Water Safe Plus, Fizzy Tank Buddies??

Question

I was wondering if they actually work the way that they are supposed to?? They are supposed to take the smell and cloudyness out of the tank, but when I used one in my tank the water actually went cloudier!! I was a little confused, does anyone know if these things actually work or why it did this to my tank???

For anyone who doesn't know, its a little tablet that you put in the tank that fizzes, its supposed to clear the water, adjust the ph, ammonia etc and take out any bad smell!! I thought it sounded interesting so I tried it!!

Answer 1

It think it may depend on the cause of the cloudiness. All most of these products are meant to do is to make small particles clump together to make it easier for your filter to remove them.

If your tank is new, the cause may not be "dirt" in the water but bacteria. When you first add fish to a tank that's only run for a few days, there are no bacteria to remove your fish's wastes. One of these wastes is ammonia, which is toxic to your fish. Once you have the bacteria established, the bacteria will convert the waste to nitrite (also toxic) then to nitrate (which your fish can live in as long as the amount isn't too high). In a new tank, you don't have enough bacteria to convert all the ammonia or nitrite, so the bacteria multiply to take advantage of the extra. When they are reproducing quickly as they are during this time, the water appears cloudy.

Until you have the bacteria built up, you need to do weekly water changes of 25% (or twice weekly changes of 10-15%)to remove the ammonia and nitrite, otherwise they will harm your fish. And even after the tank has built up the bacteria, you still need to do the 25% changes to remove the nitrate - no chemicals can do this for you.

Please see the following links for more info on this:
http://www.fishlore.com/CloudyWater.htm
http://www.fishlore.com/NitrogenCycle.htm