Help me theorize about my cloudy water/fish behaviour

[Miles]

Hopefully nothing from the DIY is leeching..

The reason I mentioned Heat is because although 84 degrees is not to extreme, it increases the metabolism of all the organisms in the tank.. This includes heterotrophic bacteria that breaks down solid wastes (uneated food, potatos, prawns).. It also speeds up the metabolism of all your fish, like a messy oscar, to produce more ammonia.

Often times fish won't eat with poor water quality..

It just seems weird, like you said. you should expect ammonia or nitrite for this cloudiness, and all the signs of a bacterial bloom are there, just not the water tests..


I dunno..

 

[cvermeulen]

yeah I dunno. I'll test it again tonight after work. I'd think if anything though, the bloom would last a shorter time in high temp water... it's been over a week now though. The only time I saw this bad of a bloom was when I was first cycling.

Something else interesting to note - the oscar and my aro are both not eating... however, my BGK and ally my clown loaches are acting normal, the goldfish is acting normal (no surprise there). My large gibby has been hiding a lot, but he's been hiding progressively more and more for weeks, so I don't think that's related - he still comes out and makes a mess of my tank when he eats, so I'm pretty sure he's OK.

I also have in there a blue acara, L052, and an ACF that are not displaying any strange signs. Just the two big carnivores. In fact, since the oscar has been sulking, all my loaches are out and happily swimming about.

 

[Miles]

O and Aro eat feeders?

 

[cvermeulen]

Nope. I fed the oscar feeders once, and he immediately started eating tankmates, so I stopped. The aro never seemed interested in feeders. Normally the O and aro will get pretty violent at feeding time and snatch whatever food I give them out of my hand. I WAS feeding them frozen krill, but I ran out a while ago. The oscar also used to eat basically anything I put in there. Now he's not interested in earthworms, bloodworms, brine shrimp, or pellets anymore. He will eat little red ramshorn snails if I drop them in, but that's it.

 

[duke33]

I'm having a tank doing something simular. Doing the same things....Hoping it will take care of its self????

 

[Mystix212]

Why do you have goldfish at a set 80F temp?

 

[Nova 8]

I had a problem with my tank for ages with a cloudness in the water, it just popped up after feeding watermelon (stupid, but the pleco loved it). I did WCs 3-7 times a week and upto 90% for ages and it didn't clear up, the water prams were great before/during/after all the WC's. I was about to colapse the tank and start agin when a friend said to add an additional canister filter with only filter pads/wool and the aquarium cleared up. So maybe you don't have enough mech filtration. The reason I didn't think of that was it was a haze not large particals.

 

[cvermeulen]

Why do you have goldfish at a set 80F temp?

Long story.

 

[cvermeulen]

I had a problem with my tank for ages with a cloudness in the water, it just popped up after feeding watermelon (stupid, but the pleco loved it). I did WCs 3-7 times a week and upto 90% for ages and it didn't clear up, the water prams were great before/during/after all the WC's. I was about to colapse the tank and start agin when a friend said to add an additional canister filter with only filter pads/wool and the aquarium cleared up. So maybe you don't have enough mech filtration. The reason I didn't think of that was it was a haze not large particals.

Well I'm running the water at 2000gph through a 50 micron filter, and I have an fx5 with polishing pads in it. It IS improving, however I made another discovery tonight...

The oscar is still not eating, and the aro is being pretty picky about what/when he will eat, so something is wrong. I did a pH test (yes, I should have done one earlier) and the pH is around 6. My tap water is neutral, and I just did a 60% w/c, so either the water was brutally acidic beforehand, or something in the tank is causing the pH to drop rapidly. I've never had a problem with the pH in this tank before, so I'm not sure what the deal is. Any Thoughts?

 

[cvermeulen]

oh and everything else is well within normal. Ammonia and nitrite are 0, nitrate is under 10, and GH is around 20. I tried two different test kits to be sure. PH was off the bottom of the scale on the quick dip strip, and piss yellow with the hagen test kit.