Cant work this one out.

D

daniel

Guest
Woke up this morning to find benny's tank cloudy. on closer inspection i found that there is a greasy film of something on the inside of the glass. ive taken the appropriate steps of removing benny (luckily i keep a 20L tank cycled just in case)

The strange thing about this is that his tank has been cycled for about 8 weeks now and the water has always been perfectly clear and had no problems at all.

I will be testing the water a bit later but i have a feeling you are all going to suggest starting over again. I guess i will have to empty the water to clean the inside of the tank to get rid of the greasy substance. am i correct in thinking this?
and what could cause it?
 
could it be a brown algae? could be all sorts of micro-organisms. To an extent nothng wrong with some microfauna and flora. Is there a description besides "greasy"? Could be some sort of protein residue.
 
its a white substance covering all of the glass in the tank, looks like clouds. comes off easily when i touch it.

it wasnt there last night so its appeared in the last 10 hours
 
This sounds like a bacterial overgrowth (biofilm). It can occur if there are sufficient organics in the water (even though the levels are good). I have most commonly seen this occur when frozen/thawed foods and/or pellets are used to feed the animals.

Ed
 
thanks ed. i am feeding frozen bloodworm so very probable.

Should i do a 100% water change?

and could there be any adverse effects on the axie from being in the tank for 10 or so hours?
 
Hi Daniel,

If your levels are fine then the only concern would be a risk of lower oxygen levels due to the bacterial overgrowth. Otherwise the axolotl should be fine. While axolotls don't like excessive water currents, if you could increase aeration of the tank then you will remove most of the risk from the increased bioload. Wiping down the glass and doing the water change after wiping it down you can get rid of most of the overgrowth with a couple of water changes. I wouldn't wipe off all of it at once because these bacteria are the ones that are responsible for converting ammonia to nitrite to nitrate and removing all at once could cause a minicycle for a few days.

If you are using frozen bloodworms are you thawing them in another container and draining off the liquid before feeding the bloodworms out? This will go a long way to prevent that kind of overgrowth.

Hope this helps

Ed
 
thanks again Ed,

I was putting the bloodworm in the tank and thawing it under the filter.

I will take your advice and thaw first feed later in future.
 
Again, using a bowl helps out - thaw it in the bowl, then slowly sink the bowl into the water.
 
Hi Beech,

I would suggest draining off the water before feeding as there is a lot of organics in that water that can cause issues with the water quality.

Ed
 
How odd - sorry, was having some issues accessing caudata from college - I did put the rest of my message on there - the next lines were:

You will need to drain it and fill with tank water, but keeping the palm of your hand over the opening as you go will keep the rest of the food in the bowl.

I don't know why that bit never made it.
Even more confusing, I don't know why it logged me in on my OLD username....
 
i kinda guessed it was you from the user name ;)

thanks for all your help people
 
Little update. i decided to leave benny in the 3ft tank for a while. (hense no webcam at the moment)

I turned off the filter and air stone completely for 24 hours and it is clearing up really well.

I just realised something. In the last water change i did, i put a cycling chemacle in instead of water conditioner. I'm guessing this would cause the overgrowth of bacteria in an already cycled tank.

Silly me
blush.gif
 
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