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#1
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wow.. clear water finally!
Hi all,
long time ago, I posted regarding ways to clear up water... and I think I finally did it! (after increasing fish population by 50% or so and lots of trials..) adding Flourish Excel was helping (in addition to Flourish and Flourish Iron.. I should buy Seachem stocks..).. the level of cloudiness seems to vary from barely visible to hazy (not really cloudy, but just hazy). and it seemed like the haziness was worse in the evenings than in the mornings (could be the lighting, but..) and no.. the water was not green (just slightly hazy) few days ago I got hold of Flourish Nitrogen.. and put about 50% dose in the tank for the first time... (my nitrate is zero in the tank, so..) in two days, wham! the water is crystal clear!!! (now the algae growth on the back side of the tank is painfully obvious.. hmmm) I guess lack of nitrogen was definitely limiting the plant nutrient intake that was causing the haziness... does this mean I can conclude although it was white haze it wasn't bacterial? do things really make this sort of drastic change? or is non-green-haze=bacteria always? or may be it's the loaches I added (that ate snails).. or the cories (that still hasn't figured out that the tablets are for them to eat) that I added in the past 2 weeks... just happy :-) linda |
#2
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wow.. clear water finally!
hi, how did you do it?
would you please teach me? thanks. "linda mar" wrote in message ... Hi all, long time ago, I posted regarding ways to clear up water... and I think I finally did it! (after increasing fish population by 50% or so and lots of trials..) adding Flourish Excel was helping (in addition to Flourish and Flourish Iron.. I should buy Seachem stocks..).. the level of cloudiness seems to vary from barely visible to hazy (not really cloudy, but just hazy). and it seemed like the haziness was worse in the evenings than in the mornings (could be the lighting, but..) and no.. the water was not green (just slightly hazy) few days ago I got hold of Flourish Nitrogen.. and put about 50% dose in the tank for the first time... (my nitrate is zero in the tank, so..) in two days, wham! the water is crystal clear!!! (now the algae growth on the back side of the tank is painfully obvious.. hmmm) I guess lack of nitrogen was definitely limiting the plant nutrient intake that was causing the haziness... does this mean I can conclude although it was white haze it wasn't bacterial? do things really make this sort of drastic change? or is non-green-haze=bacteria always? or may be it's the loaches I added (that ate snails).. or the cories (that still hasn't figured out that the tablets are for them to eat) that I added in the past 2 weeks... just happy :-) linda |
#3
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wow.. clear water finally!
someone else on the newsgroup mentioned that a kink in the canister filter
tube caused cloudiness, so.. YMMV... but here's my experience... also, my definition of cloudy is slight haze.. just enough that you can get a nice depth perception between the foreground leaves and the background leaves.. but nothing like a white-out or anything opaque in any sense. First i had to decide whether the cloudiness was caused by bacterial bloom (too much fish waste, poor water, etc) or plant/algae related. The tank had finished cycling for few months by then, so it wasn't exactly spanking-new-tank with the new tank syndrome, but something more chronic (didn't add fish for 2 mo and nothing changed). the water wasn't green, so it wasn't obvious that it was algae or bacterial.. so... I started doing pretty frequent water changes.. no change. adding or subtracting fish didn't help either. did thorough vacuuming and pruned dead vegetaion very carefully, and that helped a bit.. but not much. I tried the flocculent water clarifier.. and realized that my powerfiler wasn't filtering those small particles out efficiently (and stuff was starting to settle on my plants like dust bunnies).. so fist I bought and installed HOT Magnum filter, and ran micron cartridge. it helped clear up the water a bit, but not very much... so at that point, decided that the filter itself isn't a problem. stopped feeding fish for 4 days with no change, went down to once-in-2-days feeding, and no change.. at this point my guess was that the cloudiness wasn't entirely due to bacterial bloom caused by water pollution, but most likely caused by some nutrient imbalance for the plants that made it hard for them out-compete algae, etc (free-floating diatom, whatever). Another hint whether it was pollution-related was it didn't seem to matter whether I add fish (once I increased population by a good 50%) or subtract it (into quarantine tank or due to deaths) too. the confusion was that the water wasn't green like you would associate an algae bloom, so... anyway, my gut instinct said plant-related.. so, I started adding Flourish to tend to the plants... this made the plants happier, but water was still cloudy, and the plants started to turn yellow so, I started adding Flourish Iron and Flourish Excel.. F. Excel was in lieu of adding CO2. also, I started to darken the room a bit, so no direct sunlight would hit the tank (there was abotu 30-60min worth of sunset hour that the tank got direct sun, so..). This allowed the water to get "more clear" but not crystal clear. plants were nice and green, but nothing extraordinary.. but this also brought on lots of beard algae and the like.. so I got myself some SAE's that I just happen to come across to control them... So, i kept this regimen up for about a month.. then I realized that the water is more cloudy in the evenings while it is clear in the mornings.. which REALLY pointed to plant activity.. (either sunlight or respiration, etc) after I bought a test kit and tested the water, and finding out that the nitrate, nitrite and ammonia are all zero, very low KH and GH (2), a suggestion was made that I was totally devoid of the macronutrients.. so I went and bought Flourish Nitrogen, and put 50% dose (not to shock the fish).. and while I was at it, I added 5 more bottom feeders two days later the water is clear.. and two days after that the water is a little cloudy again (I need to add more furtilizer, I guess) so... hopefully after I add more furtilizer, things will go back to clear again... linda "Lava Plays" wrote in message ... hi, how did you do it? would you please teach me? thanks. "linda mar" wrote in message ... Hi all, long time ago, I posted regarding ways to clear up water... and I think I finally did it! (after increasing fish population by 50% or so and lots of trials..) adding Flourish Excel was helping (in addition to Flourish and Flourish Iron.. I should buy Seachem stocks..).. the level of cloudiness seems to vary from barely visible to hazy (not really cloudy, but just hazy). and it seemed like the haziness was worse in the evenings than in the mornings (could be the lighting, but..) and no.. the water was not green (just slightly hazy) few days ago I got hold of Flourish Nitrogen.. and put about 50% dose in the tank for the first time... (my nitrate is zero in the tank, so..) in two days, wham! the water is crystal clear!!! (now the algae growth on the back side of the tank is painfully obvious.. hmmm) I guess lack of nitrogen was definitely limiting the plant nutrient intake that was causing the haziness... does this mean I can conclude although it was white haze it wasn't bacterial? do things really make this sort of drastic change? or is non-green-haze=bacteria always? or may be it's the loaches I added (that ate snails).. or the cories (that still hasn't figured out that the tablets are for them to eat) that I added in the past 2 weeks... just happy :-) linda |
#4
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wow.. clear water finally!
Now I have something to try myself. 10g tank with 20w (one normal, one
half-normal & half actinic), one twig cat and six Amano shrimp -- can't see the back of the tank from the front. Will investigate fertilizer on the morrow. Thanks! |
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