Green Cloudy Water

[julibob]

My tank is about 2 months old now, with readings of:

0 ammonia
0 nitrites
5 nitrates
Ph 8.2

Just after the tank had finished cycling with hardy fish, I had an outbreak of whitespot and treated sucessfully with Protozoin, but the water went a bit cloudy. I waited a couple of weeks, did a 30% water change, removed the cycling fish, added a second filter (eheim ecco 2236) and added my new fish (malawi cichlids). My water started to go cloudy again (I thought it was a bacterial bloom), but now it is really cloudy with a lovely pea green tinge to it The fish are fine, and the paramaters are fine, but I am not sure how to deal with it. I have carbon in both filters at the moment, and have added a very fine wool to the eheim filter to try and sort the problem, but it hasnt worked!! I didnt want to do any more water changes as I thought it would make things worse.

What should I do??

My tank is currently well planted with vallis and anubias and I have sand as a substrate which has been well washed.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Its most likely an algae bloom, do a 50% water change with dechlorinator right now and keep the tank lights off for longer more often and keep doing regular water changes over the next couple of weeks, if the tank has lots of direct sunlight shining on it from a window try to reduce the amount of sunlight the tank receives and it should disapear

 

[julibob]

Here is a piccie of the water. The tank gets no direct sunlight at all. Will do a water change now.

 

[Purplesmurf]

http/www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/algae/green.shtm

Nice labs

 

[One_Trick_Pony]

the backout meyhod has just worked veru well for me with a cuple of large water cahnges on the two days afterwards

 

[rdd1952]

A UV Sterilizer will clear it up but it will also clear up over time (3 or 4 weeks) Water changes won't do much other than make it a little easier to see your fish. Actually, green water is fine for your fish and won't harm them at all, it just looks bad. Here is a thread I started a while back about using one on my tanks.

 

[One_Trick_Pony]

uv sterilizers are quite expesnive tho!

 

[rdd1952]

uv sterilizers are quite expesnive tho!

I bought mine from here (the Turbo Twist 3X) and they have actually come down. I paid $79.99. Someone posted recently saying they had found them for a little less but I can't remember where. Also, besides clearing green water, they will kill Ich (or any other bacteria) that is free floating in the water. And for those that will wonder, they will not harm the beneficial bacteria since, unlike bacteria like Ich, beneficial bacteria are not present in the water column.

 

[Squirrelbuddies]

You could try testing your tank water for phosphate. I had to treat one of my tanks for velvet and the treatment killed most of the algae living on the rocks, gravel, plants, etc as well as kill a few of my vals and swords. The decaying plant matter and dead algae created a huge bioload and sent the phosphate level off the chart (over 10.0 ppm)! This in turn created an algae bloom and I had that lovely green water.

I removed any plant that even remotely looked ill and did many gravel vacs and many partial water changes. I also bought a phosphate remover --little white balls you put in a bag which goes in your filter compartment. It helped to remove some of the phosphate.

It took several weeks, but I finally got the phosphate back to tap water level and my water became clear again.

Not sure if that's your problem - but something to consider. It only cost me the price of the phosphate stuff (about $5) and a lot of patience!