Wanna help me solve a mystery ?

[Buck]

My newest Angel Tank is a disaster, but only so far , this will not beat me ! :evil:

Anyone ever have anything like this ? Not the algae... the heavy white haze you can see above the algae line... the details are allready posted at my site... HEEEEEELLLLPPPP ! :lol:

www.buckmanshome.com The info is on the main page...thx in advance !

[Rex Grigg]

Two things come to mind. A bacterial bloom, though I have never seen one that bad, or the beginning of a green water outbreak. You have some serious problems in that tank. Let us know the current nitrate levels, the current phosphate levels or if you are even dosing phosphate. Are you running CO2 injection? What ferts are you adding? At that light level you should be dosing nitrates (if they are not way high from the Jobes spikes), phosphates, potassium, iron, traces and have CO2 injection. If you are missing one or more of these then it explains a lot.

I also would NOT have done the Jobes sticks. While it's a good idea in theory and works for some people I think for many people it causes more problems than it solves.

[Buck]

This tank is 8 weeks old Rex and this haze has been there since the end of first week...
:arrow: No CO2
:arrow: No Ferts in water column
:arrow: 14-3-7 plant spikes under 5" of substrate, top layer is 2" of Moon Sand
:arrow: Lighting has only been on 8 hours a day for the last 3 weeks
:arrow: PH 6.8 - 6.9, Nitrates - 40ppm at peak before water change (not bad) , Nitrites "0", Ammonia "0"

I am not concerned with the algae or the plant health right now. I am just trying to beat this white haze in this tank, with the naked eye you can see it rolling through the water current... ever see the "whitish dust" that is emmitted by ammonia rock when you dont rinse it? Its almost just like that ! :roll:
This is Simplified Aquaria... nuttin fancy here bro.
I have not lost a fish in here and they are healthy and happy, my plants are growing quite well considering, the val's are putting out runners( cant see them... haze... LOL ), the apono's are growing well and I have some balansae that are doing nicely... I just want to be able to see them ! :cry:

If I were to pass you all the test kits, get the results from you and then SHOW you the tank you would think I rigged the tests...the water is within ranges, but the look is not ! :evil:

In the second week of this haze and a few beers I got disgusted, had very little invested in plants and purchased a bottle of " AlgaeFix" thinkin it was a green water onset... double dosed the tank,turned out the lights for 2 days, yada yada yada and it didnt touch it ! I have used this stuff in my non-planted tanks over the years with great success so I KNOW it aint no GW brewin here which leads me to bacteria...
This is nuts... Can you test for bacteria? :roll:
I had not changed the water for the past 3 weeks and added cycle to the filters (another successful tactic I have used) in hopes of diminishing the bad bacteria with the good... still nothing...

I now had to do a water change so I did an Algae scrub and 30% water change yesterday...check it out....the haze is exactly the same minus the green tint from the algae scrub.
I ordered a Diatom Filter and it should be here tomorrow from Big AL's

Then we'll see who's boss... :evil:

[Steve Hampton]

I'd bet heavily on it being a green water attack. If you can beg or borrow a diatom filter you can eliminate it real quick. Also, a Magnum 350 can be turned into a Diatom filter by coating the Micron Cartridge with diatom powder. Interestingly, when the "white stuff" gets collected and concentrated on the diatom is will show a slight greenish color. Like Rex, I'd also look to the Jobe's sticks as the culprit. The biggest problem with the Jobe's is the Urea that they contain. Any substrate disturbance will release this HN4+ and green water and possibly BBA if your CO2 levels drop will almost always be the end result.

In what would appear to be a contradiction, I've found that Jobe's sticks are best used in low light slow growing tanks. In these tanks I never add any additional liquid fertilizers, and the substrate isn't often disturbed because the plants are slow growing...thereby eliminating the problems associated with pulling up fast growing stem plants and replanting them and the substrate disturbance that causes. The higher the lighting and faster the plant growth, the more I depend on water column fertilizing.

YMMV,
Steve

[RogerL]

Fascinating posts guys (I'm learning more about this addictive hobby everyday!). At the risk of appearing dumb, what's a "green water attack"?

[Rex Grigg]

A FW attack is a outbreak of single cell floating algae. When it happens it normally starts out looking like cloudy water or some people have said like smoke in the water. But once it reaches critical mass it will turn your water pea soup green.

[Work In Progress]

I am just trying to beat this white haze in this tank, with the naked eye you can see it rolling through the water current

Well my two cents........
Sounds like the substrate to me. When I first switched to the substrate I have now, I ended up with a white haze. Yours reminds me of what I went through. Mine was almost like a oily smokey type haze, you could also see it rolling and swirling in the current.
I didn't rinse a bag of the sand, so I figured it came from that. But to this day, if I dig too deep into the sub, the same haze will come up. So dunno if the laterite is leaching something out, or if it is the sand, but I definitely know it is one of them.
I ended up doing several 50% water changes every few days and turned one of my HOB filters up to the highest flow rate.
Seems like the haze lasted forever......but it did eventually clear up.
I have no experience with a diatom filter, but I hope it works for ya!

[Buck]

In what would appear to be a contradiction, I've found that Jobe's sticks are best used in low light slow growing tanks.

Very interesting that you would say that Steve ,
When I first tried the Jobes I was scared to death, so not being quite sure of them I broke 1 stick in half and stuffed them on each side of one sword and added the Flourish Tabs I normally use to the others. This was in my 30 gallon that has a good 4 wpg, press CO2, liquid ferts etc... and 1 month later the Jobe fed Sword dwarfed the others unbelievably and had richer greens to the leaves, ya know its obvious when the wife even notices ! :lol:

As far as the Jobes getting in the water column... I have been there and done that...LOL That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this haze so I buried everything with another 2-3" of moon sand, there is no way that stuff is coming out, besides that , that would be way to easy a fix for me, I aint that lucky :lol:
Also I am no stranger to GW, it was very common through my years of live feeder aquariums... nothing polluted a tank faster then the 16" Tiger Knife housed with 3 beautiful 8 - 11" Red Oscars I had ... that tank was a full time job on water changes and if I missed a week, all hell would break loose.

If it were GW the Algae Fix would have knocked it out, that stuff has never failed me ever and for it not to even lighten the cloud I find very hard to believe. That stuff will knock out an outbreak in any stage... However I wouldnt use it in any "established" planted tanks for obvious reasons, but it does have its place in the Algae killing world.

Desperate Men chose Desperate Measures :roll: I even double dosed that tank with it cuz I had nothing to lose at that point, its not GW, Im sure. :cry:
And if by some chance it is... its gotta be a mutant strain of algae from another planet !

I got the filter in today, its a wee little D-1 Vortex but lets see what happens...

Thanks for the input guys...

I would love to hear from anyone who might have used the Eco-Complete Substrate also... maybe I got a funky bacteria in one of the bags? I dont know but after beating my head against the walls for seven weeks , I keep coming back to bacteria, it is the only thing that I cant account for.

Dang that them Vortex's are loud ! :shock:

[GDominy]

I have experienced the white haze before "If" its the same thing that I had I would check your phosphate levels.

In my area tapwater contains an unusually high level oh phosphates, its still safe to drink, but they are still there. Every time I fill a tank I get a massive milky bacteria bloom that stays around for a week or two (it almost looks like silt in the water, like when you fill a sandy bottomed tank badly).

This would lead me to believe that "something" might be raising your phosphate levels a bit. It "could" be a jobes stick, or something else, its tough to say.

This may not be it at all, but its something to think about.

[SNPiccolo5]

I am also to see what a diatom filter does to it, good luck Buck!

-Tim

[m.lemay]

I've experienced bacteria blooms in the early stages of a tank before but they usually go away after 1-2 weeks. I'm curious to see if the diatom filter will clear it up and keep it that way. I've used accu-clear on sediment type cloudiness and that works great. I've tried accu-clear on bacterial blooms and it doesn't do squat.
For those of you who don't know what accu-clear is, its a product that coagulates small particles (sticks them together into larger particles) so that the filter can pick them up.

Marcel

[Moebius]

I am new to the hobby, but am very familiar with bacteria. Do you sense a different odor when you smell the tank?

If you take a small sample out and boil it, do the suspended particles settle or even appear 'chunkier', due to the denaturization of proteins?

In any case, I would think a Diatom filter would do the trick.

Ken

[aquaphish]

HHHUUUMMMMM!!!!! I had a similar problem and determined that the filter was not large enough for the size tank and to add to the problem the filter was not working as well as it should have been. It was old and overworked.

When I replaced the filter with a new one but the same size and model of the older one it improved somewhat but still hade that milky cloud floating around but not as much and the algae did lessen a bit.

I then decided to get yet another canister filter but with a larger flow rate. I just got the next larger one. To my amazement with in just a few days the water started to clear and finally cleared and the problem was gone!!!

Looking at what you have hanging on the tank you might check it out. Maybe the filter is just a little small for the size of the tank.

[doooog]

whenever i added algae fix it clouded my water, just a thought, ya might try adding some bio spira if the cycle is in question, but from how it sounds it is past that. Adding that stuff won't hurt anything either (after the tank has cycled) it can be safely added whenever you'ld like

[ginnie5]

what kind of filter are you using? When I set my tanks back up I used aquaclears again with just the sponge in them. The same way I used to. This time though I had cloudy water. I tried water changes, waiting, and some stuff for cloudy water. Nothing helped. Then I did something really simple. I added some regular old filter floss. My water was clear by the next morning. Apparently the AC filters do not work the same as they used to. Maybe the holes in the sponges are bigger? I don't know all I do know is that they did wonderfully before but now they need a little help.