I have my tank running since last October and it was running fine with crystal clear water all the time. Until recently, the water became cloudy (not very severe though) and I have started to perform water changes from the usual 25% to 75% and still no signs of clearing up the water. I have a big filtration system with added crushed corals to buffer the water and also added some baking soda to increase the PH level. My filter is a trickle filter with lots of media, bio balls and bio rings.

The filter media has not been cleaned for a while and I have also cleaned part pf the media using tank water. Almost everything has been cleaned and yet no improvements on the water clarity. I have 9 gf in my 70gal tank and feeding is normal at 2 times daily. The goldies are perfectly healthy and very active. If I do a 75% water change, the water will be clear for about 2-3 days and will get cloudy again.

The water parameters is as follows:-
Ammonia=0
Nitrite=0
Nitrate=15ppm (low due to frequent water change)
Water hardness=120ppm
PH=7.5

The water in the tank used to be very clear but on some occasion in the past, the water will get a little cloudy after water change but will clear up in a day. The tank is fully cycled as you can see from the parameters and it is also a bare bottom tank with only 2 small plastic plant in it. I am not sure whether the used of crush corals is causing the water to turn cloudy. I cannot find any crushed oyster shell to buffer the water thus corals is the only available solution.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers...........

Hi there ranchu_man.

Crush coral can have lots of very fine powder mixed in. That is why I prefer crush shells but that by-the-by.

Anyway, you can have a look at this thread and see if you can rig something like that up. Very effective.

http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/...showtopic=10121

Hi Captk,
Nice to hear from you again. I am inactive at this forum for a while. I have done what the thread had mentioned. I used a 5 micron filter fitted to a 60W power head with flow rate of 3000l/hr. The water seems to clear up a bit after running for 8 hours but still not well polished. The filter had changed its color from white (new) to brown after 8 hours. I ran it for 2 days with little improvements. I have since removed the unit on Monday. I think the cloudy stuff cannot be filtered out. It doesn't look like debries or fine air bubble.

I will try removing the bag of crushed corals to see whether it helps to clear up the water. Could this be a bacteria bloom? I have 8 layers of floss media in the filter, 6 layers in the 1st stage and 2 layers at the sump area before the sump pump. I just cannot figure out what causes the water to get cloudy. In case of bacteria bloom, what can be done? Just leave it alone to let it settle down of keep on changing water till is clears up. I have been changing water every 2-3 days at 50% for the past 2 weeks and geting a little tired. Is this too much or I should let the tank settledown for a week or so?

Okay, a couple of points. It is possible to buy 1 micron filter so there is room to improve as far as the filter goes.

If it is not fine debris then it gets tricky. We can say bacterial bloom but the sum doesn't add up. Usually a bacterial bloom happens when there are lots of nitrients in the water but your tank has been running for a long time and the filter is cycled. You are doing lots of water changes and the nitrAte is good, nothing else seems out of place. You are not over feeding them, are you? What type of diet is it? Lots of protein and live food?

You water is not particularly hard so minerals participating out of the water doesn't ring true either.

You could try using one of those chemicals that is designed to bind fine particles together so that the filter can remove them more easily. In Australia we have a product called Magic Clear. I don't know if it is available in Perak.

To answer your question. I would say stop changing water for a week and let it settle down. It might even improve in the mean time. If it is a bacterial bloom, it won't hurt the fish.

Interesting. The corals been in there for a while, so I wouldn't think that would be doing it. Be sure to buffer with baking soda to maintain your KH.

I've been using a 1 micron aquaclear quick filter that hooks to a powerhead. The filters are cleanable. the unit cost $10 and replacement filters are a couple of bucks a piece.

From what I understand, bacterial blooms (white cloudy water) are from heterotrophic bacteria (the ones that eat debris) reproducing too fast. You might try rinsing your mechanical filter media well in old tank water.

i got the same problem
my water is white cloudy, what do i do?
tank has been set up more than 6 months
i have two bubble wands that produce fine bubbles but they dont cause the cloudyness.
the water had been pretty clear but since i have been adding water conditioner i have this problem


i have a 30gallon with 4 Comet GoldFish
ph is low i cant get it to go higher than 6.2
and tha other like ammonia r fine tha local petshop said.
i do regular gravel cleans every 2 weeks changing 20% of tha water

Captk, I am feeding the fishes 2 times daily and feed only what they can eat in 3 minutes. I will leave the tank running for a few days and see whether the situation improves or worsen. I will look out for the Magic Clear if I can find one.

Betty,
I am still using BS to buffer the water everytime I perform water change as our water KH is zero. Added crush corals did help to increase the GH to 120ppm from 50ppm and helps maintaining the PH in the region of 7.3. I have almost cleaned everything in the tank and filter including the bag of corals placed on the 1st stage mechanical filter. Carbon has also been changed. There is quite a lot of debries and fine powder when washing the bag of corals. Not sure whether it is causing the problem. I will remove it in a few days time (allowing the tank to stabilize first). I will get a 1 micron filter with a power head to polish the water weekend to see if it helps to clear up the water.

Thuglife,
Your PH is too low. Try adding 1 tsp of baking soda daily till you achive the PH at around 7-2-7.4 This will improve the water quality. At PH6.2, your nitrifying bacteria may not work properly and you might have presence of ammonia. I had the same problem too and adding BS helps to solve this problem.

Cheers.........

Ranchu_man, may I suggest that you reduce the feed for a few days and see if it has any effects. DG is right, if it is a bacteria bloom, the bacteria has to feed on something. Maybe there are excessive organics in the water. Can say because we can't test for those easily. We can only limit the source and see if we hit jackpot.

Thuglife, yes, RM is right. However, I would like to see your KH test result if you can do one. It will tell us if your buffering is too low. What is your source water pH. You can be fighting a uphill battle as well if your source is acidic by nature. I would probably start with 1/2 tsp of BS and just play it slow. Let's look at KH and source pH first, shall we? OBTW, what type of conditioner are you using?

I have just changed 80% water justnow. The water is getting very cloudy. I have also cleaned all the filter media in the 1st stage filtration with tank water to make sure it is really clean. The crushed coral has also been removed and I have added a small bag of man made pebbles like marbles made from calcium carbonate (I think because the color is very white). The label never says the material type but it says it helps to stabilize the PH....just a wild guess.

I will reduce feed and monitor the water clarity. Hopefully there is improvements. Even after changing 80% water, I can still see the water is slightly cloudy (view from the side of the tank). I will update you guys on the outcome in a day or two as in the past weeks, the water will turn cloudy after 2-3 days.

Cheers...........

u changed tha water 80%?? wont that cause bacteria bloomin?
jus wonderin

tha water conditioner that im using is "Aqua plus - tap water conditioner" by Nutrafin
it is a 473mL bottle
my PH from tha tap is 7.0/neutral
and i dont kno tha KH bcuz i dont have a KH tester
but next time i go to tha LPS i will check

I am not sure doing a 80% water will cause bacteria bloom. Anyone can provide an answer? I am also wondering on the same question as sometime I do water change, I do get slightly cloudy water but generally will clear up in a day. I think the "cloudyness" might be cause by the very fine air bubbles in the fresh water causing it to look cloudy.
In my case now, this is not happenning. I am still monitoring the tank after yesterday's hardwork cleaning the filter and water change.

RM, TL, there are many sides to the water change coin. Some of it is myth, others are very real.

I suppose as a start I'll answer the question posed. From what I know, I have to say that a massive water change do not cause bacterial bloom. However, it is never that simple. What we have to consider is the impact of the massive water change.

On one hand, the bio-film (i.e. the thin layer of good bacterias) are fairly resilient so unless the new water has poison (e.g. chlorine) in it and it is properly treated, it should not harm them. The immediate removal of large quantity of nitrIte and/or nitrAte will also reduce the amount of nutrient in the water that feed the bacterial bloom.

On the other hand, we try to create a stable environment in an aquarium. A massive water change will certainly upset that apple cart. The fish will be stressed, extra ammonia will be generated. The water chemistry will be altered drastically and it will take time for the closed system to achieve equalibrium again. Is the system is unstable for whatever reason, it may get worse. That is why we usually advice people to do small but regular water changes instead of massive ones irregularly.

In this case, RM is an experienced fish keeper and I rely on his knowledge and experience to form his own judgement. However, to form a baseline, I also suggested that RM should leave it alone for a few days to see if it will settle down. It is a bit of a forest from the tree type of problem. If you can't see through to the fundamentals because of too many changing variables then you can't fix the problem.

Captk,
You are absolutely correct. Changing too many parameters at one go can sometimes be disastereous and no way of finding out the actual cause of the problem. In my case I ran out of options thus restarting the whole process again and hopefully I can hit the jackpot finding out the actual cause. I will now leave the tank alone for at least a week to see how it behaves.

Just one more question. Will too much filter media in the filter system causes bacteria bloom? My filter has many layers of fine wool media, 6 layers in the 1st stage plus another 4 layers of course media (used for koi ponds). The 2nd stage which is a trickle filter have 2 bags of bio ring at the top followed by ~150pcs bio balls and another 2 layers of course media. The sump had a bag of carbon and pump. Since there is so much surface area for the nitrifying bacteria to grow, will it cause cloudy water if the population grows out of proportion? Also will water change dislodge the bacteria from the filter media causing the water to turn cloudy?

I did 80% water change last night and the water is again getting cloudy
I have reduced feed today and DG was right that the crushed coral may not be the cause as it was removed yesterday. Lets see what happens in a few days time.

thanks fo tha help

i need help in restartin a new tank
how do i do it properly?
its a 30 gallon
and i just bought a new filter for it "topfin filter 30"
and bought a new undergravel system to replace the old one

can yall help me in startin it up

One thing at a time.

RM, the situation with nitrifying bacteria is that you can't have them growing indefinitely or out of control. You can have the equivalent of a football field in surface area and there will only be a set amount of bacteria on it. The reason is simple. Food. Any bacterial colony's size is governed by the amount of food available to them. As soon as the bacteria number multiplies beyond the level of food supply, some of them will strave to death thus maintaining a stable level. That is why a bacterial bloom in the water should ultimately clear by itself because the bloom will consume what nitrients are in surplus in the water and then it will strave itself out unless more and more nitrients are created to sustain the bloom. This is the question we have to ask ourselves. What is sustaining the bloom?

ThugLife,

I'd advice you nuke your tank properly before you start again.

The normal weapon of choice is bleach. Just your plain household cleaning bleach. The normal ratio is 1 part bleach to 19 part water. If you think you have some nasty bug in the tank, you can make it 1:10. Put everything including every bit of the filter, nets, ornaments, gravel (you can boil them), etc and soak them in the bleach solution over night and make sure there are no air pockets. Wash the tank with the bleach solution well.

Rinse with fresh water many times until you can't smell bleach then rinse two more times with dechlor water. Because you had fungal problem, I would suggest you air dry everything for a week to 10 days before start again.

u serious bleach?
it will go away if i rinse it?
well ill do that
and what is "dechlor water"?

Yes, if you seriously want to sterilise something, you use bleach. You need to rinse it extremely well.

Dechlor water is water that has been treated with chlorine/chloramine remover, stuff that you would treat your own fish tank water.

It's not the bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrAte that bloom. They don't grow fast enough to bloom, tho I wish they did!

It's the heterotrophic bacteria that eat debris that bloom. According to Tim Hovanec, the heterotrophs:
-are responsible for the break down of organic materials, e.g. leaves, fish feces (1)
-are one of the chief producers of ammonia in an aquarium (1)
-are responsible for bacteria bloom which turns the water milky white (1)
-can double their population every 20 minutes and can grow over and smother nitrifying bacteria (1, 7)
-consume oxygen which may inhibit growth of the nitrifying bacteria (1) especially if there are large increases in organic matter in the tank (6)

The numbers at the end of each bullet refer back to links here to his articles.

Since you tank is barebottom, the heterotrophs will be living mainly in your mechanical filter media, I'd think mainly in the layers that trap the large particles cuz that's where their food is.

Thank you, Betty, I got a bit carried away with the population density of the nitrifying bacterias and missed the heterotrophic bacteria issue. Glad that you are around to catch my dropped balls. Cheers!

thanks captk
u do help alot

so i can use water conditioner? rite?

Yes, water conditioner is fine.

ight

i have taken all tha rocks out and will boil them in a pot

i had filled it with half a cup of bleach and filled water scrubed all tha tank in and out
then washed tha tank 7 times with water
then i filled water and add water conditioner

i will leave tha water condtioned water in tha tank over night is that okay?

2morrow i will be washing tha tank 7 more times
with water and waterconditioned water

am i doin this rite?

thanks again fo da help

You are doing great. I know it is a lot of work but if you want to do something right, you gotta do it right the first time.

Hi Captk and Betty,
Thanks for the information on heterotrophic bacteria issue. I think that's the most likely cause of the problem due to the fact that I have cleaned (disturbed) the filter and did a large water chage for a few times causing the unbalance of the water chemistry. My tank is still very cloudy and getting worse everyday. It looks a little "green" but I doubt it is algea bloom possibly because the amount of light that is able to penetrate the water is much lower compared to the usual clear water making it looks green. I have also reduce the lighthing from the usual 10hrs to 4 hrs.

Water parameters are still within the norm with very low nitrate due to large water change earlier.

I had very little algea on the parts of the tank but I will normally remove it before it grows out out of proportion. Meanwhile, I am cleaning the first layer of the filter every 2 days to remove the some trapped poops and dirt and syphon out fine poop debries at the sump area. How long will it usually take for the heterotrophic bacteria to reduce the population or for the tank to stabilize in this type of situation?

Cheers........

RM, that is a right tough question. It totally depends on your tank environment. I had one new tank with cloudy water that clear after a short time and then another tank that went on for days and days. All I can say is that the bacterial bloom is harmless to the fish and you just have to wait it out.

well atleast i kno im doin it rite
im going to rinse it a lil more today
and leave it drying in tha sun for 12 hours or 24 hours

in sum other tread i posted
ppl said that "topfin filters" are not good?
is that true?

i just bought mine like couple days ago
and if it is bad i wanna return it bfo i cant

wut brand is good for a 30 gallon?

Certainly the smaller size topfin have questionable merits as a biofilter. The popular choices for HOB filters are whisper and aquaclear.

thankz bro

now i have cleaned the tank 7 more times with water
i had wiped it with paper towels and now it is super clean and cant smell no bleach

it is sitting out in the sun
how long should i leave it?
2 days? 10 days?

thanks again fo responding quickly

If you have a good spell of warm sunny weather than 3-4 days would be fine. If it is just undercover and air dry slowly then a week to 10 days would be better.

OBTW, don't let it sit outside in the cold night air as dew drops will form on the tank walls and kinda defeat the whole exercise.

even if my sundeck is cover with a roof
i cant leave it outside? in tha cold night?

In that case, just throw a towel over it at night.

I think my tank could be having the algea bloom syndrom. The water is turning "green" after 4 days since the last water change. It is still very cloudy and I am not certain it is algea. Could bacteria bloom occurs followed by an algea bloom? I have never encounter algea bloom before as most of the algea in the tank is brown algea. I have another plastic tank for my frys which has lots of brown and green algea stuck to the sides and bottom of the tank (located at the back of my house) and the water is very clear.

My tank now looks green from the sides but nothing sticking to the glass wall. The tank looks horrible now and still patiently waiting for it to stabilized Hope it will not take too long. Should I do small partial water change to improve the conditions or just leave it alone for another few day.

If it's green it could be an algae bloom. I had pea soap in the 55 for a while. I got rid of it with massive partial water changes and cutting back on the amount and duration of light. Daphnia in a breeder net also helped.

Green water can cause pH swings cuz it uses up CO2 when the lights are on and produces CO2 when the lights are out, so plenty of airation would be good.

So how much of what kind of light do you have over the tank and for how long? Is it getting any indirect sunlight? How's your nitrAte running?

Good advice, DG. I would have suggested reduce lighting as well.

One interesting question for RM, your tank is exhibiting all the symptoms of a cycling tank but it can't be cycling, can it? Very odd indeed.

While the algal and bacteria bloom are very unsightly, it does little physical harm to the fish.

I am also puzzled what is happening to my tank. The tank is fully cycled till now with all the water parameters pointing to a cycled tank. I have however cleaned the first stage filter media twice but with tank water thus should not "kill" the good bugs.. but maybe I have cleaned it too well probably removing most of them but again the 2nd stage filter media was untouch and should still have some good bugs in there.

DG, the lighting I used is a full spectrum light made by Hitachi (30W X 1) and the usual duration is 12 hours. I have switched off the light completely for 2 days and ON for about 2 hours today. Nitrate is low due to frequent change of water. I measured 2 days ago at 15ppm. I have just checked the nitrite level at 0ppm and Ammonia also at 0ppm.
You mentioned "massive partial water change" means partial water change everyday and what is the percentage? I think I will leave the tank alone for a few more days to see whether it improves and if not I will change some of the tank water.

I did talk to my LFS and he said I should cleaned everything in the tank including the filter with PP and salt killing all the good and the bad bugs at one go and let the tank cycle by itself again. I think that is a bad idea as I have 9 medium size gf in the tank and the ammonia build up will be very high during the cycling process and that sacres me. I think I will change the tank water every other day just to keep the ammonia down. I had ammonia problem earlier due to low PH and I was a bit worried not knowing what to do. Luckily you guys helped me out and by increasing the PH with BS, it stabilized and no more ammonia after that. Now with another set of problem, I am still learning from you all. the experts and I am sure the problem will be solved. Thanks for your helps.
Cheers............

Well, I'm no expert. DG is the water chem guru.

It is 12:35am here so my brain has seized up but I'll sleep on your problem. Hopefully DG will come up with something positive in the mean time.

OBTW, can you do us a favour and run all the waterQ tests again. I just want to confirm that you tank is not undergoing a mini cycle. Tank temp and GH, KH as well, thanks. Your filter is a home made wet/dry setup, right? Can you take a pic of the tank from the green lagoon?

Capt: LOL... It's afternoon here and my brain's already toast! I don't know if I'll EVER get this report done! *groan*

Ranchu: You can edit one of the duplicate posts and delete the text that's in it. I can't do it... I'm not a mod.

When did you set up your tank and when did we get the pH/ammonia issues resolved?

My 55 bloomed after I added a lot of light to it and some ferts. by massive I mean, I all but drained it to start over with minimal algae and extra nutrients. LOL
I had 60 watts over it for 10 hours a day when I was trying to get rid of the algae bloom.

30 watts really isn't much light and your nutrient levels don't sound high either.

A UV unit might help. The pond folks use them to combat pea soup algae. They kill anything in the water column. I'm thinking about adding one to my goldie tank to make sure I have the parasite problem licked that's been bugging my goldies for the last month.

Another thing you could do if it's an algae bloom is add floating plants like frogbit or maybe hornwort. They help shade out the algae and don't have to compete for CO2 cuz they get it from the air. as I mentioned before, daphnia in a breeder net would help. Those little critters LOVE to eat pea soup algae, and afterwards your goldies would have a treat.

IMO your LFS guy is FULL OF IT. a petstore ninny. There's NO WAY I'd nuke a tank unless there was a bad bug killing my fish in it I couldn't get rid of otherwise.

Tho if you bypassed the filter, pp could be used to kill the algae. I'd consider that a way last resort tho cuz you gotta be careful with PP or it'll toast the fish too.

Taken care of the double post, so continue on with the very interesting thread!

Ranchu Girl, thanks for your help to delete the duplicae post.

LOL...DG, thanks for the advise. I started with this tank in Oct 04 with a fully cycled filter using feding fish. All went well until Feb 05 when ammonia starts appearing. Frequent water change could not bring it down until I tested the PH to be 6.4 Finally added BS and 2 days later, ammonia was zero and water became very clear. Lighting was always at 12 hours daily cause a lot of brown algea was forming after 2-3 days. With extra lighting, the algea seems to have reduced but still present in parts of the plastic ornaments and suction tubes. I have to clean the ornaments weekly using bleach.

Slowly, the water was getting a little cloudly and I did a few water changes in a week (25%) and it was not improving much and still slightly cloudly. I then start cleaning my filter media part by part as I was a little worried to have remove too much good bugs at one go. Since I started cleaning the media, the situation became worse and the more water change I do the cloudier the water became after 2-3 days. The water looks green now and I am still allowing it to stabilize but I clean the 1st layer media every 2 days. The tank is indoor fully shelthered from the sun.

I will try to get some daphnia to digest some of the pea soup but the daphnia source in our place don't survive very long. I remember using it to feed my frys and it could survive in an areated tank for about 20 hours the most. I will post the picture of the tank and filter tonight and you guys can tank a look what went wrong.

Cheers..........

Thanks Ranchugirl for the housekeeping, you can join in on the fun, y'know. No need to lurk around.

RM, at this point in time, I'm suspecting your filter. If you are going to post pics, can you get some good ones focused on each stage of your filter. I can't help but think that something strange is happening in there and it is making your tank a frankinstein. By your WQ readings, it should be happy and clear but it isn't. It acts like a cycling tank but it isn't and shouldn't. Very strange.

The water parameters today are as follows:-
1. PH 7.6
2. KH 6dKH (107ppm)
3. Nitrite - 0ppm
4. Nitrate - 20ppm
5. Ammonia - 0ppm
6. GH - 100ppm

Below are some pictures of my green pea soup tank The tank pictures are taken without the aquarium light ON to give a better picture of the "greeness". As you can see from the pictures, the 1st stage filter consist of 1 layer of floss media on the uppermost layer where it is cleaned every 2 days and replaced once a month. A bag of ceramic balls are now used which is supposingly used to buffer the water. I have place this bag in the filter 1 week ago as the ealier material used was crushed corals. There are lots of "powder" debris at the bottom trap of the 1st stage filter and these debris are vacummed out once a week. All the media in this section has been cleaned throughly with tank water.

The 2nd stage trickle filter had 2 bags of ceramic bio rings on the top followed by 150pcs of plastic bio balls and 2 layers of course media. This media is produced by the Japs usually used in Koi ponds and it is good for the cultivation of the nitrifying bacteria. This section is usally quite clean but I did rinse with tank water half of the bio ball and the 2 bags of bio rings 2 weeks ago and the course media was left untouched.

The sump had a new bag of carbon in it plus a pump to return the water back to the tank.

I am quite puzzled what can go wrong with this simple setup as most of the "items" in the system have been cleaned. The tank is bare bottom and I have remove all the ornaments and the tank is really naked. You will also notice that I have included a power head (on the right corner) and a 5 micron filter to polish the water but no signs of improvements. The filter is those used in domestic water filtration to filter rust and soots and usually had to be used with a housing. I did some modifications to the filter to fit to the powerhead. The filter is used once and discard cause I can't clean it. It quite cheap at USD2.00 for 3pcs. Hope you guys can analyze the pictures..... Hope I am not overloading you all
Cheers......

These are the picture of my tank before and after the "bloom". You can see the very big difference in the water clarity.

Tank picture dated Nov 04


Tank picture today with lights on

Man, I just LOVE your sump! Looks to me like it could handle a small pond.

You know what'd be neat. If you could make a home for the daphnia and they'd keep the pea soup under control and provide a continual source of live food. That would be sweet.

I'd bet that since you don't have the plants to outcompete the algae for nutrients, you'll hafta either go the daphnia or UV route.

I am wondering whether I should discard the floss media in the 1st stage and replace with new ones leaving the rest intact to reduce the bacteria population? Do you think this is sensible? I bought another type of media today, they call it bio-sponge. It has very course pores in it and very soft and I think the marine system uses a lot of this sponge for filtration. Apart from this should I do water change anytime sooner?

Isn't your bloom algae and not bacterial or are you thinking you have both happening? Looks like pea soup algae to me. If it's algae, it wouldn't matter whether or not you replaced the filter floss with the sponge unless the sponge was able to mechanically trap the algae.

As I understand it, algae need light and nutrients to grow. Since you don't have any plants to speak of, there's nothing competing with the algae.

You could add a UV unit hooked to the outflow of your sump. That should kill any algae, bacteria or parasites in the water if you get one that's big enough. I was looking at some at Dr Foster and Smith today.
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/NavR...m?N=2004+113778
They also have some articles linked in the upper right corner on them and how to choose the right size.

Daphnia in a breeder net would be the way I'd go... or in the last stage of your sump if there's a prefilter on the pump. Cheap and natural.

You don't have much light over the tank, but cutting back to less than 10 hours a day is supposed to help.

There are algicides. I haven't read up on those and would hesitate to use them.

Here's some green water links
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/maintena.../greenwater.htm
This one's interesting... tho they're trying to sell you something.
http://www.algone.com/greenwater_pf.htm
I wonder if it's possible to buy zooplankton (the article says they eat pea soup algae). guess what... daphnia are zooplankton.
Here's some more about them
http://ebiomedia.com/prod/algaeguide1.html
http://lakes.chebucto.org/zoo.html
http://www.venturenorth.com/tlca/doc7_6.htm
http://www.wildsidepetsinc.com/GreenWater.html
http://www.aquariumpros.com/articles/algae.shtml

Hi Betty, thanksfor the very informative links. From the readings of the articles, my tank bloomed is likely caused by a series of events and eventually causes the algea to bloom. Starting from high nitrate, big water changes and distrubing the filter might have lead to the problem. You are right that changing the media will not help as the algea is everywhere in the system. I will try the Daphnia method and I am sure it will work as I did see drastic improvement in my fry tank. The only problem is I have not seen a Daphia net and my filter system might not work. How would you propose to add Daphnia with the filtration system on or switch it off for a few day? I will have to bypass the filter system to prevent the bio bugs from dying. Can I use the fine mesh fish net to house the Daphnia temporarily?

Hi RM, sorry, have been sidetracked for a little while. Betty has been a fountain of good advice, as usual.

Yes, fine mesh netting (breeder net/cage) will do fine to house the daphnia.

No thank you to algicides. It works but more problem than it is worth. You will find that most of the algae will be dead and you have a large rotting bio-mass to deal with. Ammonia spike, DO2 fall through the bottom. Yuk!

You can also try a short cycle lighting regime. Like 3 hrs on and 3 hrs off. Apparently, algae don't like that but I don't have hard proof. It is a fairly harmless thing to try though.

Leave the filter alone for now. You have lots of filter capacity so you don't need to clean it every second day. Relax.