Fish tank burry?????

Question

ok asked this question about an hour ago

e have had our fish tank for about 7 months and now our tank is blurry after our last water change. we have a master water test kit and all is well we added 2 mickey mouse fish and 6 snails after our last molly died about 2 weeks ago can anybody tell me what is doing this it had never been blurry like this before . was snails a bad idea? i don't know what to do?

i forgot to add that the water smells like... umm..... murkey like lake water type smell not sure how to tottaly explain it and also i haev used those drops they work for like 5 hours and then back to cloudy

Answer 1

You need to start cleaning it more often and changing the water more often now that you have added more animals to it.

It would be like having a horse in a stall. If you add another one to it doesn't it make sense it will have to be cleaned more??

Good luck!

Answer 2

If you haven't had fish in the tank for two weeks, your tank may be cycling again. If you're not familiar with the term, this is when you're tank is building up the bacteria that convert the wastes of your fish (ammonia and nitrite) to the less harmful nitrate. This would be true if you tore down the tank to clean it as well, since water with chlorine would kill the bacteria. Since ammonia might be building up from the wastes of the snails and fish, this may give off and ammonia (like the cleaning product) odor.

You may also not have had the filter running without any fish. Without the filter (or an airstone) there wouldn't have been enough dissolved oxygen in the water to keep the beneficial bacteria alive, and the bacteria present would have been anaerobic types. These may have been feasting on any wastes in the gravel and producing some hydrogen sulfide gas (smells like rotton eggs) that got stirred up by the snails rooting around in the gravel or when you turned the filter back on.

My suggestion would be to use a gravel vacuum to siphon any old debris from the gravel (unless you cleaned this between times you had fish) - maybe doing sections over 2-3 days, and not removing more than 50% of the water per cleaning. STOP using the drops to clear up the water - these don't remove anything, just makes smaller particles cling together so the fall to the gravel or get caught in your filter. All you should add is conditioner to remove chlorine/chloramine.

If you haven't been using a gravel vacuum to clean the tank, this would be a good purchase for you. Unless you get the debris (feces, uneaten food) out of the gravel, it's continued to decompose, and will produce higher nitrate levels in your tank. Nitrate isn't as harmful as ammonia or nitrite, but it can kill your fish if the concentration is high enough, or the fish are exposed long enough.

As to the cloudiness, if this is part of the tank cycling over again, this will go away on its own, once the bacteria have been established (3-6 weeks). All this is are the bacteria reproducing rapidly to take advantage of the excess ammonia and nitrite (their "food" source) that are in the tank.

Answer 3

1 snail is not a bad idea because it will lay eggs but will not reproduce. More than one however and you are going to be in for one hell of a headache trying to keep them under control. (some came on plants that I got from a pet store a year ago, we bleached the tank, filters, EVERYTHING! They are still hanging around!) Luckily I have hungry fish. lol
If you want snails, I would suggest giving them their own tank because they take over everything.
The smelly water could be from not changing your water enough, bacteria, OR it could just be from having the heater on your fish tank set too high. I wouldn't suggest using drops to try and clear up the water. There is a dechlorinator that I use called prime that works great at knocking the smell down if you are changing your water consistently and keeping your heater checked. That is the only chemical I have ever had in my tank. Also, not sure what size pump you are running but I always suggest running larger pumps and using triple filtration. They work great for me and I don't have a cloudiness issue. (plus the filter sucks up snails that get near it)

Answer 4

long time ago, fish breeders would put mystery snails in nursery tanks. 1, to consume leftover food and 2, because the snail droppings had a large amount of partially digested vegetable matter that encouraged the growth of infusoria which the baby fish ate.. could you be having a infusoria bloom? or, another possible explanation, you say you just cleaned the tank. maybe you overdid the cleaning and are getting new tank syndrome..

Answer 5

We had a 30 gallon fish tank with the same problem. We had to go to the next size up filter system. We added 2 graumies and a placostimus, and 2 big snails. You might want to try changing your filter system to the next size up. We used an under gravel charcoal filter system along with a small D.E. Filter System. (The D.E.-Dalmacious Earth. The kind a Swimming pool or Spa gets.) Ordered it from Florida for a Salt water tank.

We got rid of the snails, their slim was adding to our problem...not saying that it is adding to yours.

Try draining your tank all the way down and rinsing your rocks really well, but of course place your fish and plants and stuff in different water. Use an algae killer on the rocks as you clean them. It might be an algae that is causing it. Don't forget to clean the inside of the glass with the algae cleaner, and you will have to do this more often, if it is an algae to make sure that it is all gone.
or
Try using distilled water...Not sure how big your tank is...but try that and see if it helps....if it does not contact the fish/pet store and tell them (petzmart) Believe it or not they are schooled to help with difficult problems.

Answer 6

I have heard that the snails can be bad for your tank, & that they reproduce quickly, & the babies will get into your filters & stop it up, which could cause the tank to get dirty quicker. I would get rid of the snails, my husband wouldn't let me put any in my tank because of this.

Answer 7

I am not sure of your tank size, filtration and how many fish you have but, I would try a 10 to 15 percent water change.