Update: Aquarium Water Green

[Sean W.]

My mom has an eclipse 30 gallon tank, and her water is green, its pretty thick too, not just a slight tint of green, and no matter how many water changes i do it doesnt go away, i cannot for the life of me get her water to be crystal clear like the rest of the tanks in my house are. dont get me wrong, her tank is healthy, fish grow in her tank faster than ive ever heard of, she got 2 baby clwon loaches like a month ago and they are already 3 inches long, she has a cory cat fish that is just over 2 3/4 inches, she has 2 guromies that are well over 4 inches. so her water isnt unhealthy, its just green, i give up, so i come to you guys, ive tried everything i can think of, any ideas to get her water clear?

Thanks

 

[Curiosity101]

Aglae bloom, caused by ammonia in the water and too much light (or natural light). You can go for a full black out for a couple of day...or if you have live plants then just keep doing regular water changes.

Eventually the ammonia spike will subside along with the algae bloom.

What are the water stats?

 

[Sean W.]

Aglae bloom, caused by ammonia in the water and too much light (or natural light). You can go for a full black out for a couple of day...or if you have live plants then just keep doing regular water changes.

Eventually the ammonia spike will subside along with the algae bloom.

What are the water stats?

its been like this for atleast 5 months...


Ammonia: .025
PH: 7.6

 

[Curiosity101]

Hmm...then can you give me the following info?

Fully stocking list (inc rough guestimates on sizes)
Filter make and model
General tank maintenance routine (% water change, how often, gravel vac etc etc)

With a persistent algae bloom I'd guess there has been consistent ammonia.
Possible causes...
Filter cannot hold enough bacteria to process all of the ammonia fast enough
Filter never got properly cycled before more fish have been added
Cleaning + water change routine isn't quite up to par
Fish are being consistently over fed and the extra food is rotting

 

[Sean W.]

Hmm...then can you give me the following info?

Fully stocking list (inc rough guestimates on sizes)
Filter make and model
General tank maintenance routine (% water change, how often, gravel vac etc etc)

With a persistent algae bloom I'd guess there has been consistent ammonia.
Possible causes...
Filter cannot hold enough bacteria to process all of the ammonia fast enough
Filter never got properly cycled before more fish have been added
Cleaning + water change routine isn't quite up to par
Fish are being consistently over fed and the extra food is rotting

she has a grip of fish....

2 cory cats
2 albiona cory cats
2 clown loaches
1 khuli loach
2 blue guoaries
1 discus
2 sicsor tail fish
8 neon tetra
6 rummy nose
2 bala sharks
4 unkown (idk the names, kinda look like perana.. but they arnt )

the last thing you said makes sense, over feeding, she feeds them twice a day...

 

[Forestpisces]

Sounds overstocked to me.

The ammonia will be causing the algae, any detectable trace of ammonia is very bad for your fish, ammonia and nitrites should always be 0ppm

 

[drobbyb]

Way overstocked! There is your problem then. The filter simply cannot cope with all the ammonia resulting in a green water situation. To fix this you will need to convince her to get rid of some of her fish (note: clown loaches get to a foot long and are only suitable to tanks 75 gallons or greater).

 

[Curiosity101]

Agreed with the above. That tank is very overstocked. I would make an educated guess that the persistent ammonia is because the filter just can't cope with the amount of fish waste produced.

There are only two ways to solve this:
Buy a secondary filter

or Re-home some fish.

The following fish are unsuitable for that tank and so are all perfect candidates for re-homing. And I would really really recommend getting them ALL re-homed.
2 clown loaches
1 discus
2 bala sharks
4 unkown (Are these silver dollars by any chance?)

 

[Sean W.]

no they arnt silver dollars... im not sure what they are, i think they might be spider tetras... i dunno tho..

 

[Curiosity101]

Picture of the unknown fish would give someone a chance to ID them. How big are they? If they're only tetra sized are they...
Bleeding heart tetra
Buenos aires Tetra
Sepae tetra?

Can you give us a desc, including shape, colour, fin colour etc.

And what do you think about re-homing the rest?
2 clown loaches
1 discus
2 bala sharks

I can't stress enough how unsuitable that tank is for them. It will, without any doubt, lead to premature deaths.

 

[Sean W.]

the only other tanks in the house are my 10 gallon tank, my moms 10 gallon hospital tank and my 2 gallon hospital tank...

ill take pictures tomorrow and post them...

 

[Curiosity101]

Well then the fish listed above need re-homing or taking to your lfs. It is very unfair (to say the least) to keep them in that tank any longer.

You could just describe it by the way, just answer the following questions...

Body Size
Body Shape
Body Colour
Fin Colour
Any Markings
Roughly how old you think they are

Pretty sure we can work out what it is from there, even without a pic.

 

[Sean W.]

silver dollar size
kinda like a... fish... haha
gray, and its back fin is black
they are about... 2 years old

it looks like this...

my amazing skilz with paint

 

[Curiosity101]

Silver dollar sized?

As in the same shape and about 20cm from head to tail?

Or Silver dollar as in the american currency?

 

[Sean W.]

American currency