Debris in the water

[Guest132675]

Hi, I've had trouble with floating debris in the water since day 1 many years ago. I even got a new filter, an Eheim Classic 2260, which is more than enough for my 540l/120gallon. I've tried fixing the flow in the aquarium, putting in wavemakers and putting in a ton of filter watt. Someone please help! I do 20-30% waterchanges every week. What could contribute to the problem I guess is that I have a lot of bottomdwellers such as loaches and plecs and they could stir up the mulm a bit. Any advice on how I can fix this?

 

[Colin_T]

Can you post a picture of the tank showing the dirty water? Show the entire tank so we can see where the filter intake/ return pipes are, and show a close up of the water so we can see what the gunk is.

What media/ materials do you have in the filter?
How often do you clean the filter and how do you clean it?

How often do you feed the fish and what do you feed them?
What fish do you have and how many of each?

What sort of substrate do you have?
Do you gravel clean the substrate?
If yes, how often do you do it?

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If your filter intake is high up in the tank, try lowering it down a bit to help pick up the gunk on the bottom.

Have the filter outlet at the opposite end of the tank to the intake strainer. This will help push dirty water towards the filter intake.

Have a sponge in the filter and put a layer of filter floss/ Dacron in the filter to trap fine materials.

Clean the filter at least once a month and every 2 weeks is better. Wash filter media in a bucket of tank water.

If you just have gravel on the bottom of the tank, make sure you gravel clean it every time you do a water change.

Do bigger water changes. I recommend doing a 75% water change and gravel clean every week.

If you are feeding a lot of dry food that sinks to the bottom of the tank, reduce the amount of food you put in. Try using more frozen food. If you have lots of algae eaters, increase the lighting time on the tank to encourage algae to grow on the glass and ornaments. This will provide extra food to the algae eaters and reduce the amount of dry food you need to add.

 

[Guest132675]

Hi, thank you for your thoughtful response. After troubleshooting on the issue before I moved the intake and output pipes to the same side of the tank. I've also tried to move the intake around a bit, and it's currently just in a temporary solution. The filter has two coarse pads at the bottom, followed by filter floss and then a lot of biomedia.

I clean the filter about every 2 months, but the issue has always been here, even with the previous filter. I guess I could try doing it more often, but I've been told that many do it only every 6months without issues.

I mainly feed discus granules, but also pellets and flakes on occasion. It's usually eaten up within a few minutes. As for the fishes I have:

15 clown loaches (7-10cm)
2 hoplosternum (15cm)
5 cardinal tetra
4 plecs (5-10cm)
2 upside down catfish (7cm)
2 big and 3 small angelfish that I recently got

A couple of months ago I reset my tank and replaced the sand with soil capped with sand. This also caused huge prolonged bacterial bloom, but water values are perfect. A bit of the bloom is still left. I vacuum just above the sand and between the plants with every water change, but some of the mulm gets stuck between rocks, making it harder to get to.

I only do small water changes as I only have cold water to work with, and heating it is a lot of work for such a big tank. Would doing a 20% twice a week help? Thanks for the tip with the food and algae, I'll try that!

The lights are currently off in the tank, but I'll post pics tomorrow. Also the debris problem is really up and down. Sometimes it's a lot worse, other times not very much. Thanks again!

 

[Colin_T]

The catfish and loaches will possibly be contributing to the issue by digging in the dirt. There's not much you can do about that.

A big water change will make more difference than a couple of small ones. If you get a couple of large buckets/ plastic rubbish bin/ storage container, you can fill them with tap water and dechlorinator, add an airstone and let it bubble away. Boil some water and add the boiled water to the container to increase the temperature a bit. Alternatively just use warm water from the tap.

Does the water look milky cloudy or green cloudy?
Milky cloudy is caused by bacteria eating fish food. Green cloudy is single celled algae.

 

[Guest132675]

I'll try doing bigger water changes. The loaches digging is probably an issue, but the debris problem lasted years before I put dirt in my tank.The water has been milky, likely from the organics released by the soil, but it's clearing up nicely now. Here are some pics. It's kinda hard for the camera to see the debris, but it's like white-ish dust floating around everywhere.

 

[Colin_T]

it's probably from the sand or the stuff under the sand. try bigger water changes and see what happens.

 

[Guest132675]

Ok I will. Thanks!