I quit smoking for this? Incentive, cloudy water, second thoughts, regret.

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
pelleeklund;3180818; said:
Jake I just got done replacing my gravel. It was a huge pain in the ass. Dumb, really dumb. This time I made the effort to clean the whole batch. Anyway during the gravel change a ton of water was changed too so my parameters are almost tap-like. I dumped a bunch of aquasafe in there and the fish are maintaining, but it will probably take a bit for everything to regulate. New gravel looks good though, and everything, filter, pump etc have been cleaned out and are moving well.
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Check your water parameters every day now... You just removed a huge amount of beneficial bacteria from your tank.
 
What does a thorough check of my water parameters involve anyway? PH, Ammonia and what else? I only got the kits for those two and always assumed that that was good enough. Im trying to completely understand all the chemical levels that keep the fish alive. I know that they hate dish soap, and that my dish soap level should always be at 0.
 
hybridtheoryd16;3170187; said:
Well the first problem I see is your pump. It pushing 780 gallons per hour at zero head hieght. And you are more than likely only getting around 600gph after it pushes thru the filter and tubing. One thing you will hear alot about with keeping big tanks is turn over rate. And you have to match your tuen over rate to the type of filter you are running. With your canister type filter you need around a 7x turn over rate. And you have 600gph(pump) divided by 220g(tank) = 2.72 turn over rate. So you need to upgrade the pump to one that pushes around 1500-1700 gallons per hour. And then for the soot that you have from the gravel. That can be cleaned out by doing daily 50% water changes and vacuming the gravel with a python gravel vac. Also you could added a better filter material that would catch the soot that is in the water column. I would suggest polyester batting from a fabric store. It is cheap and you can pack it in afilter a little and it will catch very very small particles. And then for the PH. Test the ph of your water right at your sink. If it closely matches what is in your tank then its fine. Most all fish will adapt to a very wide ph and do fine. But using ph addatives will cause a ph swing which is deadly to alot of fish. And if there is a big difference between your tap and the tank water 24hrs after a water change then the gravel is more than likely at fault. And will need to be changed out. If you replace it, pea gravel from HD washed really well is a good cheap choice over aquarium store gravel.---------if you have any more questions feel free to pm me and i will try to help out.
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You always provide the best answers
 
Just keep in mind the basics.

PH, Ammonia, NitrIte, and NitrAte - You need to test for these.

Beneficial Bacteria will turn the Ammonia into NitrItes, then other beneficial bacteria will turn the NitrItes into NitrAtes. NitrAtes are why you do water changes in the first place (simply speaking). If your Ammonia or NitrItes are high and you have 0 NitrAtes, then your tank is not finished cycling. You should keep up with the water changes.
 
you might look into getting some seachem stability and seachem prime, I had a bacteria crash when setting up my 180 gal frontosa tank. the prime used with water changes will protect the fish and the stability will jump start your bacteria.
 
pelleeklund;3180849; said:
What does a thorough check of my water parameters involve anyway? PH, Ammonia and what else? I only got the kits for those two and always assumed that that was good enough. Im trying to completely understand all the chemical levels that keep the fish alive. I know that they hate dish soap, and that my dish soap level should always be at 0.
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Well basically Pharaoh said it all.
But ammonia is toxic to fish, and you will often notice burns and peeling off of the slime coat. Nitrites are also toxic to fish, but not as toxic. Usually if death will occur it will be from Brown Blood Disease.
Nitrates are not toxic to fish at standard levels (basically if you water change once and a while) and plants remove some nitrates as well. But it's suggested you keep them pretty low because high nitrates is low quality water.

Most likely if something is going wrong, you'll notice cloudy water. Suggesting an ammonia spike. The cloudy water is from bacteria that is feeding on the ammonia. Then after that you will notice a nitrite spike. The nitrates might shoot up a little bit after that.
Basically, as ammonia goes down, nitrite starts going up, and as nitrite starts going down, nitrate starts going up.
 
Jungle makes 6-in-1 test strips. They sell them everywhere you buy fish food. Go buy a bottle & that will be the easiest way to keep an eye on your levels. Once you start needing more accurate numbers, get a master test kit.
 
Thanks again for all the advice everyone. Ill get pictures up when everything looks really tight, its still too sloppy. The fish look healthy though and I am fired up about the new gravel. Its a lot darker, autumn red landscape stone that looks almost purple/black. Ill try to get a good shot of the Peacock Bass and maybe someone could tell me which type it is. I hear thats hard to do.
 
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