Icky Smell, White Coating On Filter, And Slimy Stuff?

[Winterlily]

Well yuk. Every time I open the hood, I get hit with this icky stagnant water (swamp-like) smell. I've got cloudy slime on all the glass, and now a thin white coating on the filter intake thing and also where it puts the water back into the tank. My ammonia continues to be 0, but I continue battling my nitrites, which are generally 1.0. I'm doing big water changes every about 3 hours to keep them down to .25 or under. (They rise right back up, fairly fast.)

?? Is this smell, slime, and white stuff from the bacteria that I want? Or is something else going on? In another thread about the slime, I found out it was okay for me to clean the slime, but what about the white stuff on the filter? I'm so hesitant to disturb that cycling filter! And what of the smell?? Just ride it out? Will it go away once the cycle is complete?

FYI: It's a 3 gallon Eclipse with just 1 male Betta in. Also, our water is very hard so not sure if the white stuff on the filter is the beginnings of mineral build-up?

Thanks!

 

[waterdrop]

New tanks do all sorts of weird stuff, partly because they're new and partly because of the cycling. Nearly all of this is stuff that will just go away after some time, so I think that's always a good starting point for your thinking.

In my experience there's usually nothing wrong with cleaning anything you want to clean outside of the inside of the filter. As long as you leave your media and the inside of your filter pretty much alone during cycling, you're free to take actions with other things. You can turn the filter off, take it to a sink and wipe down all the "outsides" you can get at. You can sponge clean the inside glass. You can gravel-clean-water-change. Let's see, what else? Well, I wouldn't try to give your betta a clean, they tend to get a little huffy about that.

Actually, if all that doesn't help enough, since you are doing a long slow fish-in cycle with just the betta, I might even be tempted to gently clean your filter media in tank water. Although we generally don't do that during cycling because the colonies are more fragile, if you've got a pretty clogged small filter then we might change our mind. The beneficial bateria we're dealing with tend to attach and cling quite toughly to their media and even if a media squeeze-out did set your cycle back a day or two, it might actually bounce back and be faster after that.. and it'd be great if it inproved your feeling about your tank.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Winterlily]

Thanks so much, waterdrop. I did indeed get a sponge thingy and cleaned the inside of the glass (I left everything else alone for now) just before a water change - I really wanted to be able to see in and him to see out! Looks ever SO much better now.

I did leave Roo (the betta) alone though - no cleaning him, no.

That filter was smelling in a major way, and I DID take the cartridge out and swish it around gently in some of the tank water that I removed during the water change. The smell went away for a bit (is back now, just this morning #$%^) but the BEST thing is the verrrry next day (yesterday) after swishing the filter out, the nitrites dropped! Went from a really clear 1.0 to a negligible .25! Yeah!! Was like that most of the day and is still that way as of this morning's test. Not sure if it was related or not, but it makes me verrrry happy.

Thanks!

Samantha