why is my tank murky?
last night we completely took apart our 10gal freshwater aquarium. we had a MAJOR snail invasion that we had to take care of because they were eating our fish.
so i took it completely apart. i put fresh new rocks in (washed very good 1st)
we have a under gravel filter system. the snails were infested in both little Charcoal filter things so i had no choice but to run it with out the filters until morning when i could buy new ones.
when i woke up this morning the tank was totally white! i could kinda see the fish but barely. so i immediately went to the pet store to get the filters. by the time i got home i couldn’t even see my fish! i ran the filter for most of the day and still no change, so i did another complete water change. since the water change the water isn’t white anymore but its still VERY murky and has a grayish dark tint to it.
its not FRESH and CLEAR like it normally is when i do my water changes! i have no idea what happened and what the heck to do! lol.
any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.
its a 10gal glass aquarium, under gravel filter with a reg filter as well,
fresh rocks, 2 fake plants, ceramic hiding thing, new Charcoal filters for the under gravel and reg filter.
we haven’t done anything we’ve never done before. when we set up our aquarium for the 1st time i didn’t have this problem.
oh and about 20 little guppy sized fish, 3 of them are no larger than a quarter the rest tiny. oh and an algae eater. (all fish we’ve had for months!)
its also indoors out of sunlight. again nothing has changed!
did not add salt..never have and its never been a problem. y add salt?
what do people not get about ive done notthing different!
about the cleaning…i didnt just do suction. i emptied the entire tank, i threw out all the old rocks, scrubbed the glass, put brand new rocks (there for NO old dirt)
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s because of the filter, again, lol.
I would do another full water change and have the filter running from the start. Put all of your fish in gradually, not all at once, so the filter doesn’t get overloaded with tons of fish being poured in and all of their mess.
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Thanks very much!
Did you de-chlorinate and add some tank salt?
You probably have a bacterial bloom in the tank due to you disturbing the underlaying gravel. Normally, all that "muck" is trapped by the under gravel filter and the rocks, however, since you disturbed the environment down there, the filter is just sucking up all that stuff and spitting it back out. The charcoal probably won’t do anything since the particles are too small to trap. Running the filter will clear it up eventually as soon as the environment stabilizes. Doing a full water change repeatedly will probably slow the normalization process down even more. If the fish don’t seem to be affected, I say just leave it for a day or so and it should clear up on it’s own.
try a little more water changes, like 25% of the water at least every week.
also it sounds like you have way too many fish in that 10 gallon aquarium. rule of thumb is 1 inch of fish per gallon
The problem is you destroyed all the beneficial bacteria in the tank. There is never a good reason (unless your fish have TB)to clean out the entire tank and the water. Your tank is now recycling. You will need to keep a heads up on the ammonia spikes for the next week or two, followed by the nitrite spikes. Right now your fish are producing so much waste your beneficial bacteria cannot grow fast enough to accomodate it. 21 fish in a 10 gallon is a lot of waste. Stop doing water changes. For every hour your bacteria has a chance to grow you destroy it all over again. It will never clear up this way. Let it run as is and keep testing for ammonia spikes. If you feel you must change water don’t change out more than 25% that is all that is needed once per week. Let the tank’s bio filter grow. Below is a good site to help you understand what is going on in your tank.
Also: snails don’t eat fish, secondly simply weighing down a piece of lettuce or zucchini slice would have captured most of your snails and made it easy to remove.
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/biologicalcycle/a/nitrogencycle.htm