![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Aquarium cleaning
Jun. 13th, 2011 10:38 pmWhoa. I had no idea. Y'know, I've had fish tanks for a long time now. Something like half a century or so in fact. Tried marine environment once, but that is just too messy. Generally fresh water, easy stuff like live bearers, danios, and such. In the last 20 years I've finally begun to be aware of the complexity of water chemistry and how delicate the balance is. The idea that it could be actually controlled and corrected when it starts to tilt would have been incredible to me before that.
Anyway, we have one tank that has been going continuously for eight years. Not that it hasn't gone "sour" a couple of times in that period, because it has. But we'd just replace the water, clean out the filters, and bring it back to life. Then just recently we discovered that nothing we could do would bring the pH in that tank up to neutral. It stayed acidic, and would go all the way down to 6.0 in a week or so if left alone.
After seeking advice in multiple places we concluded that it was the undergravel filter, which had been running all those years. In theory, the power heads lift the gunk back up from under the gravel to where the filters and water changes can take care of it, but apparently they don't work that well and over time the space under the filter panels gets very foul indeed. This was the problem.
Today's advice is to remove the UGF completely, or else reverse the flow so that water is pushed down the tubes and under the gravel, forcing the gunk up through the substrate where it can be removed. So we decided to check it out. Moved the fish (seven swordtails of varying ages, and two plecostomi, one about eight inches long and the other quite tiny) into a couple of buckets filled with water from the tank. Took all the plants and rocks out, pushed the gravel to one side and started lifting out the plastic perforated panels of the undergravel filter. I have never seen such filthy water outside the foulest swamp. Black as pitch, filled with sediment, and even smelly. That was surely the problem.
Removed all the water down to the gravel and bare bottom. Replaced it with softened well water (not ideal, but the best we had on hand) and then added some pHDown to start pushing it down toward neutral as our well water is around 7.8 once it goes through the softener. It's also too soft, so I added "aquarium salt" to help compensate. The tank is now cycling through a clean filter element to remove the sediment that remains. Meanwhile, the fish are being slowly acclimatized to a higher pH by replacing a pint of water from each bucket with the softened well water every couple of hours. By tomorrow night I hope the conditions of the buckets and the newly-refurbished tank will match closely enough to allow us to return the fish to the tank.
Anyway, we have one tank that has been going continuously for eight years. Not that it hasn't gone "sour" a couple of times in that period, because it has. But we'd just replace the water, clean out the filters, and bring it back to life. Then just recently we discovered that nothing we could do would bring the pH in that tank up to neutral. It stayed acidic, and would go all the way down to 6.0 in a week or so if left alone.
After seeking advice in multiple places we concluded that it was the undergravel filter, which had been running all those years. In theory, the power heads lift the gunk back up from under the gravel to where the filters and water changes can take care of it, but apparently they don't work that well and over time the space under the filter panels gets very foul indeed. This was the problem.
Today's advice is to remove the UGF completely, or else reverse the flow so that water is pushed down the tubes and under the gravel, forcing the gunk up through the substrate where it can be removed. So we decided to check it out. Moved the fish (seven swordtails of varying ages, and two plecostomi, one about eight inches long and the other quite tiny) into a couple of buckets filled with water from the tank. Took all the plants and rocks out, pushed the gravel to one side and started lifting out the plastic perforated panels of the undergravel filter. I have never seen such filthy water outside the foulest swamp. Black as pitch, filled with sediment, and even smelly. That was surely the problem.
Removed all the water down to the gravel and bare bottom. Replaced it with softened well water (not ideal, but the best we had on hand) and then added some pHDown to start pushing it down toward neutral as our well water is around 7.8 once it goes through the softener. It's also too soft, so I added "aquarium salt" to help compensate. The tank is now cycling through a clean filter element to remove the sediment that remains. Meanwhile, the fish are being slowly acclimatized to a higher pH by replacing a pint of water from each bucket with the softened well water every couple of hours. By tomorrow night I hope the conditions of the buckets and the newly-refurbished tank will match closely enough to allow us to return the fish to the tank.
