Ada how to prevent clouding due to fish

[accordztech]

I setup my 50g with some ADA that was used from tom. Got an excellent deal on it.

So the soil was quite clumpy and all and when I put it in my tank I had to use a gravel cleaner to get the chunky stiff stuff out and the clouding on top of the soil out.

The tank will be all nice and clear, but then my loach loves to eat snails on the soil and he will toss around in the soil to eat the snail. At the same time clouds of ada dust comes up thanks to him, and within 2 days my tank is cloudy and it doesnt go away.

I use 4 ultrafine filter pads and some carbon and still it doesnt get rid of it.

Can I just cap the ADA with some flourite gravel? What should I do?

[accordztech]

and I went to the LFS that has ada amazoniaII in their tanks and theirs are all nice and granulated. Mine has a bunch of mulm still

Should I just buy more ada and top it off? Or should I gravel vac the crap out of it?

[Diana]

The Loaches will still continue to dig, a lot. I do not think any method of capping is going to solve the problem of fines coming up when the substrate is disturbed.

I see 2 approaches. Both mean a lot of work:
1) Remove the substrate, rinse it like crazy and redo the tank, perhaps buying more substrate if it turns out the material you have gets mostly rinsed away.
2) Rinse it in the tank by doing a lot of deep vacuuming.

[houseofcards]

So is it used ADA II? I think it would be pretty much impossible to stop a certain amount of it from just becoming a dust like powder. It's not going to keep it's grain. The more you handle it and/or disturb it the more it will bring down.

[accordztech]

Originally Posted by houseofcards

So is it used ADA II? I think it would be pretty much impossible to stop a certain amount of it from just becoming a dust like powder. It's not going to keep it's grain. The more you handle it and/or disturb it the more it will bring down.

Honestly I was told that this substrate was fairly new. However I think I mainly got the bottom stuff that was in the tank thats why its mulmy. If I take out some of the mulm there is still a good amount of solid ada stuff.

Perhaps I should Just invest in another bag of ada.

But this loach has got to go. Unfortunatly I dont think I can do cories

[Calmia22]

Carefully vaccuum the top of it, and often. Don't dig into it in anyway, or really disturb it much. I get a certain amount of mulm on the top of mine, and thats really the only thing I have found to calm it down. I have cories in mine, and they bring up a certain amount of cloudiness, but I have somewhere around 900 or so gph flowing through my 75.

[accordztech]

I caught the bastard! Took me 40 minutes when I finally decided to drain all the water out of my tank. He sure wasnt happy.

I cleaned up the substrate again. Its looking much better and I still have lots of solids. But for a tank with 50 shrimp and 3 ottos...they sure do poop alot.

[accordztech]

So im still having an issue with clouding and its not the fish. I only have shrimp and ottos now and it still is slightly clody.

I used those very fine pads in my filters and some carbon. It helped temporary but then the cloudyness comes back. I cleaned my filter finally to find it muddy and after a week the water got clear for 2 days. Now its cloudy again. I havent rescaped or even did a water change to see if it was my fault.

Im sick of it. I have ada soil in another tank thats completly turned into mush and even if I stur it up it doesnt cloud the tank line mine.

[accordztech]

FREAKIN FIXED!!! Stupid issue is gone!! Water is 100% clear!

I got some blasting sand (very course) and then removed about 1/4'' of ADA. Made sure that the sides had no ADA so that the sand will sit low in the corners.

After a day my tank is 100 percent clear. I dont think its the fault of the ADA soil. I think that since my ADA soil was used, I got the lower bottom portion and even though it wasnt degrading....it still had a little bit of sheadding to do.

Im happy, still got the ADA for dirt cheap, and didnt spend a ton of money on black substrate.