Water clarity

Tim S

Tim S

Joined
11 Jul 2009
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Location
Cape Town
Hi all,

What's the secret to crystal clear water. Looking through my dt end on, the water has a greenish / yellow colour to it. I have a big skimmer, 7 layers of filter wool and a vortch with sponge which collects a massive amunt of stuff. I do have a bit of slimy algae growing. Could this be the cause? I had some carbon in the sump but did not seem to make any diffirence.

Any advise please.
 
Regular Water Changes! Otherwise the carbon does work, but it needs to be changed every 4 to 6 weeks! How big is your tank end to end? How big is your bio load, try feeding a little less if possible, otherwise there is not much more you can do!
 
Tank length is 1500mm. Have 19 fish, 4 shrimp, hammer, brain, xenia and some mushrooms. Fish are not very big though. I feed flakes and pellets twice a day and frozen seafood mix once a day. If any food does not get eaten, the overflow and vortch pulls it out straight away. Due to the efficiency of the system I was concerned that the scavangers do not get any or enough food. So I tried to overfeed, but the spare food gets picked up very quickly by the pumps.

I did a water change (100 litres of 600 litres) last weekend and usually do this every 3 to 4 weeks.
 
you should do a 10% change min once a week, 20% in 2 weeks, but once a week is good. Make sure that your carbon isnt old
 
What carbon do you run?
Do you defrost the frozen food straight away in the tank? If yes, you need to defrost in a glass, rince off the juices and then feed. The juices can fuel nuisance algae if not enough filter feeders or inadequate filtratrion or lack of waterchanges.
Do 10% per week as you'll regularly remove nutrients and add trace elements that was used up. Like iodene for example doesn't stay long in the system as skimming removes it. Shrimps and all other crustaseans, including pods need iodene to molt (shed their exoskeleton). Corals also need iodene. You can dose iodene, but cannot test for it so that makes it dangerous if you overdose. Rather do regular waterchanges.
I never dosed anything like iodene, or any other supplement for that matter, just 10% weekly waterchanges ;)
 
Hi Tobes,
I defrost the food by placing it on the brace of the tank after dipping it in the water. If I don't dip it to defrost, it is very sticky. There is some very fine matter which comes off when I feed the fish which dispuses in the water. I'll try rinse the food before putting in DT but how do you 'filter' off the fine stuff and keep the food? Might need something like an old tea strainer?

How do you do it?
 
Tim S said:
Hi Tobes,
I defrost the food by placing it on the brace of the tank after dipping it in the water. If I don't dip it to defrost, it is very sticky. There is some very fine matter which comes off when I feed the fish which dispuses in the water. I'll try rinse the food before putting in DT but how do you 'filter' off the fine stuff and keep the food? Might need something like an old tea strainer?

How do you do it?
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The right way is to defrost it in cold RO water. Then pour it through a tea strainer or small sieve. I then take a small bit of tank water and rinse it with that through the strainer as well just to flush off any access juice.
Then I put the strainer upside down on the glass and pour tank water over it to rinse off the food back into the glass. I then suck up the food with a turkey baster or just throw it in the tank bit by bit. Sounds like a lot of work, but doesn't really take that long.
 
You have some phosphates, get a liquid phosphate remover. Also go check again your tds on your ro unit. Test nitrates also. Try running the carbon in a reacter and get good quality carbon or else it wont work.
 
Tim S said:
I'll try it. First need to find a 19th century tea strainer. :)
Click to expand...

You get these small plastic ones - the steel ones will rust. Check in the "bake a cake" section in the shops :p
 
Water yellowing is caused by a build up of DOC. Now there are many remedies however do not cure too quickly. The water yellowing acts as a UV filter. So reduce slowly.

First off, the water change regime need to be revised for long term clarity sustainability.
Second, a large skimmer does not mean that it is removing DOC. You need an efficient one suitable for the tank and producing large QTY of skimmate.

However if your water is green then it is could be Plankton. A simple blackout should fix that one.
 
Tim S said:
Hi Tobes,
I defrost the food by placing it on the brace of the tank after dipping it in the water. If I don't dip it to defrost, it is very sticky. There is some very fine matter which comes off when I feed the fish which dispuses in the water. I'll try rinse the food before putting in DT but how do you 'filter' off the fine stuff and keep the food? Might need something like an old tea strainer?

How do you do it?
Click to expand...

Tim, need a strainer? Can give you a piece of plankton mesh. Glue it into a small plastic pot, like the ones from the cottage cheese.
I strongly advice to defrost and strain the food before feeding. Especially for frozen adult brines. They come in a soup full of diseases. Learnt my lesson back in 1995 with beeing lazy and holding the frozen block in the current. Every new introduced fish died in no time.
 
Nemos Janitor said:
Water yellowing is caused by a build up of DOC. Now there are many remedies however do not cure too quickly. The water yellowing acts as a UV filter. So reduce slowly.
Click to expand...

Keith is right. To make it more clear for you. Add 0.5 litre activated carbon in one go, and you burn all your corals in one go, too. But your water should be clear!

I don´t know, who is aware of the following:

Activated carbon should be washed and afterwards dumped into almost boiling water, before using it.
Then the carbon gets really activated. I always wanted to try, if it might be possible to reactivate the carbon, with boiling it.

For my big tank in Germany, I made a carbon filter. Actually a piece of pipe where the water gets pushed through the carbon.
With putting in in a bag and dumping the carbon into the sump, you waste a lot of money. The water musn´t flow around the carbon, it must flow through the carbon.

Tim, if you want, I can pop around, bring you a piece of plankton mesh and we can have a look how to plumb in, my DIY milkfilter. Have we met before?
Sorry met so many people in this hobby, I hardly can remember the names.
 
LuckyFish said:
Activated carbon should be washed and afterwards dumped into almost boiling water, before using it.
Click to expand...

I know about this but only because it was suggested on a box of eheim carbon, only did it with the eheim carbon as none of the other brands recommend this on their packaging. If i get a nice fizzing sound it is usually good enough for me.
 
Singularity said:
I know about this but only because it was suggested on a box of eheim carbon, only did it with the eheim carbon as none of the other brands recommend this on their packaging. If i get a nice fizzing sound it is usually good enough for me.
Click to expand...

Think about it. If I would produce activated carbon, why must I tell the customer how to make more use of it? The customer buys my carbon every month. So now he will buy only every second month. You also believe, that what´s written on the bottle of trace elements, do you?

Everybody who is selling something, wants to make as much profit as possible.
More or less!


Fizzing sound? Put the carbon into very hot water and then hear that sound!
 
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