Summer water issues - again...

[Lusus_Naturae]

We moved last year and we are now back in a city where I had previous water issues. The first time we lived here I thought the water issue I had experienced was simply the drought we were having that summer and that was it. Last summer when we had moved we had a worse drought, and a new water tower in the city, and I had no issues - but now I'm having issues again and we have no drought. So here it goes.

I have great water conditions normally, and the tank had been set up 2 years but it was moved last year to the new house. The water parameters are 0-0-10 on average. If I skip a water change it can bump to 0-0-20 or so. This is where I'm having a couple issues though. The tank looks great on days 4-7 after a water change, but the first three days it gets a slightly cloudy look to it, mostly seen when you look though the long side of it or up at the surface of the water from underneath. There seems to be dust particles on the surface at times, and about 4 days after the water change they go away. The bigger the water change the worse it is too. I guess it could be comparable to running hot water out of the tap when you have an older hot water heater and the water looks foggy for awhile. The parameters out of the tap are fine, so what's going on? This has only started to happen again this past month, in winter I never have issues, I also only use cold water for water changes. We have a new watertower in town and that took care of the old water issues we had years ago, but it's about 5 years old now so I don't think it's that. The city uses both chlorine and chloromine - mostly chloromine.

Is this something I can fix with letting water sit out during the week, or what? I use Prime as my water treatment, no salt in the tank. Tank is a 125.

 

[Gill Blue]

could be air bubbles, then letting it sit before using would get rid of them.
could, but shouldn't be, particulates. in which case letting it sit for a week would allow them to settle to the bottom. you would-probably get a few when you transfer the water, but avoid most if your careful.
personally, since I wouldn't want to be drinking particulates, I would use a small filter with a polishing pad in a CLEAN, covered bucket. let it run until you can see it's cleared up and check the pad. if it's still clean-air bubbles. if not, call your water department.

 

[Lusus_Naturae]

It's not bubbles. Particulates in the water here is not uncommon, the stuff is small enough the get through most filters though making it hard to actually filter out. the problem reoccurs when I put new filter pads in an Emperor 400 too, it's like the fine dust gets in the water and until there's enough crud on the pad it doesn't filter out. Which could be issue in fact, summer air is pretty dusty here overall and it could just be getting into the tank. Even with the windows closed and A/C on it gets dusty in here more than when I lived up north. Of course the bad side of that is when the filter is nasty enough to filter out the stuff it's also impeding the flow of water more than I'd like.

 

[Lusus_Naturae]

Oh, and the filters I'm using are two Emperor 400's and one Rena XP4. The XP4 was added when this problem began and only runs ceramic rings and substrat pro - which i thought would be enough to block the particles or whatever it is, but I guess not.

 

[GrantA94]

Im interested to see the results here. I am in the same boat, but my tank is 3ft deep so its a pain to look through. I had considered adding some chemicals to bulk the particles (dust) together. Because even fine pads aren't doing it for me. Its not as though a wc fixes it because the water from the tap is cloudy. So I pressume it will just become cloudy again if I use chems. I have nowhere to store 100+ litres of water to let it seperate. So its a never ending circle...

 

[Gill Blue]

the problem reoccurs when I put new filter pads in an Emperor 400 too, it's like the fine dust gets in the water and until there's enough crud on the pad it doesn't filter out.

that's why I said polishing pad, not a filter pad. it will filter out micro particulates. just run it after your changes until the water is clear. or run it in your settling bucket.