Tank health

[ShrimpKeeper]

Hi everyone. I need help with my tank. I have an established 10 gallon tank that is dirted, with a bristle nose pleco, nerite snails, and dwarf shrimp. My tank isn’t doing so well and I don’t know where to start to make it better and could use some help. The water is very cloudy. There is tons of tiny black specks attached to the duckweed roots and I don’t know what they are. There is also just a lot of green fuzzy stuff around the roots that I think is algae but I’m not sure. Underneath the soil is a lot of weird colors that make me think the soil is dirty but is deep underneath and too deep to reach during water changes. There are also a ton of pest snails that are constantly dying but they are so small that I don’t know if this is negatively impacting the water quality. There is white crusty stuff that has formed at the top of my heater and on the outside of my filter that I am not sure how it got there or what to do about it. I do a water change once a week . My water temperate is 77.2 and my water parameters are: Iron(0), Copper(0), Chorine(0), GH(75), Alkalinity(180), KH(300), PH(8.4), Nitrate(25), Nitrite(1)

 

[Andy Sager]

Hello and welcome to the site.
You definitely have a few issues that need to be attended to but we need to do things one at a time based on importance.
For starters, what kind of dirt did you use?
How long has the tank been running?
What is the ammonia level in the tank?

Addressing your other issues:
The nitrite level being at 1 is a problem. That is a sign that you are not cycled or as " established" as you think it is. You usually don't see nitrites in an established/ cycled tank so either your test strip is inaccurate or your nitrogen cycle has been interrupted or just starting. I suggest taking a sample of water to your local shop and have them test your water to confirm your readings. ( And have them check for ammonia as well. ) FYI, make sure they give you numbers and not " It's okay" or "Everything is fine". It's the numbers that determine your next course of action.

The white on the heater appears to be a mineral deposit coming from your water. When water evaporates, Only the H and O evaporates and everything that is mixed in the water ( i.e. minerals, salts, etc) remain behind forming a crust. The heater can be cleaned by turning it off and letting it cool down, remove from the tank and wipe it with an acid like lemon juice, white vinegar or the same. If just a wipe doesn't clean it totally you can wrap the top area in a paper towel that is wetted with the acid for a few hours or overnight and that should take care of it.

Regarding the black spots on the roots, your Pleco may have stirred up the dirt and those are just dirt spots caught in the plant roots. Take out one of the plants with the black dots on it so that you can touch the spot and see if it's alive or just a piece of dirt.

Regarding the green fuzzy stuff on the roots, that is a type of algae that the Pleco probably won't eat because the surface it's on is too fragile for him to get to but your shrimp should eat. Green algae is the result of a combination of too many nutrients and too much light. Considering you have a higher nitrite level, that's most likely the food source the algae is feeding on. Once you correct that, it should help reduce the amount of algae in the tank. How long do you keep the tank light on and is there any outside lighting that is reaching the tank?

So let's start there.

 

[Enchantress]

The black spots in the plants look like shrimp poop, which would indicate that you're not siphoning out the debris out properly when changing water. Simply replacing water isn't always enough, you should also be vacuuming out any gunk that you can reach in order to prevent waste buildup. How much water are you changing per week? And what kind of filtration do you use? I agree with Andy, nitrite this high means the tank either didn't cycle, or crashed at some point. And this is dangerous for the animals, as nitrite is highly toxic. You'll have to do daily water changes until the level drops, and in the meantime add some good quality live bacteria to the filter. That being said, test strips tend to be inaccurate, so I'd try to get my hands on liquid tests if I were you.

 

[ShrimpKeeper]

I don’t exactly measure the amount of water I’m changing as it is hard to measure it at the same time I’m siphoning out water. If that is shrimp poop which now that you mention it I think it is, how would I go about cleaning that out ? Because I use a siphon to clean out the bottom of the tank and those pieces of poop are attached to the duckweed roots. And that other discoloration is way underneath the soil do I plunge my siphon under the soil? I know siphoning with gravel and soil is different and I still haven’t completely figured.

 

[ShrimpKeeper]

The black spots in the plants look like shrimp poop, which would indicate that you're not siphoning out the debris out properly when changing water. Simply replacing water isn't always enough, you should also be vacuuming out any gunk that you can reach in order to prevent waste buildup. How much water are you changing per week? And what kind of filtration do you use? I agree with Andy, nitrite this high means the tank either didn't cycle, or crashed at some point. And this is dangerous for the animals, as nitrite is highly toxic. You'll have to do daily water changes until the level drops, and in the meantime add some good quality live bacteria to the filter. That being said, test strips tend to be inaccurate, so I'd try to get my hands on liquid tests if I were you.

The black spots in the plants look like shrimp poop, which would indicate that you're not siphoning out the debris out properly when changing water. Simply replacing water isn't always enough, you should also be vacuuming out any gunk that you can reach in order to prevent waste buildup. How much water are you changing per week? And what kind of filtration do you use? I agree with Andy, nitrite this high means the tank either didn't cycle, or crashed at some point. And this is dangerous for the animals, as nitrite is highly toxic. You'll have to do daily water changes until the level drops, and in the meantime add some good quality live bacteria to the filter. That being said, test strips tend to be inaccurate, so I'd try to get my hands on liquid tests if I were you.

I don’t exactly measure the amount of water I’m changing as it is hard to measure it at the same time I’m siphoning out water. If that is shrimp poop which now that you mention it I think it is, how would I go about cleaning that out ? Because I use a siphon to clean out the bottom of the tank and those pieces of poop are attached to the duckweed roots. And that other discoloration is way underneath the soil do I plunge my siphon under the soil? I know siphoning with gravel and soil is different and I still haven’t completely figured It out . What me and my family do is we just bought like a grid to place on the edge of the siphon to not suck up shrimp and soil beads and we hover over the dirt and suck up gunk on top of the dirt but not actually clean underneath the dirt

 

[Andy Sager]

I don’t exactly measure the amount of water I’m changing as it is hard to measure it at the same time I’m siphoning out water. If that is shrimp poop which now that you mention it I think it is, how would I go about cleaning that out ? Because I use a siphon to clean out the bottom of the tank and those pieces of poop are attached to the duckweed roots. And that other discoloration is way underneath the soil do I plunge my siphon under the soil? I know siphoning with gravel and soil is different and I still haven’t completely figured.

There are a couple of easy ways to figure out how much water to siphon.
Option #1
1) Place a mark at the water level you keep in the tank.
2) remove a measured amount of water ( typically a gallon).
3) Measure the distance between the original water level mark and the new water level mark. That is how much that amount of water takes up in the tank. You can then start at the top of the substrate and mark that measured amount so you can see how much water is in the tank. ( See attached pic for what how I mark all my tanks. )

Option #2:
1) take your typical container you siphon water into and put into it a measured amount of water.
2) mark the outside of the container where the measured water level was so you know that when you reach that level, you have removed "X" amount of water.
( I typically use a 5 gallon bucket that I have measured out 3 and 4 gallons of water. I use this bucket for 10 and 15 gallon tanks so I know where a 30% & 40% water change is if the tanks are not marked.)

Bottom line, these 2 methods take all the guess work out of the equation. In a decorated tank, you are not going to be exact because of displacement from decorations, substrate and such but you will be close enough. For future reference, I like to set up a tank with the decor and substrate then add measured amounts of water and mark the tanks as I'm filling so that I can be even more exact as to how much water is in the tank.
Hope this helps.

 

[Enchantress]

I simply use 2 1gal buckets for the water, so I know exacty how much I'm changing out each time. Not sure what your setup is, but Andy's advice is sound as well.
As for the shrimp poop, you can just stir it around a bit with a chopstick or something like that until it falls to the bottom, where you can siphon it out. Or just use the siphon directly on the roots; if there's a mesh at the end of it it shouldn't suck up the plants. OR trim the roots regularly, to stop them from getting this long and tangled. You can also increase the filter output. Or all of these things together
Do not disturb the substrate by plunging the siphon deep into it; there could be pockets of gas and bacteria in there that you wouldn't want to stir up and release into the water column. Superficial vacuuming is fine, but don't go way down deep.