Really long bloom?

[moghedan]

I'm guessing on the forum section...

Ok, I have an old tank, set up a few years. They guy that gave it to me said it was 55 gallon, I think it looks closer to 40, but I haven't exactly measured and calculated.

In this tank are
4x Buenos Aires(sp?) tetras, 2.5"-3" long
2x Ottocinclas
15? Neon Tetras
12? Ghost Shrimp
(Shrimp and Neons don't count well... the Neons don't school, half of them hide at any given moment, and they seem to teleport more than swim half the time. I know there are at least 12. As for the shrimp, I put 20 in, pulled out three dead the next morning, and guess from there as I only ever see one at a time... if I look very closely. If he can change size, there could be at few as one remaining...)



The Issue - The water has been cloudy since October. Sometimes it is the very scientific "kinda cloudly" all the way up to "I can't even see the HOB tube". Seriously, the red light on the heater makes the entire tank glow light pink at night.

Parameters - Hell, I don't know. I have a API master test kit, but it is a wrapped gift... and the party where the unwrapping happens hasn't occured. My grandparents were in Florida, the house got a ruptured pipe, the house molded, the house is being "Cleaned", my grandparents haven't really felt the need to return home during this adventure.

Visual situation - No ich, no red gills, do deaths. I suppose it is possible a neon or shrimp died, since they have mastered uncountable teleportation, and their bodies dissolve into the ether, but I am reasonably certain they haven't. The fish are in good spirits, swim happily, and act no different from before.

The plants continue to grow.

The Algae continues to grow... a light coating on most surfaces.




Actions prior to clouding -
Last major act was to add plants. I was at PetSmart, got frustrated waiting on someone, bought a few TopFin tubes of Amazon swords and a Coconut Mid September.

I have since become aware that the coconut was a poor, nonaquatic choice. As of yet, it continues to be bright green and happy, except that the BAs seem to find it very tasty and eat the ends of the leaves. At least, I think it is the BAs.

The Swords provide lush cover, when combined with the existing plastic plants, as such that the shrimp are rarely seen.






I have done waterchanges, ~15 gallons a week. Then I thought that might be prolonging it, and stopped for a couple weeks. I have done 50% water changes, measured by "that looks like about half" which was really more than that because the pebbles and plants take up waterspace at the bottom, not the top. Waterchanges clear the water to "kinda cloudy" for one day.

No lights for three days did nothing.

Feeding once every two days did nothing. I might be overfeeding, but not by much. Very few flakes make it to the shrimp. To make it easier for the neons, I slightly grind some of the flakes in my fingers to break them up. The BAs get the bigger ones fine.

I usually keep a frozen romain leaf or cucumber slice in the tank for a few hours each day. It is the most common time to see the shrimp. This is a recent addition, and started around the time the cloudinress started. I had some trouble with some unwashed romaine killing fish in another tank, and layed off veggies for a while. But I skipped a week with no change in water.

Except where noted, none of this routine has changed in years.

[Honey Badger 1]

Without accurate parameters it will be next to impossible to figure out what is going on. Could the ruptured pipe have something to do with the cloudy water? Is the water coming out of the pipe cloudy? Maybe the non-aquatic coconut plant is mucking up the water? Neon tetra do count towards bio-load. Your tank doesn't seem over stocked, but without accurate nitrate levels it's tough to know. There is a handy calculator in the left hand menu to calculate aquarium volume.