I removed the phosban, phosphates are at 2.0ppm approximately. I started dosing up nitrates a little since they dropped to zero.

The cloudiness is now no worse, but certainly no better. Shall I let this go a few more days? Will cleaning the filter help, it's getting a bit cruddy...

Thanks for all the advice guys!

-dave-

 

[BlazerFRS]

with that much PO4 you'll need to dose at least 20ppm of nitrate to keep the tank balanced. if you just let it go you'll again be asking for an algae bloom.

The general rule of thumb is to keep a 1:10 ratio of PO4:NO3