Not poly dust - bacteria bloom

[tcyiu]

What I thought was polyester filament dust turned out to be a bacteria bloom. I put the water under my son's toy microscope again, and this time, I found quite a few tiny wriggly blobs.

So I removed the driftwood and most of the plastic plants. I did a deep clean on the gravel (I do this once a month anyway) - last one was a few days ago. I did 2 75% water changes within an hour. So effectively, it's close to a 95% change. I also "polished" the water with the Micron filter.

Since I replaced the sponges in my Eheim with new floss just a few days ago, I left the cannister alone. But I did a deep clean on all the hoses. LOTS of junk built up over time. The gunk in the hoses were probably nurseries for the bacteria.

At this point, the tank looks pretty clear, but bare. I'll leave it as-is to see if the bloom comes back. If not, I will slowly re-intro the decoration to see if anything else might be causing the bloom. My suspicion right now is the driftwood is adding nutrients to the water.

Man! I hope this finally clears up the cloudy water!! Anything else I should be doing short of getting a UV filter??

Tim

[Harriett]

Tim,
My guess is, since you put in all new filter media, you just lost some of your cycling. Do you have other media in the the Ehiem [like ceramic noodles, bioballs or something] or is it all floss? IF it's all floss, you need to change out no more than a third to half at any one time or you will lose the essential micro environment in the tank and then you get a bloom. You can clean the filter media in tank water thoroughly and not toss it, for quite a long time....It was a good idea to clean out the hoses and of course the big water changes was the right thing to do do also. I think given the situation, you don't need to be thinking UV filter--you just need to be judicious when you clean the filter and of course take real good care of the general cleanliness of the tank....so,
The other thing I wanted to respond to from your post is that you said you only vaccuum your substrate thoroughly once a month and you use plastic plants. In my experience, it's no where near enough unless you have a VERY densely [live] planted and understocked discus tank---crap really collects and unless a zillion plants are sucking up all the poop and uneaten food debris, you are asking for trouble. Once a week thorough vaccuuming would be a more pro active move for a healthy environment for the discus--just my opinion--.

BEst of luck,
HArriett

[tcyiu]

Harriett,
Thanks for the reply. As for cleaning the gravel, that happens at every WC which ranges from 3 days to 1 week depending on my schedule. I use a gravel cleaning head every time and also try to get under the drift wood etc. And you are right, there is A LOT of gunk down there.

What I mean by "deep clean" is all plastic plants and driftwood come out so every patch of gravel is easily accessible. Then in addition to the normal gravel cleaning, in which half of water is removed, I also re-suction the gravel with a Magnum + micron filter. Then I leave the Magnum on for polishing as I run my hand through the gravel to stir up any pockets I may have missed. This pretty much leaves the tank without any visible organic particulates.

This regimen was not working in reducing what I thought was ployester filament dust. As you see in the original post, the real cause was a bacteria bloom.

As for the filament, I always leave a 1/3 of the floss behind to "seed" the new floss.

Hopefully, I can get this bloom licked.

BTW, I got some new cardinals today. So I siphoned off half the water from the main tank into the QT to get that started. The main tank has had two significant WCs in as many days. Fingers crossed.

Tim

[tcyiu]

Final report. Good news.

I bought some DE (diatomaceous earth) replacement called Fiber Clear from a local pool store. I charged up my Magnum 350 + micron filter with this stuff and left the filter on for a few hours. This polishing (after the massive water change, complete cleaning of hoses and cannister filter and deep clean of gravel) seems to have finally cleared up the bacteria bloom.

The water has stayed crystal clear for about 5 days with only one normal WC!!

Tim