Seachem Matrix nightmare

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Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Nov 17, 2009
1,086
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Syracuse, NY
I have read all of the raves about seachem matrix and in an attempt to boost my biological bacterial filtration I have purchased some and put about 1.5 liters of it into my HOB filter for my 55gal tank.

The water got cloudy despite the fact that I rinsed the seachem matrix rather well. I also noticed that my PH dropped sharply to about 6 I did a 50% water change and added a ph balancer to it.

Sadly my 2 tiny ciclid fry were found dead in the morning. I changed 50% of the water again, and read my water levels, I have very hard water out of the tap, but otherwise my amonia, nitrite, nitrate were all at zero or close to zero.

I added another HOB filter with activated carbon and did a third 50% water change. Still the cloudy water persists. I have never had this problem before in my tanks and I am very careful not to let any food remain at feeding time, whats going on??

I was wondering if it has something to do with the tap water here, its been raining constantly everyday here for almost two weeks and im pretty sure that the water is supplied from a local lake reservoir. could it have something to do with that?

I also noticed that my cichlids started to get red coloration at the beginning of their fins. the "joint" of the fins. Im doing everything that I know, stress-coat, aquarium salt, minimal food. whats going on?
 
Ehhh sounds like high ammonia.
Are you soppose to put it directly in your filter like that? What im guessing is you killed/ starved all your good bacteria in the tank. You probably have high nitrites and ammonia which cause something to bloom clouding the water. Continue with the 50% water changes everyother day until the your bacterias can regular themselfs again.
This is just an educated guess though.
Dont use Ph balancers, A steady Ph is better than one the flucuates.
 
your tank isnt cycled!!!!
you should never have a ammonia reading or a nitrite reading both should always be at zero
and nitrate never reaching above 40
you doing water changes is only going to prolong the cycle
 
IF your ph is 6 and you used something to make it 7 that is 10x less acidic, its not that less acidic is bad but a shift of 10 times the ph that fast is really stressful. I kept fish in <6 all the time until I found coral to keep in the tank. As mentioned above stable is better and cheaper then adding chems, if you want it balanced get some natural buffering. Without coral my tanks hit below 6 all the time, with coral I am rock solid at 7.3. When I say coral I am talking about marine rock that is comprised of dead coral.

pauly187;4222252; said:
your tank isnt cycled!!!!
you should never have a ammonia reading or a nitrite reading both should always be at zero
and nitrate never reaching above 40
you doing water changes is only going to prolong the cycle
Click to expand...

#1 matrix is some good stuff inexpensive and has good surface area, can be used any where. I have some along with lava rocks no problems, and I never ever washed it.

#2 When I was a noob and not a beginner like I am now, I killed a lot of fish with ammonia, same symptoms right down to the red fins.

#3 I have mixed feelings about water changes prolonging a cycle, I used to think that they did prolong it; but I have heard some interesting thoughts on it.

You don't have to have 4ppm of ammonia to cycle a tank, so doing water changes keeps the ammonia and nitrate lower which is better for the fish. The thing about bio filters is not how many ppm the water currently is that they can filter, its how many ppm per day they can filter vs how much is added.

So for example if day one you at 2ppm and 3 your at 4ppm you or filter only needs to filter 1 ppm per day. If you kept up the water changes, as long as there is >> ANY << ammonia the bacteria will continue to grow. So they will keep growing until the is no more food, its not the amount of food that determines their growth rate.

However if your doing fishless cycle then by all means keep it as high as you can without halting the cycle. doing fishless you can get it cycling 4 or 6ppm per day, and be able to add pretty much a full tank at once.
 
It sounds like you did a 100% replacement of your old filter media when you started using Matrix. If so, then this is the source of your issue. You need to keep some of the old filter media because it is already populated with beneficial bacteria. If you take "all" of it out, you have, effectively, crashed your biological filter.

When migrating to a new biological filter media, the safest approach, depending on your bio-load, is to replace about 10%, wait a week, then keep repeating the process (10% then wait a week, 10% then wait a week, ...) until you've completely turned over the media.

When you do a 100% replacement, however, your tank will be exposed for a few weeks without any meaningful biological filtration. If you are in this situation and are in dire straights, immediately get Prime and Stability. Use per Seachems directions and don't be afraid to do daily water changes until you get things under control.

One other note: I used stress coat for about the last 10 years. It served it's purpose - admirably. Recently, however, I've switched to Seachem Prime. It smells awful, but, it works so well!!! It not only dechorinates/dechoromines (as does stress coat), but, it also renders ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate "inert" for up to 48 hours after dosing. Think of Prime as "Stress Coat +".
 
I made it a point to keep about half of the BB that was attached to the old media in the filter. My ammonia and nitrite levels are at zero right now and my nitrate is somewhere between zero and 10ppm right now. I also went to the LFS to get a second opinion of my water and they said that everything looks good.

Yesterday a strange thing happened. when I turned off the lights the fish started jumping and darting and two actually managed to jump out of the tank through the cracks( I was there to put them back) and as soon as I turned the light off they calmed back down. So reluctantly I left the lights on for them at night.

I am beginning to suspect that there is some sort of bacterial infestation going on in the tank. I spent a few hours reading things on this website and Im going to go get a medicinal treatment, see what happens.

I am no Noob at fishkeeping and I know that this is not new tank syndrome, or anything like it. I bought bottled spring water from walmart and filled half of the tank with it yesterday. Im running out of ideas here.
 
Do you treat your water to remove chlorine/chloramines? Perhaps your water supply had to be treated with more chemicals than usual. Our community water supply is off a river. After heavy rains, there is a noticeable increase in chlorine in our water. At close to flood stage, the river water pollutes the main holding tank, and we get notices not to use the tap water. Maybe your water source is like ours---heavy rains = more chemicals in the water....:(
 
I bought water from walmart, not sure the brand it came in a box three 1 gallon jugs per box. It had ammonia in it, likely from chloramine.
 
sounds like you had a ph crash which stressed your fish, did you add any buffering to the bottled water or any chemicals? if your water smells you have dead bacteria
 
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