Hi all!

I set up my goldfish tank 2-3 months ago and recently began having troube with tiny specs floating all through my tank. At first I thought it was because of the Parasite Clear I had treated my tank with, but I have done multiple large water changes, with no improvement. This week, I changed the carbon and bio-floss in my filter. That does seem to have helped a small bit (maybe that's wishful thinking), but I'm still seeing a fare amount of debris. It's so small that it isn't really noticable when the hood light is out, but when the light is on, there appears to be tiny white/dust specs floating all through the tank. They seem to float upward and settle on the water's surface. The filter is continually spitting them right out into the water. It looks really bad against my black aquarium background, which only magnifies the problem. The problem gets noticably worse when I feed the gel food I made. The food disolves pretty quickly if not eaten immediately. And if a fish eats a large mouthful, it causes a white cloud around the fish. Is this normal, or did I do something wrong when I made the food? I thought I put quite a lot of geletin as it was, but perhaps I should have used even more.

Even so, shouldn't my filter be removing this debris? Shouldn't the large water changes have helped, even temporarily? I also wonder if my hard water could also be contributing to the problem. Perhaps it's beginning to build up in my filter. The water where I live is notorious for leaving behind hard water residue. You should see the inside of my humidifier! I do hope it isn't the hard water. It would cost me a fortune to have to buy spring water all of the time for a 75 gallon tank!

Depending on how much gel you placed in the food is how much the gel food will break down. When I make a patch in the soft way I get this allot but if you have enough filtration in the tank and the intake tubes are 2" off the bottom of the tank then it should be cleaning the tank up fast.

You could also think of having a power head in the tank to circulate the water to help clean off the bottom of the tank...

Koko herself! Glad to meet you! Thank you so much for starting and maintaining this site! I've learned so much already!

Hmmm. I'd prefer a firmer food so I'll plan on increasing my gel next time. But that'll be a while. I have a good deal of food to go through. At least I now know what I'm seeing isn't uncommon.

My Castcade 1000 filter is designed to cycle 265 gallons per hour. I would have thought that is good. I'd say the intake probably IS about 2 inches off the bottom, if not a little higher. I have 3 airators, two of them bubble wands, so I have good circulation, but I do have a lot of plant debris settling on the bottom as my tank is heavily planted. Please pardon my ignorance, but what is a power head?