Cloudy Tank

[ppipanman]

my dads 10 gal tank is horrible. you cant see halfway through it. sometimes it looks just cloudy and sometimes its green like soup. we've tried algeacide and multiple water clarifiers but nothing seems to work. our local fish guru thinks it may possibly be cellular algea, but still no results. we have taken the carbon filtration out while treating but left the bio filter in to support the fish. Any Ideas?

this tank has a back and sponge filter.
the water tested at: 0 amo
0 nitrite
5ppm nitrate
7.2 pH

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum PPipanman. It sounds like you are describing a case of green water algae. It will not hurt the fish so try not to think of it as a crisis. The best way that I have found to deal with green water is to reduce the time that the lights in my tanks are on and to reduce the rate that I feed the fish. If the tank is getting direct sunlight, you need to try to protect the water from that direct sunlight completely. The green water algae need both light and nutrients to survive in the tank so if you reduce both it will gradually die back. Another useful thing to do, if you can find them, is to add some daphnia to the tank's water. Live daphnia are sometimes sold as fish food. Daphnia feed on green water and will consume it rather quickly until the water is clear enough for the fish to find the daphnia. At that point the daphnia will become fish food, but it would jump start the process..

 

[ppipanman]

thanks for the great tip! could you tell me where to find daphnia? and what they are? thanks old man

 

[OldMan47]

They are small, very small, crustaceans. They may or may not be available at your local fish store as food. I have seen many people in the UK refer to them as a readily available foods source there. In the area where I live in the US, they are only available frozen and won't help much with water quality. Another name you may see with them is moina. That is a smaller than usual form of daphnia. Daphnia is a name applied to several dozen slightly different crustaceans that are fairly common in freshwater environments including in temperate zones. I happen to have some daphnia that are about 1 mm in size and are a great source of live food for a treat for my fish. My source was another hobbyist who was at our club's meeting to give a talk in November. Another common name for daphnia is water fleas. The best food for a culture of daphnia is green water, hence my suggestion if you have a good source of daphnia. If you can find a local club, chances are one or more of the club members will have a daphnia culture like mine and can get you set up with some. There is a bit of information about them here http/www.caudata.org/daphnia/#cult1