Cloudy Tank

[Avel1896]

@Uberhoust lucky you !! In my area (French riviera) it is, generally speaking, pH7.8 GH18 KH14 ?

 

[Falconwithaboxon]

@Falconwithaboxon uh no, not quite. It is KH 2.25 and GH 3.35
Why are they this low ? Osmosis water ?
No NO2 no NO3 ? How do you check ?

It is just tap water, city water not well water.

API master test kit and I use the API test strips for GH and KH only

 

[Uberhoust]

@Avel1896 In my previous home, 40 km north of where I am now, my water parameters were closer to yours. I was keeping African Cichlids then so at first I was upset with the soft acidic water, though now I am glad, there are more choices in plants and fish with soft acidic water.

 

[Avel1896]

Almost a little high for African Lakes Cichlids !

 

[Uberhoust]

You work with what you have. The fish did OK, but keeping the tanks clean was a chore, black beard algae and lime deposits. I wasn't rich enough for RO system. I know much more now then I did when I set up the Cichlid tank.

 

[Avel1896]

@Falconwithaboxon Api isn't known to be precise, not to mention their strips unless you proceed this way :

 

[vanalisa]

@Falconwithaboxon Glad your tank is working out now. I have started this before I saw your response but thought I would still add it. I find using native materials for my tanks add interest to the hobby. Here are some of my rules / ideas that I use. I know that some view the use of native materials controversial.

I don't think the small piece of wood in your tank would be the major or sole cause of your cloudiness, particularly if you boiled the piece first. I have not yet had an issue with collected wood in any of my tanks. When I use personally collected wood there are a few things I watch for:

• Aged wood, the wood should be dead for a while before using in the aquarium
• Make sure the wood is not resinous, pines in particular can be highly resinous which has a potential of releasing interesting compounds to the water. I personally don't know what the resin, sap, would do but I don't think it would be good.
• Wood from water sources should be dried and aged, then boiled if possible. Ich is endemic in the natural environment along with other pathogens I don't want in my tank.
• I avoid pieces with bark remaining on the piece.
• Large pieces too large for boiling I treat by scrubbing and cleaning the surface, I use a pressure washer for hard wood, then treat with oxygen bleach (primarily Hydrogen Peroxide), leave in a sheltered spot to dry. Then thoroughly clean and rinse with water only.
  • Some risk of introducing some fungal or algal organism to the the tank but personally haven't ever had an issue with this. I live in a temperate climate which might help with this.
  • You risk bleaching the wood to a lighter color if that is an important consideration.

Personally collected rocks, gravel I check for the following:

• Carbonates - Raise the pH, I use muriatic acid (a common concentration of HCL, available from Home Depot, very corrosive so be cautious) to test. You only need a few drops on the rock. If the rock has white encrustations make sure to test those areas as well.
  • Major fizzing and bubbles -> likely limestone (Calcium carbonate mostly)
  • Minor fizzing and bubbles -> likely another carbonate, dolomite for example (Magnesium carbonate) not as strong a push to higher pH
• Porosity - The more porous the rock is the more reactive surface it will have and the faster it will change the pH if it is reactive. Porous limestone can raise the pH rapidly whereas a more solid piece might raise the pH slowly.
• Iron or Copper staining - No rocks with reddish rust staining, or any blue/green staining.
• No rocks with mineralization or crystals (other than quartz, mica) - pyrite crystals for example are not good in an aquarium
• No rocks from areas with arsenic, or from salt plains, or evaporative basins
• No gravel from the ocean unless it is for a high pH tank. (you can clean the salt out but not the shell fragments). All gravels and sands get a soaking in normal bleach before final rinse and wash.

Thanks for this!
✔

 

[ArmchairAquariest]

My experience is much more limited then many people on this forum, but the only times I have had cloudiness problems like you describe it has always been either a bacterial and/or fungal bloom. If you didn't boil the sticks and rocks you found and put in beforehand that may have contributed to their introduction.

My solutions are usually:

1. Do more frequent water changes for a while and use a water pro-biotic like Seachem "flourish" with each of the new water additions for the changes. This way you are basically conducting a microscopic war and bringing in beneficial fish-friendly bacterial reinforcements with each new water change while depleting the cloudiness causing guys.

2. Like all living things bacteria and fungus need nutrients. While you have some plants in there, if you really crowd it out with plants I have often found it helps deplete enough nutrients that bacteria and fungus can't usually bloom to the point of cloudiness -- to be sure they are still there in force, but not enough to form an underwater "fog." If you need some "temporary" plantings because you don't want your tank to be that crowded with plants long term, go buy a bunch of floating plants. Then when your problem eventually goes away you can just fish them out and hand them off to someone who wants them or toss them in the compost/garbage and be done with them. Good floating plants for this IMHO are things like hornwort in the water column, and like some water lettuce or water hyacinth (if not illegal in your area) on the surface. All of these are nutrient hungry, exude some natural and fish safe chemicals that help slow certain microbial blooms, and easy to remove later if you don't want them then (just for the love of all that is good, don't dispose of them in any way they can end up in a local water system -- that is precisely the reason water hyacinth is illegal in so many places, it feels like it grows as fast as bacteria once established.) If you want an interesting permanent plant that will really vacuum excess nutrients out of the water try a tiger lotus -- an interesting aquatic plant that feels like it is a black-hole for waterborne nutrients. If you get a tiger lotus just don't plant it too close to any aquatic moss, it can apparently vacuum up enough nutrients from the water to starve and kill nearby moss. Rooted plants right next to it are fine because their nutrient dependence is more on soil/substrate bound nutrients and less on nutrients free in the water column. Be aware tiger lotus can grow like crazy to the point where some people plant it in its own buried container to keep it from going too out of control.

3. Filter feeders. This is difficult because most of the really good and easy filter feeders are also fish food that fish eat like popcorn. For instance, daphnia are great at filtering bacteria and fungal blooms out of the water, but it is basically impossible to establish them in a fish-containing tank because no matter how full fish get, they always seem to have room for "just one more daphnia" and their little jerky swimming motions basically make them too irresistible for fish to ignore. Rotifers kind of work. They aren't the most effective filter feeders in the world, but they do a bit and many of them are so small that only fish fry will eat them making them possible to establish in your fish tank (easier if you have lots of little hiding places like in and among hornwort or the roots of floating plants). You could try getting a clam. Most of what is available though are those asiatic golden clams and I have heard they can be a little difficult -- they can filter feed up to the point of starvation if you don't start supplementing your tanks microbial "cloud," and then they die and rot possibly hidden deep in the substrate somewhere you will never find them and suddenly all your tank parameters are ruined and things are now worse then before you added the clam. This is why I am a fan of the little Pisidium clams (a.k.a. "fingernail clam" or "pea clam") They aren't as voraciously hungry as larger clams like the golden asiatic, but they do a decent job of filter feeding, and while they are small masters of hiding and will die from time to time, they are small enough that a few dead individuals won't ruin your entire tanks water parameters upon death like larger clams will. Instead their still living relatives will mostly filter out any of the damage a few pisidium corpse might otherwise do. The problem is basically *NO ONE* sells pisidum, you will have to go find a vernal pond and pan for some in the substrate there yourself. I only once found a commercial supplier of them, it was on ebay, and they only sold them once and never again.