green water!

[silverdollar]

I've been having major problems with one of my tanks. I have a small 10 gallon tank with 5 black tetras, 1 cory, 2 chinese algae eaters and 2 guppies. I never had a problem with the tank, it's been up and running perfect for over a year. About 3 weeks ago I removed three plants, all lillys, and the water started to cloud a few days after. Did a 25% water change and it came back the next day. Did a 75% change and it came back a few days later even worse. Did a complete water change 5 days ago and cleaned out the susbstrate and it's now worse than it ever was. I can't even see through the tank. The water is green. All parameters test fine.

Any ideas?

 

[fat bob]

I encountered a similar problem with my tank a few months ago do you have a wooden lid ? if so is the water from the outlet splashing up onto the underside of it ? when this happened with mine I didn't realise that the chemicals from the wood were leeching out into the tank water and clouding it. you say you removed plants. Could these have been preventing the splash ?

 

[silverdollar]

Hood is made of plastic. I even thought it might be poor filtration so I added an additional filter and that didn't help. I removed the fish this morning to another tank. Right now the 10 gallon looks like a tank of melted green jello. I'm stumped.

 

[tstenback]

do you know the niTRATE and phosphate readings in the tank? Is this an algae like substance? Odd that even with a complete water change you experienced the same result. Anything other than the removal of the lillies that may have happened around the same time? Sorry for all the questions but i am looking for something to go on and like you right now im stumped.

 

[DrOizo]

The removal of the lilies may have resulted in a nitrate boom which has now resulted in a water borne algal boom. This may follow a similar path to Eutrophication in real life.
Eutrophication= high nitrate---High algae-algae overcompete and die---bacteria decompose algae and use up o2----low o2 level---fish die

 

[fishjewel]

This may be a little late, but maybe you can use it later. I had the green water thing and the only way I was finally able to kill it off was by doing a complete black out on my tank for five days. Wrapped the tank in a dark towel. The algae has to have light to live. The water was still cloudy for the next few tank changes but things eventually got back to normal.