White Fluff

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paolo

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Hi, newbie here. We have just bought and set up an aquarium for our son, we have had the tank up and running for two weeks and have 5 guppies and 3 shrimps in it. Yesterday morning we noticed what I can only describe as white fluff lying on the bottom of the tank and the water smells a bit off. There is a fair bit of uneaten food on the bottom, (flake food) so I wonderd if it was anything to do with that.
 
Oh dear :( Where to start....

I'm sorry to tell you but it sounds like you are already several paces down the wrong road.
I'm presuming from what you have said that you have not cycled the tank at all before putting the fish in? This is not unusual, but will make things difficult for you and give you a lot of work from this point on for the few weeks certainly.

What capacity is the tank, and what filtration are you running?

The food on the bottom is a bad sign of severly overfeeding, which is something you REALLY want to avoid right now.

You will need to get yourself a decent liquid test kit, the one most commonly used on here is the API Freshwater Master Test Kit.
Also if you do not have a gravel vacuum syphon you will be wanting to get one of those.

At the moment the ammonia levels in your tank, (produced by the fish, fish waste, and decaying matter), will probably be sky high. The filter would normally remove this, but as you haven't cycled the filter the bacteria culture won't have grown in there yet, and as such at the moment the filter isn't yet doing it's job properly.
The problem with this is that Ammonia is HIGHLY toxic to the fish :(

My first advice is;

- Get that decaying food out of there
- Get the white fluff out of there
- Do a water change on the tank of around 50%, (making sure you add dechlorinator to the new water before you add it)
- After an hour or so do ANOTHER water change of around 50%, but keep an eye on the temperature of the tank, you don't want it to drop too much below the 25 degree C mark. The idea of these two changes is to get as much of that ammonia out of there as possible right now.

Then get the water test kit, (and gravel syphon if you don't have one). Don't be convinced by the fishshop to A) buy more fish, or B) buy any sort of bacteria helping product in a bottle.

Once you have the test kit, do the Ammonia, NitrIte, nitrAte, and ph tests on the tank, and also on your tap water and post the results back here.
You'll notice that I tend to capatalise the I in nitrIte and the A in nitrAte, that is because they are spelt very similarly, but are very different substances, and we need to be clear which one we are talking about :)

Sorry, but be prepared for some hard work in the coming weeks with plenty of water changes going on, will await your results :)
 
Thanks for the prompt reply. It's a 30l tank, we set it up one week before adding the fish. We added TetraTec aquasafe and safe start. There is a filter in it, a tetra-tec internal power filter and an air pump. I have a eSHa Aqua Quick-Test kit, which says the chemistry is OK.
 
That is very surprising, I am not familiar with the eSHa Aqua Quick-Test kit, but everything else about your tank says that the readings should be bad.
Is the test kit a liquid based one, or one with the dipstick style test?

My advice would still remain the same though, you really don't want any 'white fluff' or decaying food matter in the tank. Purely from the fact that that is there should be enough to be pushing your ammonia levels high, especially in a 30L tank.

When you say it says the chemistry is "ok" what are the actual numberical readings you are getting from the tests?
 
It is a dip stick type. Can't check readings at the moment, as I am at work.
 
Ok, so as you know the dipstick style aren't exactly renowned for their accurancy, I had some to start with and was frankly shocked by how bad they were once I was persuaded to get the API kit. You can pick the API kits up from your LFS, or even e-bay for around £20 if you are interested, and they will give you the ability to do the tests literally hundreds of times.
 
Just rang my wife, she has removed all the fluff and changed the filter, which has only been in two weeks, so not sure if that's a good thing or not.
 
It all depends on how she 'changed' the filter, and what parts she changed.
If it is an entirely 'sponge' filter and she has changed all the sponges then you are back to square one I am afriad, if you are lucky however and there is some bio-media in there as well as the sponges, and she only changed the sponges it might not be too bad.

Looking at the tetratec internal power filters I would guess it's the INplus 400.
There is a good section in the manual on how to clean the sponges, (ie. one at a time) etc etc so it will be worth having a read of that too :)

:good:

Incidently the post below is one I typed up just this morning for someone else's question :good:

Filtration
 
Have been cleaning fluff put and done a couple of 50% water changes, rinsed old filter, (2 weeks old) in aquarium water and put it back in.
Got the test kit here, (it's actually a tetra 6 in 1 kit):
NO3 0mg/l
NO2 0mg/l
GH 4od
KH 6od
pH 6.8
cl2 0 mg/l
 
Just thought join in with Schmill so you'd have another voice.

You've got a whole set of classic problems that we see a lot here in the "New to the Hobby" forum. The difference for you is that you've stumbled on to this great site with a whole bunch of experienced fishkeepers who can help you iron out all this stuff and get on the right track.

I agree with all the things Schmill is telling you: You've probably got an uncycled tank, or at least one that we need to test and determine what state the water is in at the very least. The strip tests you have are probably worse than useless as they will mislead usually. There are just a whole set of good beginner setup tips and habits that the members here will be able to pass along!

Among the things Schmill has said, and I'll just echo, you'll need to perform daily 50% water changes until you can pick up an API Freswater kit as he mentions (or other liquid based master kit) and post up the test results. As he says, the return water will need to be conditioned with dechlorinator/dechloraminator and roughly temperature matched (your hand is good enough.) Once you get the good test kit you can practice following the intstuctions by testing both your tap water and your tank water and posting up the results here for Schmill and the others.

Good luck and welcome to TFF!
~~waterdrop~~
 
DISASTER! :eek:
Whilst vacuuming out the gravel, we noticed the water level dropping, got the fish out and most of the water, to find the bottom glass had a crack in it. Took the tank back to the shop, many apologies and they swapped our 30l tetra tank for a 60l Juwel rekord. In the process of refilling it now. As it has a different type of filter, (differing grades of foam), would it be wise to use the old filter until the bacteria have established themselves.
 
First of all, bad luck with breakage!
But good luck with the 'upgrade' :)

Although your first filter likely didn't have 'much' bacteria in it, it will be worth you running BOTH filters on the new tank for about a month if you can?
What is the new filter model, do you know?

Also as waterdrop as reaffirmed, it really is worth getting a liquid kit. Feel free to check it along side the strip tests at some point if you like, you'll be shocked, I certainly was, and I still have a tub of around 20 strips out of 25 in the cupboard. Although they are 5 in 1 strips, (API), I only use them for testing hardness, and then only as a guide, purely because the other reading are SO off, even compared to API's own liquid test kit.
 
I have ordered the API ammonia test kit.
The filter is a Juwel built in filter system with foam media, a large pored blue block at the bottom, a medium one next, then a black carbon foam, (which it says to replace every month) and on top a white wadding, which it says to replace weekly.
 
I'd replace the black carbon foam section with something like ceramic pebble type media. And you're going to need the water changes more than ever now. Good luck!

~~waterdrop~~
 
There is no need to replace the white stuff weekly, every fortnight is plenty but ideally replace half a week. Don't replace anything until you have cycled your tank.

What you will see in a normal cycle is that ammonia levels will rise. You should try to keep them down below 0.25ppm (ppm or parts per million is the same as mg/L, 1ppm = 1mg/L). The bacteria that process ammonia will begin to become established and turn your ammonia into nitrite. The nitrite will start to rise. Then more bacteria that process nitrite will grow and then turn the nitrite into nitrate. Nitrate is not toxic.

So you should test for ammonia every day once your test kit comes (ammonia is NH3/NH4+) and do water changes to keep it under 0.25. You should also test for nitrite (N02) every day. Once you start seeing nitrite, you know your cycle is progressing. Then you start checking for nitrate. Once the bacteria that deal with both ammonia and nitrite are established, the readings for both ammonia and nitrite should fall to zero and stay there. That means the tank is cycled.

Five guppies do not need much food at all. The amount that will cover a fingertip fed once daily is plenty, feed this amount once every two days during cycling as a little less food is far preferable to a little more ammonia. Your tank will be able to deal with the waste produced by the fish once it is cycled, but it will be hard pressed to deal with the waste from overfeeding as well. Unfortunately this is common bad advice from LFS as well who tell you to overfeed because you run out of fish food faster and buy more.

Sorry from all of us that you had to be introduced into the hobby this way and I hope things look up for you soon. You've come to the right place, I did basically the same thing as you, but with twice the number of fish and a tank half the size. If they can save my fish, they can definitely save yours!
 

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