Hi all, please excuse the long explainations here but it's all info we need.
So I noticed a few days ago that some if my fish had the weird flukey things again and it prompted me to test my water. I had this in my fish a good 18 months ago and no-one seemed to know what they were. I even photographed them and my lfs sent the images to one of their contacts at a fish medicine lab ... nothing came back. They were treated for fish lice, flukes, and pretty much everything external known to the hobby but nothing got rid of them.
It was soon after that I lost the will with the hobby. My tank was blanketed in BBA, my fish were lethargic with these weird flukey things and I was close to giving up for good. It was then that the lovely guy at MA told me about phosphates. I got my phosphate tested and it was off the scale. But where was it coming from? I armed myself with my own po4 test kit and tested my tank again followed by my tap water. I was horrified to find my tap water read in excess of 1.2ppm for po4. After much deliberation it was decided that the best option was to start running a phosphate remover as I live in a first floor flat, my car is 25 metres away and I've got joint and muscle problems. All this meant RO wasn't really an option and so I bought a po4 remover.
At first I tried the JBL one. It was orange in colour and went into the filter. It did very little to my readings for po4. Then my lfs gave me a sample bag of a NTLabs po4 remover and this was white .... it did the trick. After much chatting on another forum I learned removers come in differing types. One is iron based (the orange coloured type) and the other is Aluminium based (that's the white one)
After a while of running the remover and getting my po4 down to a safe level I noticed the weird flukey things just disappeared. The fish were more energetic too. I got the SAE's to eat the BBA and all was great.
Now fast forward to this week, I've spotted the weird flukey things so I tested my tank. The po4 is reading at the top end of the scale again. I was cleaning a filter anyway so I add a fresh bag of the remover. Come forward two days and I re-test and the po4 hasn't moved at all.
I've just tested my tap water again and it's even higher than it was 18 months ago. I don't stand a chance.
Here's what I got. The bottle on the left is the tap, the bottle on the right is the tank
the kit card reader
So, it looks like I'm going to have to add a second dose of the remover. I don't want my fish to be ill and I certainly don't want the BBA back.
So basicly I'm here to ask for some help. Can anyone suggest a better option? Is there anything new on the market that I've not heard of. Can anyone come up with a sensible solution. What I need is something to add to my buckets on water change day to remove it before it's even added to my tank!
I can see if I can't get this back under control I'm going to have to turn to RO and just buy it in small amounts ... I'm really at a loss now
So I noticed a few days ago that some if my fish had the weird flukey things again and it prompted me to test my water. I had this in my fish a good 18 months ago and no-one seemed to know what they were. I even photographed them and my lfs sent the images to one of their contacts at a fish medicine lab ... nothing came back. They were treated for fish lice, flukes, and pretty much everything external known to the hobby but nothing got rid of them.
It was soon after that I lost the will with the hobby. My tank was blanketed in BBA, my fish were lethargic with these weird flukey things and I was close to giving up for good. It was then that the lovely guy at MA told me about phosphates. I got my phosphate tested and it was off the scale. But where was it coming from? I armed myself with my own po4 test kit and tested my tank again followed by my tap water. I was horrified to find my tap water read in excess of 1.2ppm for po4. After much deliberation it was decided that the best option was to start running a phosphate remover as I live in a first floor flat, my car is 25 metres away and I've got joint and muscle problems. All this meant RO wasn't really an option and so I bought a po4 remover.
At first I tried the JBL one. It was orange in colour and went into the filter. It did very little to my readings for po4. Then my lfs gave me a sample bag of a NTLabs po4 remover and this was white .... it did the trick. After much chatting on another forum I learned removers come in differing types. One is iron based (the orange coloured type) and the other is Aluminium based (that's the white one)
After a while of running the remover and getting my po4 down to a safe level I noticed the weird flukey things just disappeared. The fish were more energetic too. I got the SAE's to eat the BBA and all was great.
Now fast forward to this week, I've spotted the weird flukey things so I tested my tank. The po4 is reading at the top end of the scale again. I was cleaning a filter anyway so I add a fresh bag of the remover. Come forward two days and I re-test and the po4 hasn't moved at all.
I've just tested my tap water again and it's even higher than it was 18 months ago. I don't stand a chance.
Here's what I got. The bottle on the left is the tap, the bottle on the right is the tank
the kit card reader
So, it looks like I'm going to have to add a second dose of the remover. I don't want my fish to be ill and I certainly don't want the BBA back.
So basicly I'm here to ask for some help. Can anyone suggest a better option? Is there anything new on the market that I've not heard of. Can anyone come up with a sensible solution. What I need is something to add to my buckets on water change day to remove it before it's even added to my tank!
I can see if I can't get this back under control I'm going to have to turn to RO and just buy it in small amounts ... I'm really at a loss now