Hi guys, so this one seems super weird to me. Hoping you have insights.
I walked downstairs this morning to my bowl tank, and the water was a little cloudy. I normally do my 30% water change every Friday, but decided since it was a little murky I would just do it a day early. I wish I got a picture of the murkiness before starting a water change, but I wasn’t expecting this result. So for description sake it was maybe a touch more clear than the second photo.
So as I’m draining my standard 5gallons out I notice the tank getting darker and darker and I couldn’t even see the zoas about 2inches from the tank wall anymore. If I didn’t see it with my own eyeballs I’m not sure i would think that can happen? But anyways I go fill a 5gallon bucket of newly mixed saltwater from the mixing station and when I get to the other room where the tank is, my clownfish is now laying on the bottom of the tank gasping for air. (He’s the only fish resident) Thankfully there’s a quarantine tank set up nearby that didn’t have any residents at the moment so I transferred clownie to it and he seems totally fine in there.
After all that, now the water is insanely dark green (the first picture where the tank is half full) so I said what the heck and drained almost all the water from the tank leaving about 2inches at the bottom for my emerald crab and peppermint shrimps to hang out in. I cleaned the canister filter out, vacuumed the sand bed, and refilled the tank with new saltwater. Which brings us to the current state photo, where it’s still cloudier than when I started this whole adventure. The emerald crab and peppermints seem to have survived the event unscathed. And the clown is still in the spare setup because I’m afraid to return him until I know what happened.
I did save some of the gross green water I took out and ran tests on it. The ammonia is higher than I would like but everything else seems pretty much the same as usual. I still have the water if there’s something else I should test it for. We use Hanna checkers for everything except alk which is nyos test kit.
Ph 8.1
Ammonia .25
Nitrite .07
Nitrate .12
Phosphate .09
Alk 8.2
The tank is a gigantic bowl that holds just under 13 gallons of water after all the rocks/sand were added. It’s running a canister filter at the moment with 30% weekly water changes. I test 2x a week and everything’s been stable. Tank is about 6 months old but was built from live rock and sand transferred out of a system running for just under 2 years. It has one clownfish, 2 peppermint shrimps, an emerald crab and less than a dozen corals.
any insight is appreciated!!!
What happened here?
How can I prevent this occurring again?
Is there anything else I should do to get the tank to clear up?
Is it safe to put the clownfish back in his home?
I walked downstairs this morning to my bowl tank, and the water was a little cloudy. I normally do my 30% water change every Friday, but decided since it was a little murky I would just do it a day early. I wish I got a picture of the murkiness before starting a water change, but I wasn’t expecting this result. So for description sake it was maybe a touch more clear than the second photo.
So as I’m draining my standard 5gallons out I notice the tank getting darker and darker and I couldn’t even see the zoas about 2inches from the tank wall anymore. If I didn’t see it with my own eyeballs I’m not sure i would think that can happen? But anyways I go fill a 5gallon bucket of newly mixed saltwater from the mixing station and when I get to the other room where the tank is, my clownfish is now laying on the bottom of the tank gasping for air. (He’s the only fish resident) Thankfully there’s a quarantine tank set up nearby that didn’t have any residents at the moment so I transferred clownie to it and he seems totally fine in there.
After all that, now the water is insanely dark green (the first picture where the tank is half full) so I said what the heck and drained almost all the water from the tank leaving about 2inches at the bottom for my emerald crab and peppermint shrimps to hang out in. I cleaned the canister filter out, vacuumed the sand bed, and refilled the tank with new saltwater. Which brings us to the current state photo, where it’s still cloudier than when I started this whole adventure. The emerald crab and peppermints seem to have survived the event unscathed. And the clown is still in the spare setup because I’m afraid to return him until I know what happened.
I did save some of the gross green water I took out and ran tests on it. The ammonia is higher than I would like but everything else seems pretty much the same as usual. I still have the water if there’s something else I should test it for. We use Hanna checkers for everything except alk which is nyos test kit.
Ph 8.1
Ammonia .25
Nitrite .07
Nitrate .12
Phosphate .09
Alk 8.2
The tank is a gigantic bowl that holds just under 13 gallons of water after all the rocks/sand were added. It’s running a canister filter at the moment with 30% weekly water changes. I test 2x a week and everything’s been stable. Tank is about 6 months old but was built from live rock and sand transferred out of a system running for just under 2 years. It has one clownfish, 2 peppermint shrimps, an emerald crab and less than a dozen corals.
any insight is appreciated!!!
What happened here?
How can I prevent this occurring again?
Is there anything else I should do to get the tank to clear up?
Is it safe to put the clownfish back in his home?