Translucent "growth" Update

[finchfarm]

Just an update for those of you that have been following my issue with the translucent-cottony-growths in my tank. We took a sample of the growths and some fish tank water to our local petstore to try to find out what was up. Its not white algae, nor slime mold.....its bad bacteria. Even thought we gravel vac and change out our water ect., apparently we don't do it offten enough and the bad bacteria got out of hand and started to kill off our good bacteria. This caused a pH crash (5.0) and a rise in ammonia levels. Yikes!
When all this happened and I noticed one of our fish had cloudy eyes the first thing I tested was pH....which according to our tester kit was good. We had had our water tested just the week before at our fish store we go to and everything was fine, (just like our test kits said they were), the only thing the store didn't test was the pH. We, and the store, assumed since the ammonia, nitrates, hardness of our test kit were the same as the tests they performed that our kit wasn't bad.....well, apparently our kit is still good....everything except our pH tester.

Anyway, all of our fish are now evacuated to a hospital tank. We drained 20 gallons out of our infected 75 gallon yesterday. Later today I get to scrub down the driftwood and all the plastic plants and other accessories in the tank and plunge them in some declored water for a while. Later tonight we're probably going to start a massive gravel cleaning job on our tank with the gravel vac. This is the main reason we moved the fish, so we could gravel vac without having to worry about stirring bottom sediments up and making the problem worse. All said in done, we're going to be replacing all of the water in the 75 gallon before we move the fish back in it.....and we're going to make sure we take a water sample to our fish store and have them run a full panel on it to make sure everythings okay before we go sticking them back in it.

As said, we do clean out the tank, but apparently not offten enough. This is where my questions come in. Tank maintence:

• How often do you recommend changing the carbon, foam, ect., in a filter? (Ours is an Auqaclear)
• How often do you recommend gravel vacing?
• How often do you recommend doing partial water changes?
• How often do you recommend doing full panel tests on water stability? (pH, nitrates, ammonia, ect.)

 

[xxBarneyxx]

• How often do you recommend changing the carbon, foam, ect., in a filter? (Ours is an Auqaclear)
• How often do you recommend gravel vacing?
• How often do you recommend doing partial water changes?
• How often do you recommend doing full panel tests on water stability? (pH, nitrates, ammonia, ect.)

Carbon should be changed every 3 months at least (otherwise it starts leaking all the stuff back into the water). Foam pads should not be changed very often (in fact I have used the same ones for over 12 months and just cleaned them out in siphoned out tank water). They are a good spot for good bacteria to grow.

I change half the filter wool about once a month and rinse the other half out in tank water. The Bio media I hardly ever touch and If I do replace it I only replace a small amount at a time (and only when it looks VERY dirty). You don't want to replace to much of your filter media in one go as that is where all the good stuff is growing.

On my non-planted tanks I used to run over the gravel vac every water change to take up the worst debris.

Depends but personally I would do a 20% change once a week unless there are water problems in which case you change more and do it more often.

With regards to testing. When cycling a tank I test every other day. If I'm having problems (fish look paler/not eater, sudden algae bloom, etc) I test right away and if there is a problem I then test at least once a day until it is resolved. Other then that though I don't test at all unless I'm making changes that could effect the water chemistry (adding new fish, setting up CO2, etc).

With regards to the bacteria thing I cant help as I dont know anything about it . If it is in the tank then you might need more then a water change and gravel vac to get rid of it.

 

[Davidtq]

As said, we do clean out the tank, but apparently not offten enough. This is where my questions come in. Tank maintence:

How often do you recommend changing the carbon, foam, ect., in a filter? (Ours is an Auqaclear)

Carbon if Im running it it gets changed after a couple of weeks, but dont run it often.

Foam never! Ive got some of the foam in my filters is over 20 years old, just clean it out every water change and off you go again.

How often do you recommend gravel vacing?

I dont run gravel any more, when I did it was an essential part of every water change.

How often do you recommend doing partial water changes?

Depends entirely on the tank, Ive been known to do water changes every 2/3 days on tanks to cope with a particular problem, Really is a matter of judegement depending on stocking levels feeding amounts and types planting levels etc etc.

How often do you recommend doing full panel tests on water stability? (pH, nitrates, ammonia, ect.)

Ammonia and nitrites I do very very occaisionally, normally when something in the tanks been changed or weve had a problem eg power cut etc, or when setting up a new tank. PH and nitrates depends on stocking levels etc etc, the lower the stocking level the less often you need to run the tests, with many tanks stocked the way people recommend them I would be running them every couple of weeks at least. But some of my tanks I check very rarely. I tend to like big tanks and understocking. Unless you are an advanced aquarist I would recommend at least every 2 weeks for tests.