It smells funny.....

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fishmamma

fishmamma

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 17, 2009
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San Antonio, TX, it gets effing hot here.. but I l
Ok, this past Friday I set up a 10gal for 3 blue crays that I knew I was going to getting Saturday morning. Ok, all is set up and the crays are living in there new home, this morning I noticed the water was a little cloudy. So I took a look inside just to check that everyone was ok and it had this FISHY smell and not really the good kind. It's not so overpowering that I makes you make a funny face but when you get near the water it just smells funky. I went ahead and tested the water and the only thing that seem to be off was the Ph, it was at 6.8 so I did a little water change about 25% and it still smells a little funky. Anyone out there know what's going on, please give me a heads up. :confused:
 
Ph, being off, I assume it went down. This happens when you run out of buffering capacity in your water.

What is your nitrates and buffer at?

Basically fishy smells means you need to do a water change, and up your filtration or lower the amount you eat. Crawfish will dirty the water quick, if they're eating fish..

More info needed to help futher.
 
Keep in mind that im still very new to this...... the nitrate tester indicates that it is at 0.25ppm and im sorry what is a buffer????? and also all i have given them to eat are shrimp pellets, how many should I give them a day????
 
Unless you've used an established filter or a BB supplement your tank has not established a nitrogen cycle yet and the cloudiness is probably a bacterial or fungal bloom.

If your setup is completely new you would need to read the various tank cycling threads and a water test kit preferably API with liquid reagents to test your water and see how the cycle is going. Essentially ammonia which is produced by the waste of the crays is building up which is bad for them as ammonia is toxic, so if nothing is done your probably going to lose some if not all of the crays and even if they do survive they will not be as healthy as they could have been.

If the tank has a fully cycled filter it could be that the bacteria level needs time to catch up.
 
Thank you, I did test and ammonia is not the problem so hopefully it's only that the filtering sysem needs to catch up as you said. And yes all the equipment was all brand new........ it had only cycled about 12 hours before i put them in. Wish me luck I will do my best.
 
12 hours is nowhere near a cycle unless you have established media or use a bacteria supplement.

If done naturally from scratch a cycle can take almost a month.
 
sometimes even longer than a month depending on how well you follow the "rules"
 
Neophyte;3035568; said:
12 hours is nowhere near a cycle unless you have established media or use a bacteria supplement.

If done naturally from scratch a cycle can take almost a month.
Click to expand...

So far I have used AquaSafe for tap water and EasyBalance....is that ok??? Do i need to use something else?????
 
Aqua safe binds chlorine and chloramines to make them safe for fish and should be used when introducing new water to the tank i.e. water changes.

Easy balance is supposed to help stabalize water parameters (I haven't used it so don't know how well it works) and wouldn't do anything for starting up beneficial bacteria.

At this point you could get something like Cycle or Bio-Spira to help establish the bacteria and if either works the way it is supposed to you should be all set or you can do restricted feedings and constant water changes to keep ammonia and nitrite from getting to deadly levels.

In the mean time just so you understand as much of this as possible try to read everything you can find about cycling a tank and the nitrogen cycle.
 
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