Filtration Problem

[shadeslayer]

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you.

I am hoping to get some help because I am at a loss as to why my fish tank is cloudy.
My 55g tank has been up and running about 6 weeks now. I do about 50% water change every other day. My tank has 5 discus, but most of them are still small, one is about 4 inches and the other is 3.5 inches, the rest are smaller.

I use Cascade 1000 Canister Filter http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002DJ9NY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

In the bottom tray going up I put a coarse sponge then a fine sponge, 2nd tray has a fine sponge and then a bag of arbon + Zeolite Cartridges to take car of odors and harmful ammonia, and then on the 3rd tray there is just 1000grams of Fluval biomax bio rings.

my water has never been crystal clear (such as after using UV filter) but it was relatively clear most of the time. Before you would notice the cloudiness if you looked through the side of the tank, but now you can see the cloudiness from the front. there was odor yesterday so I had changed the water and it went away. Now the odor is back (not as strong but its there).

is this another bacteria bloom? I had recently put in Tetra SafeStart because my tank was showing around 2ppm of ammonia. Now there is no ammonia I believe.

[dagray]

Sounds like a bacteria bloom to me.

[shadeslayer]

I thought that also! Then it started getting dirtier and dirtier so I took out my filter to clean - I replaced all the sponges and am now waiting to see if the water starts to clear up.

I am not still not sure what went wrong, I was told that the fine sponge have to be changed every 2 weeks and coarse sponge every 4 weeks..I hope it clears up. should I do a water change for the discus since they don't like dirty water?

[dagray]

if the tank hasn't been set up long and you just cleaned your filter you basically killed the progress on the tank cycling you may have had. If this happens again set up a smaller filter with carbon (if the tank is starting to smell bad) and do a water change, but don't do anything with your main filter.

Do smaller water changes more frequently until the cycle is established. What you are experiencing is a bacteria bloom aka a mini-cycle.

Remember the beneficial bacteria isn't in the water column as much as it is in substrate and filter media.

If you can get someone you know has a running tank without any disease or illness in the tank grab some of their substrate or filter media and put it in a woman's nylon stocking and drop it in your tank as this will help to seed the good bacteria in your tank.

[FishFanMan]

You may be feeding too much thus causing poor water conditon.

[shadeslayer]

I only changed the sponges, I left the fluval bio rings alone in the open air - most of the bacteria is on the bio rings right? I thought there is no bacteria on the sponges so I thought it'd be ok to change them out.
The water is starting to clear up now, so I'm thinking it was a bacteria bloom. I didn't change the water as of yet, but will do it tomorrow.

Thanks for the tip on the smaller filter with carbon! I luckily have an extra filter

I only feed 3 pinches of food of flakes - is that too much?

[Ryan]

Bacteria lives and colonizes on anything it can. Sponges and other porous media are great for bacterial colonies because of all the surface area. In my tanks, sponges are essentially the main part of my biological filtration. I use sponges almost exclusively and so a majority of my beneficial bacteria will be living there.

For this reason, I never change out sponges. During water changes, I pull the sponges out of my canisters and hang-on-back filters and rinse them in the tank water. Several good squeezes in a bucket of tank water will clean the gunk out of them but leave most of the bacteria intact. Then you can put them back into the filter and your tank will still be cycled, but the sponges will technically be "clean" because you rinsed the bad stuff out of them (feces, decaying food, etc.).

If you are changing water using a hose (Python or something similar) it's even easier. I run the hose to my bathtub and as the tank water drains into the tub I squeeze out all my sponges and rinse my filter media using the water coming out of the hose.

You can technically rinse your sponges in tap water too, but the concern there is that high levels of chlorine/chloramine in the water may kill off all or part of the beneficial bacteria, so most people choose to rinse the sponges in tank water.

A couple other things to check:

- Make sure the intake of your filter has some kind of pre-filter on it so that it doesn't suck up a ton of food before the discus get the chance to eat it. This will just rot in your filter and essentially do more harm than good.

- If you can, power off your canister during feeding to prevent it from sucking up food. Just don't forget to turn it back on! Some people set them up on timers so that they come on 10 - 15 minutes after feeding. This helps keep the canister cleaner, longer.

- Water dechlorinators like Prime and Safe will give a false-positive reading on an ammonia test kit. But if you did break your cycle and you do have ammonia in the tank, it's best to do daily water changes until the parameters are under control again. If you're adding dechlor daily with your water changes, that should help detoxify the remaining ammonia.

[DISCUS STU]

This may be a bacterial bloom. Do you notice a protein buildup on the water surface? I don't know how fine your final filter media is but I still use old fashioned filter floss as the last stage in my Eheim canisters. I believe the floss should be colonized fairly quickly and they have a large surface area. I clean this and the canister monthly but part of the filter media should always remain as is so as not to destroy all of the beneficial bacteria. The filter floss can be wrung out in a bucket of tank water and used a few times before discarding so as not to destroy the good bacteria. It can also be cleaned in warm water as long as part of the bio filter remains in the rest of the filter.

My systems use two canisters in circuit. The first one is purely mechanical media while the second one contains only Eheim Efisubstrat bio media.

[Twistofer]

If you have a Fluval filter, they make polishing pads for their filters. You don't disturb anything, but place them in the basket right before the return. One caution, use a single layer and use them for about 36-72 hours only. They clog really fast. You should see a difference in about 2-3 uses. PS: I would only use the routine once a week.

I've used them in my reef tanks for cloudy water and they have worked great regardless of the source. I actually set up an auxiliary filter with carbon and the water polishing pads to use after a major water change to help with bacterial and algal blooms. I realize SW/Reefs are a bit different, and am just embarking on my first FW/Discus tank. I'm hoping some of my learned lessons will apply.