Over-cleaning cause Bacterial Bloom?

[Wrencher_Scott]

On 9/9/2022 at 8:24 AM, MattyM said:

Nitrites and Ammonia both at 0, Nitrates around 15. I do run a bit of CO2, but more as a boost. My kh is 8, and my PH never goes below 7.3, which is about 12ppm CO2 and it works up to that most of the day. I checked things last night, 4-5 hours after lights/CO2 went off and no fish was gasping at the surface. All fish are fine, hungry and accounted for this morning. 

Still super cloudy though, and this is def a bloom and the slight clarity improvement I got from the wc yesterday was gone in an hour. 

I'm traveling at the end of the month and was thinking of putting some Purigen packs in the tanks as a precaution for the pet care person. Those might help here, but I'm also curious as to how long this can last. 

Thanks again for all the help! Learning lots. 

 

This guy is a chemist and a long time fish keeper. He does lots of tests on aquarium products and Purigen was one. To be honest I'm not surprised it did nothing. So many scams out there, even by "reputable" companies. Sad.

https://aquariumscience.org/index.php/7-4-6-purigen/

[nabokovfan87]

On 9/9/2022 at 8:24 AM, MattyM said:

Still super cloudy though, and this is def a bloom and the slight clarity improvement I got from the wc yesterday was gone in an hour. 

Very cool.

To give you an idea... I got one tank doing the same thing, literally just stare at it and go "yeah, that sucks" and I'm waiting for things to clear up.  It started to get a little cloudy after I did all the cleanings, but it's a tank under some stairs and things can foul the water.  Equipment is working, lid is on and I don't see any major issues. The fish are happy, things are fine... We'll see!

I know the water is fine, I know I'm not over feeding (need to feed more if anything), and I know that there is a good bioload on the tank, but nothing too excessive.  There's plenty of oxygenation, flow, water could be polished and there is a skimmer in there with a pretty fine pad to help out with that....

Sometimes it just happens and as long as water is "fine" the only thing I'll ever really stress on is when I see issues with the fish.
If it doesn't resolve itself in ~1-2 weeks, then I will probably dose some bacteria in there and potentially check to make sure the ceramic media is ok.  It should be fine, it was fine 2 days ago.  I didn't even do a great job cleaning the sponge filters, but they definitely aren't clogged with gunk.  I just suck at cleaning them well without using a hose or faucet.  (maybe I need a headlamp or something to help see the junk when cleaning!)

But yea.... As long as you're not seeing fish issues, as long as water looks good (test wise) I would just give it a little bit of time.

On 9/9/2022 at 8:24 AM, MattyM said:

I'm traveling at the end of the month and was thinking of putting some Purigen packs in the tanks as a precaution for the pet care person. Those might help here, but I'm also curious as to how long this can last. 

With the wood in there, maybe 5 days.  Hard to say because the tannins will color up the resin balls. It might still have capacity, but I was always swapping those things out and frustrated by them 😞

Carbon might give you a week, because usually you get a little more volume than you do the purigen.  It's really dependant on flow, flowrate, and what the setup is like.  Just meaning, on my tidals, I can fit one purigen, but I absolutely can't put it on top because it just floats into the tank. It's a non optimal setup at that point, which is ironic because... seachem

[MattyM]

Just thought I'd post an update to this - the cloudiness turned into green water! This is Punky's tank so she was particularly interested: 

I hit it with a the Green Killing Machine for a couple weeks. When the water cleared, I had hair algae everywhere, and explosive growth on all plants - def where a ton of nutrients in the water. After a cleaning and time, everything seems back in balance now: 

Just wanted to thank everyone! Learned a lot on this one.