Cloudy tank issues: Round 2

[clawdate]

I made a thread on here about a month ago about issues I was having with a cloudy tank.
http://www.caudata.org/forum/f46-be...nk-has-been-cloudy-over-month-what-could.html
I was unable to find any clear solution to fix the cloudiness of the tank. Instead, it magically fixed itself; I went home one weekend, and came back to find the tank crystal clear again. It stayed this way for the past 3 weeks, and I thought that it was done. I have been doing more frequent small water changes, and have some moss growing currently in the tank. However these seem to have had little real effect on the tank

Several days ago, the tank started to get cloudy again. This time, I took water samples and brought them into my research lab to check them out under the microscope. I expected to find the cloudy tank sample swarming with bacteria, and little bacteria present on the clear tank.
I scoped around on samples from both the clear tank and the cloudy tank. On the clear tank, there were almost no cells present. On the cloudy tank, there were slightly more cells present but still a very, very small quantity. I tried looking at them under the hemocytometer to count the cell density, but could not get meaningful results. In the clear sample, there were again barely any cells, not enough for a count (you need at least 200). On the cloudy sample, there were slightly more cells present, but still no where near the ball park range of ~200 cells. More like 20-40 cells, for the entire 9x9 hemocytometer grid. So, both tanks were showing very, very low cell density.

This means that the issue of the cloudy tank is most likely not an issue of bacterial density. Now the next question; what the heck is it? Something interesting to note is that as I do water changes and increase the volume of water in the tank, the apparent cloudiness does not decrease to any noticeable degree. Very odd. You would expect that as the volume increases, the concentration of whatever is making it cloudy decreases and the cloudiness decreases, but this has not been the case. I personally am beginning to suspect some sort of mineral precipitate, but the jury is still out!

 

[Umber]

I have a question. What's the pH in that particular tank? If the pm drops it can actually affect the tanks cycling by killing the bacteria.

I read up on the other thread the issues you were having and wondered if your maintance has improved in regards to water changes to help alleviate the high nitrates that were present in the two tanks(more so for general health rather than to deal with this issue)? Have you gotten a larger filter for the cloudy tank that matches the size of the non cloudy tank?

And just for perspective... if you had fish and tried adding new ones to a tank with nitrates as high as what was reading in your tanks in the previous thread the new fish would have a high chance from dying from the high levels of toxin in the water... any old fish in that tank would have gotten used to it but would eventually succumb to it as well. Just don't want you thinking that because you axies have dealt with it that it shouldn't be changed or improve. You used the phrase "if its not broke don't fix it" but what if it just hasnt broken yet and you can improve and maintain it before it does break?

 

[tigmades]

Sorry to hear it's still giving trouble

The only thing I can think of would be to completely break it down - wash everything with vinegar, including the filter. Clean very well, then set up and cycle again. It'd be a pain because it'd have to cycle again - I would keep axie in a separate container and change the water 100% every 1-2 days.

If it is some sort of precipitate, that would mean tank B has something that tank A does not have - a full tank break down, clean, and rebuild should fix that.

Edit: try to rebuild it exactly the same as the other tank - substrate, filter, etc. If something is reacting to give a precipitate it may be due to one of those differences.

 

[clawdate]

The pH is about 7.0 for both tanks.

Ironically, only the clear tank has ever had high Nitrates. The cloudy one had, and still has, low nitrates, ~20ppm. The clear one has them in the ballpark of 40-80+ppm, even after many water changes.

I have been doing more frequent small water changes on both tanks, but like I mentioned it has not actually changed anything. The water conditions are still exactly the same. I have not gotten a new, larger filter for the cloudy tank, but probably will soon. Though I changed the cartridge earlier this week and that has not had any effect on it either.

I dont keep fish, and never planned on putting any in there. I think these axolotls are a lot hardier than people like to give them credit for. I've been keeping exotics for several years now and you see the same thing on every message board, people freak out over the minutiae of their animal culture and really underestimate the conditions that their animals can tolerate. But, that is a discussion for another thread and is not why I made this one.

 

[clawdate]

Oh another thing I forgot is that the test reports the cloudy tank as having especially soft water. So I guess that rules out the idea of it being a mineral precipitate. Though it could be something else precipitating out of the water. I am not sure what kind of test you would use to determine the substance, though.

 

[jdlqh8]

This is super interesting because similar things have happened to me. Especially the coming home one day a magically the tank is clear.

I am interested in your further investigations and what you find out. Keep us updated!



Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 2

 

[clawdate]

I am not really sure where to go from here. It is possible that it still is bacteria-linked, it could be a change in the bacterial fauna that is causing a low-density population of bacteria to overproduce some compound that is clouding the water.

Even under the microscope, there was no particulate matter, so its not small particles, at least nothing you can see at 400x. This suggests to me that it could be chemical in nature.
I do research in my school's science department so I could get access to a variety of testing equipment if I ask around, though I do not know what tests I would be trying to run or even what I would be looking for.

 

[clawdate]

Sorry to hear it's still giving trouble

The only thing I can think of would be to completely break it down - wash everything with vinegar, including the filter. Clean very well, then set up and cycle again. It'd be a pain because it'd have to cycle again - I would keep axie in a separate container and change the water 100% every 1-2 days.

If it is some sort of precipitate, that would mean tank B has something that tank A does not have - a full tank break down, clean, and rebuild should fix that.

Edit: try to rebuild it exactly the same as the other tank - substrate, filter, etc. If something is reacting to give a precipitate it may be due to one of those differences.

this makes me wonder what would happen if I innoculate the cloudy tank with water from the clear tank. If it is an issue of the wrong bacterial fauna, then maybe I could re-instate the correct fauna that way. I think I will try this before I break down the tank. If I do break it all down, I will probably just buy a whole new setup, its only like $20 at WalMart for a 10g + filter. Though I will have to bleach the tank ornaments. It will be interesting to see what effect that has as well

 

[clawdate]

Put a gallon of water from the clear tank into the cloudy one. Will give it a few days to see if there is change, then may add more.

 

[wandering]

I still think you could try swapping the filters, that would tell you if the filter is involved. And if there is no change after a couple of weeks try swapping the positions of the tanks. Do you strip your filters down? I have internal power filters in some of my fish tanks and the impellors can get quite clogged up with gunk.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[clawdate]

I still think you could try swapping the filters, that would tell you if the filter is involved. And if there is no change after a couple of weeks try swapping the positions of the tanks. Do you strip your filters down? I have internal power filters in some of my fish tanks and the impellors can get quite clogged up with gunk.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

woah this actually had an effect! I switched the filters around, so the big one is in the cloudy tank and the small one is in the clear tank. After ~24 hours the cloudy tank has become noticeably less cloudy, if I had to estimate I would say the cloudiness has dropped by ~60%. Very cool! It would be interesting to see if the small filter eventually turns the clear tank cloudy. I do not think I am actually going to run that experiment, but it will probably be a few days before I can get to the store to buy a new filter to replace the small one. I will just throw out the small one and get a second big one for the cloudy tank.

I went back to the original thread and saw you suggested this before, I must have missed it because it was a very good idea. Thanks.

 

[tigmades]

Woohoo! Glad you're seeing an improvement! When's the last time you cleaned your filter? You may not need to buy a new filter - just clean all parts of it with vinegar and rinse very well with hot water. The cleaning will eliminate anything that's dead and giving off whatever that cloudy stuff is, as well as kill anything living that is producing it too. Then the clean filter will hopefully sift out the rest of the stuff clouding your tank, like your other filter seems to be doing.

Just a suggestion, if you wanted to try that instead. If it's an old, old filter, replacing it wouldn't be a bad idea, though.

 

[clawdate]

I tried to clean it last time it got cloudy, but nothing came out of it after running it under hot water. However some gunk came out as soon as I put it back in the tank! Its pretty old though probably wouldnt hurt to replace it

I will try to get the pics of the cells I was looking at up on here later