Cloudy Water

[hopitee]

Hi all,

We've had our coldwater tank set up since the end of january and had a couple of goldfish, a few danios and a sucker loach(cant remember the name) and all was fine. Recently the sucker started to go after the goldfish so we moved him to my tank which has been fine. Since then though, the water in the original tank has clouded up really badly with the fish almost gasping at the surface for air. We've done regular water changes and to try and control it over the last couple of days have done a change every day. We did not realise but the filter had carbon in which also says it reduces ammonia and have since replaced it. Would this have caused the problem with the water i.e. as it ran out or can someone think of another problem?

What should we do?

Thanks
ollie

 

[kelvinrankin767]

carbon is only there to remove meds or tannis, does not affect water stats whatsoever usually if the fish are gasping for air they are not getting enough oxygen have you got a air pump? or position you filter above the water surface to adagitate the surface and airate the water keep doing water changes but make sure to use dechlonartor to remove the clorine from the water.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Hopitee.
You have removed a great deal of the biological filter if you removed your existing carbon all at once. Now, whatever biofilter remains is trying valiantly to get caught back up with the fish load in the tank. You are correct to do huge water changes, you are now the filter, until your remaining bacterial colony can catch up with your fish stocking level. If you also changed the rest of the filter media, you will be doing big water changes for over a month.
I have a link in my signature area to an article about doing a fish-in cycle. Please go there and read up on your present situation.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, this is correct, the bed of carbon will have been home to a large amount of the two bacterial species that comprise the biofilter. It doesn't matter that carbon's forte is being a chemical media to remove medications, tannins or odors, it still has a very large surface area for the bacteria.

Have you got a liquid-reagent based test kit? It will greatly help your Fish-In cycling situation if you have a kit to use. Many of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit. The goal of fish-in cycling is to figure out the percentage and frequency of water changes (using good technique) that will keep both your ammonia and nitrite(NO2) levels at or below 0.25ppm until you can be home again to test and change water again.

~~waterdrop~~