My Water Is Doing Some Weird Things

[Arei]

I'm reversing all the good I've been doing by trying to switch over to RO water because I'm having to do so many water changes!

My tank is planted, and normally is crystal clear without much to do. I change 30% of the water weekly, and rinse the filter sponges of debris in a bucket of tank water (and clean out any filter gunk) maybe every 3 w/cs.

Since my last WC on Friday, I've noticed my tank having a bit of white cloudiness to it, like a bacterial bloom. But it's not getting any better. Now there is some white residue that has stuck to the glass. It was just getting bad last night (after I had made the large 30% change) and I found that I had missed a dead fish probably for a day.

My platies are showing the most stress, as well as my pleco. Before I found the dead fish I saw my ammonia had elevated to .50 Since then it's been back down to 0 but it's gone up to .25 again. I'm not missing anymore fish.

They were fine after I did another small change this morning and the water began to clear, but then in the past hour I've noticed the conditions deterorating down again and the fish going back to not looking well (hanging around the bottom mostly). My pleco is back to freaking out a bit too. I have no idea whats wrong! I added 1 healthy looking platy to my tank last Friday (same day as the change) and it's exhibited no signs of illness or anything (no water was put in the tank with it). It's acting the same as the rest of them and perks up after the water changes. Otherwise it had been well over a month since any other fish was added.

I am having to buy RO water and I cannot afford anymore this week so now I'm ruining my progress by doing all these WCs but they're NOT solving the problem? Ammonia is now between 0 and .25, nitrites are 0 and nitrate is 20.

The only other thing I did on Friday was switch out one of my filter media pieces (ammonia remover) I thought it might have been me not rinsing it off completely but if that were the case I figured it would've settled already... I've never heard of white dust like stuff settling on the glass in an aquarium either.

I have these in aquarium use wipes from Tetra and when I used them to wipe the glass, where my fingers had pressed the cloth to the glass were RED. That doesn't seem good >_>

Does anyone have any idea of what's going on? What should I do? Do I need to replace the water? I've added some melafix to help with the stress fungus appearing on a couple of platies, but this is driving me crazy. My tank reverts back to normal when I do a large change but after awhile it's back to this. I'm guessing something got in but I have no idea what it could be @_@ Please help me, if I need to do major tank maintenance I only have tomorrow to do it.


Also the water isn't very cloudy, it's slightly cloudy, but it's normally crystal clear.

 

[Uriel]

Bacterial bloom can cause a spike in your ammonia levels and all you can really do about this is more water changes and very good gravel vacumning.
Ammonia remover in filters has a finite capacity to absorb ammonia and as such needs to be switched out every so often with fresh. Personally i avoid such things as they can start to leech ammonia back into your aquarium once they are full.
Why have you switched to RO water. It is highly reccomended for marine as it removes all trace elements but for tropical fish tap water is better as these trace elements are used by your plants to grow. (Unless you have really bad tap water.)

 

[Arei]

I have REAAALLLLY bad tap water .___. It was causing all sorts of problems. After just one weekly 30% W/C my water was a million times better within a day and all the red algea/diatoms that had been making my tank look junky totally vanished. My fish seemed to be a lot happier with the softer water (aside from an obnoxious amount of phosphates the the hardness was off the charts) my plants look better too. It's just really nasty, the tap water that is, it even smells bad, so that causes an odor being in the fish tank. During the 2 weeks I added only RO water the odors totally vanished.

I was told after using straight RO for a month you could have 10-20% or so of the water you use to make changes with be tap water to add trace minerals. I've also seen a few products in LFSs that can be used to add trace minerals back into your water but I'll probably just stick with a little bit from the tap.

I'm having to use tap water to make these frequent changes right now while this is going on, I'm afraid I can't afford anymore RO water at the moment. I'm having to get it from a bring your own bottle place until I can afford the filter to go under the kitchen sink.


I switched the ammonia cartridge last Friday, the other one had been in there a month, the box says switch monthly.

I've had no ammonia readings with the cartridge so the fact it was able to jump a bit bothers me, but I also thought the decaying fish I didn't find for a day could've bumped it up to the .50 level.

 

[hillmar77]

I second that... There is very little advantage to using water that is stripped of it's minerals. You have to add a buffer to your tank or mix with tap water to acquire your Gh/Kh.

 

[Arei]

I will be using a buffer. It's advantageous in this situation because there's way too much phosphate and all around garbage in my tap water that it was causing more problems then using the RO water is. I'm really not keen on extra tank maintenance if it can be avoided by using different water. Well actually, I couldn't fix what problems the tap water alone caused by itself..

 

[roadmaster]

I'm reversing all the good I've been doing by trying to switch over to RO water because I'm having to do so many water changes!

My tank is planted, and normally is crystal clear without much to do. I change 30% of the water weekly, and rinse the filter sponges of debris in a bucket of tank water (and clean out any filter gunk) maybe every 3 w/cs.

Since my last WC on Friday, I've noticed my tank having a bit of white cloudiness to it, like a bacterial bloom. But it's not getting any better. Now there is some white residue that has stuck to the glass. It was just getting bad last night (after I had made the large 30% change) and I found that I had missed a dead fish probably for a day.

My platies are showing the most stress, as well as my pleco. Before I found the dead fish I saw my ammonia had elevated to .50 Since then it's been back down to 0 but it's gone up to .25 again. I'm not missing anymore fish.

They were fine after I did another small change this morning and the water began to clear, but then in the past hour I've noticed the conditions deterorating down again and the fish going back to not looking well (hanging around the bottom mostly). My pleco is back to freaking out a bit too. I have no idea whats wrong! I added 1 healthy looking platy to my tank last Friday (same day as the change) and it's exhibited no signs of illness or anything (no water was put in the tank with it). It's acting the same as the rest of them and perks up after the water changes. Otherwise it had been well over a month since any other fish was added.

I am having to buy RO water and I cannot afford anymore this week so now I'm ruining my progress by doing all these WCs but they're NOT solving the problem? Ammonia is now between 0 and .25, nitrites are 0 and nitrate is 20.

The only other thing I did on Friday was switch out one of my filter media pieces (ammonia remover) I thought it might have been me not rinsing it off completely but if that were the case I figured it would've settled already... I've never heard of white dust like stuff settling on the glass in an aquarium either.

I have these in aquarium use wipes from Tetra and when I used them to wipe the glass, where my fingers had pressed the cloth to the glass were RED. That doesn't seem good >_>

Does anyone have any idea of what's going on? What should I do? Do I need to replace the water? I've added some melafix to help with the stress fungus appearing on a couple of platies, but this is driving me crazy. My tank reverts back to normal when I do a large change but after awhile it's back to this. I'm guessing something got in but I have no idea what it could be @_@ Please help me, if I need to do major tank maintenance I only have tomorrow to do it.


Also the water isn't very cloudy, it's slightly cloudy, but it's normally crystal clear.

Reducing lighting period can help with algae problems.Cleaning glass each week will keep the glass clean, has nothing to do with the water.
Platy's prefer/need basic ,hard,alkaline water and will continue to do poorly with Soft water that R/O provides.
Reducing numbers of fish and amount of food offered, along with water changes will address ammonia along with vaccuming the substrate around plant's and will also lower nitrate levels.
Plant's will use large amount of nitrates,phosphate,pottasium as food for growth and can also utilize fish waste along with small amounts of ammonia.(add more plant's not ammonia removers)
I fear you are making things difficult for yourself and the fishes. Google (osmoregulatory functions of fishes). Sudden changes in hardness levels and resulting pH drop are quite stressful for fish.
Search ,,(water parameter's for livebearer's) Unless your water is undrinkable, then it along with dechlorinator is all that is needed for the majority of fishes.