Ballurio

I have a 36 long freah water tank and it will never clear up I clean the rocks daily and it never clears up. I keep my tank temp at 79. My pump is a Cascade 300 and i'm not sure if it is my pump? The only fish I have in the tank is 9 Jack Dempseys
Cloudyness is white.

Nitrite 0
ammonia 0
nitrate 0
pH 7.0
High Range pH 8.0

gm333

Is that a nine inch Jack dempsey or nine dempseys? What do you mean by clear up, is it cloudy with a white color or green color?

BJP

Your test numbers aren't making any sense either. The PH can be 7.0 or 8.0 but not both at the same time.

If the ph is 7.0 or above you should have something testible in the ammonia, nitrite or nitrate levels. Hopefully only the nitrate.

If the cloudiness is a greenish shade it's probably an algae bloom which may explain the lack of nitrate. That would most likely need to be adressed with light reduction which may mean closing a window curtain or moving the tank.

If it's a het bloom it may mean you need to clean a little less and reduce the chemicals you add with each cleaning.

penna32

have you cycled the tank ?

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hydrashocker

1. Get rid of the chemicals.
2. Stop cleaning your tank so much.
3. Make sure you have all the chlorine out of the water.
4. Only clean your aquarium no more than 1 time a month unless ammonia is too high.
5. Get some Stress Zyme and pour a bunch in your tank and cycle it full bore.

BJP

Stresszyme has shown itself to be the least useful of the 3 bacterial suppliments tested so far. It is getting a second chance to accomplish something in the current tests and a fourth product has been added so there's a chance it may not end up being the worst but it'll have to demonstrate that first. I'm really not expecting miracles from it though.

Advising a random dosage goes against the products own instructions and against your first tip of quitting the addition of chemical additives.

Only cleaning a tank once a month can lead to many problems including stunted growth, PH crash, KH depletion, substrate compaction leading to anoxic development, excessive algae and diatom growth from accumulated nitrate and phosphate. There should be no more ammonia problems after the initial cycle. If you want to monitor something, forget the ammonia and monitor the nitrate. That's the one that will accumulate steadily in the unplanted aquarium and show you how often your tank really needs water changes/cleaning. Do enough water changes to prevent the nitrate from accumulating and you prevent most of the other problems at the same time.

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penna32

it also sounds like you didnt fully cycle the tank, as your nitrates are low, and if it is like gm333 and its a white cloudy issue, than thats just a part of cyclingg

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hydrashocker

I am not saying to go above the instructions for the tank. I guess I should have been more exact. But the last thing you want to do is clean the rocks every day! You need the bacteria that attach to them. Also the user is not fully explaining what he is doing. Of course you have to monitor the levels but he needs to get the tank under control before trying to fix every problem at once. ONE THING AT A TIME is the best way to get the job done or crashing the aquarium WILL happen. First thing first slow down and take one step at a time. Also I don't understand what is wrong with Stress Zyme when you need all the bacteria when your tank is crashing, and you are doing to many water changes killing your aquatic cultures.

BJP

It's better than nothing but as far as accomplishing anything using it, the last test with the product had it take 30 days worth of additions by package instructions before any population of bacteria strong enough to create a nitrite level of .5ppm was in place. Under the same test conditions Cycle by Hagen accomplished that in 7 days and Bio-Spira by Marineland accomplished that in 3 days.

In other words, if a tank is in distress, for slightly higher bottle prices you can achieve the result you're trying to accomplish several weeks sooner.

I also have test results showing daily gravel vacuuming with 50% water changes not preventing the bacteria bed from developing and in comparison to a tank that had identical 50% water changes without the vacuuming, the vacuumed tank only took a couple extra days to cycle the first time and when the tank that wasn't vacuumed finally was and both tanks were spiked with equal amounts of ammonia, the tank that had been vacuumed all along had developed a much stronger bacterial population in places that couldn't be damaged by gravel vacuuming in the future where the tank that had never been vacuumed took much longer to redevelop bacteria to handle the ammonia. In other words, the more you vacuum the gravel, the more you encourage the bacteria to develop in places that will be permanent homes for them.

A secondary observation from that set of test tanks was 50% water changes and even vacuuming at the same time were incapable of keeping the nitrite levels down when the fish were continually fed twice a day throughout. Neither action damaged the bacteria enough to prevent the bacteria from cranking the nitrite off the chart every day from the ammonia released from fish waste and food.

Another interesting note now that I think about it, both of those tanks using no bacterial innoculation other than whatever developped from fish food and fish waste outperformed Stresszyme in the recent test. Both had testible levels of nitrite greater than .5ppm by day 12.

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hydrashocker

hhhmmmm.

Still not quite getting the vacuum thing. If you move the rock around and stir the bacteria up I can see it helping dramatically. But removing all the waste in the rock (especially when using under gravel filter) is not going to allow much ammonia to form.
Maybe I need to read this information you have to see the exact setup and trajectory of this test. All of this info is nice but I think misleading. Also different types of fish and different sizes are going to contribute to all different types of tests. Just because it worked for the person for their type of setup doesn't mean it is going to work for everyone with different setups.