Water or Milk

[Jerry]

???I have some questions on water chemistry. 11/21/2003

I have a 40 gal tank that has been set up for about four years now. I have never had a problem. At least until now. We had 2 angels (that spawned regularly and all fry were good and healthy. Only about five to ten white eggs in the batch) three Lg. Red hook Silver Dollars and four Congo tetras.

   I traded off all for four nice Discus. But before I received the new fish the tank stood for two weeks with only four corys in it. To date they have been in the tank for two weeks.

   Now this started three days ago. The ph is @ 6.2 and hardness is at 50. The strange thing is, the last three days when I have done the ammonia test. It shows color for the last three days, which it has never done before. Day one the tank looked clear but the test tube turned milky when I put the drops in. Yesterday the tank was looking milky, and then today real milky.

   I put some amino lock in the water after a 50% water change and each day 50%. The fish have not shown signs of stress and no heavy gill movement. Color is good and they are not dark.

   What the heck is going on? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
??? ???

[Carol_Roberts]

Milky looking water in the tank sounds like a bacterial bloom.

When you took out the bigger Angel fish load and just left a few corys most of the "good" bacteria starved to death over the two weeks. Then you added 4 discus. The "good" bacteria should catch up soon. IN the mean time "other" bacteria have bloomed in the water column giving a milky appearance. The bacteria bloom probably will not hurt the discus. Keep up with water changes - you want the ammonia to register zero on your test kit. In a few weeks things should be back to normal.

[Jerry]

Thanks Carol.

i wish this forum was around when i was a little kid and started with discus then. i only had wild turq. and was able to spawn them. guess i was just lucky. i didnt know about ph gh and all the other stuff. now i do and it amazes me.

[bernie82]

Hi Jerry. What you have is a bloom of a very annoying but harmless white bacteria. It is stubborn and can stick around for months because it's in your filter media. Water changes won't get rid of it.
The white bacteria is gram positive and Erythromycin (250 milligrams to 10 gallons of water will clear your water in 24 to 48 hours. It will not harm your water cycle at all. Do a 30 to 50 % water change and repeat the treatment every day for 4 days. If you don't the cloudiness will reappear. The medication will not harm your fish in any way.