It's A Mess.....

[SG_Dude]

Well I had a power outage for 4 hours the other night.

The 46 and 72 had ammonia spikes and are under control.

Now the 37 has spiked at 2.0 and I am following the same plan.

The tank has been up for six months but the filter only 2 months.

The only differences are the spike came 36 hours later then
the other two tanks and the water has turned very cloudy.

The cloudy water starting coming out of the canister.
I am not sure if I need to clean or rinse the canister.

This is a real pain, 48 3gal buckets in the last 2 days.

Any ideas would be great.

Thanks.

 

[SG_Dude]

Should I rinse the canister with dechlorinated water?

 

[Gilli]

Your tanks shouldnt have been affected by a cut for 4 hours,the bacteria can last a lot longer than that. I have a 250L tank with an external filter which I switched off to clean the tank and a whole 24 hours later realised what I had done and I didnt even have a blip in my water stats! I would leave your filter alone - if you have had a large bacteria die off its best not to disturb them and risk losing more.

Sounds like a mini cycle - water changes wont really clear the cloudyness, but you will need to keep doing them to get the ammonia levels under control. Just keep doing a 50% water change every day until your levels are back to 0, and when they are if the water is still cloudy just leave it - as long as the stats are ok it will clear in time.

 

[SG_Dude]

Ok, I think rinsing the white pad in the filter before the bio material was
fully established and continuing vacuuming with the weekly water change
made this worse causing a mini cycle that increased after the power outage.

I just wanted to make sure that the canister didn't go toxic.

Thanks.

 

[Gilli]

You rinse your filter media in used tank water only. When you do your water change save some of the water you take out of the tank in a bucket and rinse it gently in that. Never ever rinse it in tap water as you will kill all your good bacteria.