More bio media won't help with cloudiness or nitrate...a UV sterilizer and fine polish filter material will help with cloudy water.
Dats & Bioload?
- Thread starter Randall_Vee
- Start date
His filters should have a sponge in them if they are hang on filters or some kind of cartridge so UV and polishing material shouldn't be necessary. Maybe the bacteria in the tank got killed off so it's cycling again.
Do you use water conditioner when you water change? Do you rinse out the filter? What kind of substrate do you have?
I am - I use Prime. I also rinse out the media biweekly. The tank has no substrate so I know im not harboring any hidden sources that could be adding nitrate.
Ammonia and Nitrite are both at 0, Nitrate is still hovering at ~40ppm. My LFS recommended that I "overload" my canister and add extra media to it so I can supercharge the filtration system. Since starting the thread Ive been doing 50-60% water changes weekly and have been throwing in 2 capfuls of stability to help bolster my bacteria. I noticed one of my stable dats had a small wound on his head so I started treatment with melafix this week (Monday). After the first treatment he was looking much better.
But when I did my water change this week (Tuesday) I noticed that one of my dats had developed a white growth on its tail and began to act abnormal and eventually kicked the bucket after I completed the water change. I doubled down and started melafix and began pimafix.
All of my other fish seem okay but my most stable dat is breathing hard and his head wound seems to be worse now, I've also noticed was looks like a white growth on his side. Anyone have any thoughts or clue what could be going on? Any suggestions on what I should treat with? Im treating the whole tank just in case any of the other fish have caught what ever is causing this.
Ok prime is good but when you rinse your media out are you cleaning the sponge in the canister and ceramic media with tap water? If you are ..that right there kills off the bacteria you've built up in your filter. I never clean my ceramic media with tap water... I will use tank water in a bucket and clean all the bulky build up off of it. Doing it this way will help save a good chunk of bacteria. If your looking for more media for bacteria you should look into matrix and pack your canister with it. This should help out with the cloudy water issue. Your nitrate at 40ppm isn't the end of the world. When dealing with monster fish your going to always have some unless you do a drip system. If you want a extra hand controlling it you can look into using purigen by seachem. Now to the wound issues and white growths... your dats could be suffering from a bacterial infection and the white stuff could be a secondary infection that's fungal. Melafix and pimafix will work if they are suffering from them. Using salt to will help them. Other thing that could be making the dat breath hard is gill glukes/parasites. Any pics or video of them?
Well they're done. I've lost all three of my dats - they were all actually bigger than I estimated. The smallest was about 5" and the biggest was 7".
They all passed last week, after checking the parameters post death I was at 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and ~40ppm with the nitrate.
I ended up doing a huge water change last night and gave all my filter media a good cleaning; I added about 2 liters of matrix to my canister and about 500ml of denitrate to the media already in my canister.
I'm going to maintain the stock I have now (bichirs & sydontis) and contemplate where I want to go with the hobby. Thanks for the help everyone!
They all passed last week, after checking the parameters post death I was at 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and ~40ppm with the nitrate.
I ended up doing a huge water change last night and gave all my filter media a good cleaning; I added about 2 liters of matrix to my canister and about 500ml of denitrate to the media already in my canister.
I'm going to maintain the stock I have now (bichirs & sydontis) and contemplate where I want to go with the hobby. Thanks for the help everyone!
The cloudiness could be a bacteria bloom which could come from a dramatic water change if you do too large a change at once with a bacteria colony that isn't well established. If you put a sponge on your intake as a prefilter and some finer mechanical filtration in your filter and it doesn't clear up noticeably within a day a bloom is likely.
I believe Funwow mentioned being sure to dechloronate your water on large changes. Faster is better and treating before the new water even reaches the tank is ideal, it doesn't take too long for chlorine to damage bacteria colonies if you wait to dechloronate until the end of a large water change.
You should not be rinsing and cleaning your filter that often. The only thing that should be replaced in your filter are is the filter floss and carbon if you use any. You’re are killing you’re beneficial bacteria everytime you “clean” your filter. That’s why you are having a bloom and that’s why you’re nitrates are so high
