Green Water help

[purplecandle]

This is not one of my tanks, but one of my friend's tanks...

So I went to a friends house and she has two 55 gallon tanks...one cold one tropical..

The tropical tank is fine

But the cold water one has water the color of green antifreeze.
She says that in that tank..the green water always happens...and she said the previous owner of the tank had the same problem.

I checked the filters (two machines) and they were both filled with green gunk (the color of evergreen). I did not test the water (not at my house) but she says she has tested the water and that the ammonia is low, however, I doubt this because the tank is severely overstocked....cold water = goldfish.

I have already preached to her on that...

The tank is near some light, but not much..

I do know that she has been improperly cleaning her tanks (until I told her she did not know what a python was)...so I am sure she has been like once a month pouring out all the water and scrubbing everything....so that also leads to a possible issue of not being cycled.

So, She has several things going on..and today I am going to go help her clean her tanks - I am giving her one my pythons

But what should she do about the green water...

I have never dealt with green water...or its cause..

Any advice?

Change filter media? Clean the machines?

[J-P]

probably a light - nutrient imbalance. Too many nutrients in the water from the overstock and too much light with nothing to absorb those nutrients = scungy water.

Less fish, less feeding, less light + more plants

[purplecandle]

I was thinking of giving her some of my ramshorns to help with possible over-feeding..Would this be a good idea?

Technically the tank is a cold water tank, but it is not really "cold water" as the temps are never much lower than her house temps...would ramshorns be ok with that?

[J-P]

ramshorns may or may not help. They will be a "clean up crew" but will also add to the bioload. It is worth a shot though.

[SammyDee]

Remove the crud in the filters and add some new carbon weekly till it's gone while still maintaining the weekly WC. Try to set her up showing her that it's not much to do if she can do preventative maintanence. Doe the tank have any algae growths?

[purplecandle]

It was hard to see into the tank, but she did have some evergreen colored (i guess it was algae) growing on the glass.

[SammyDee]

Yea I'd do an extremely well cleaning of the tank. The slightest bit left behind can cause another outbreak. Clean the glass well. Then a big WC. Clean out filters(not pads/sponges). Take fake decor out and scrubb or boil till clean. Then replace it all. And have your friend do the WC weekly. Maybe twice a week to get any floating algae spores out. I had to do this once with my FW tank. Now I have zero algae and crystal clear water for years after. It's all about preventative maintanence. Tell you friend or show em that one wc a month is not right especially if the tanks overstocked. Show her how much to feed too maybe they're being overfed causing the whole issue. And make em do WC weekly after all this settles out. I'd also make sure they were keeping up on them while going thru all this. Sometime me n a bud just have some beers while doing our wc. So it's not so boring

[purplecandle]

LOL..Now I have this funny image of me and my friend drinking beer and doing water changes...

We both can't hold our liquor well...

Beer #1 Drain Water
beer #2 Clean decor
beer #3 Get distracted by how good the couch feels to sit on
beer #4 Why are we watching Desperate Housewives?
beer #5 Got any Doritos?
beer #6 mannn, luk at dem fishes ober there, why they ain't got um..um..waterrrrrrrr
beer #7 what fishes?
beer #8

[pufferpuggirl]

That's funny purple, made me laugh!

[Nick]

I usually toss floating plants into a tank with green water. Gets the light and nutrients before the free-water algae. Wisteria is good for this because it can be planted after the green water is gone for a couple weeks. Goldfish might eat it, or bite off all the leaves even if they can't, however.

[SammyDee]

Purplecandy that's hilarious.

[purplecandle]

Mystery Solved!

So I go to my friends house to help her clean her tank.

I show her how to use the python...because before she was scoping it out with bowls...

And when the water was about 4inches deep..I go to grab a plant to pull it out and it was stuck to something..so I keep pulling and pull up this huge white thing that I think 20 years ago was a underwater gravel filter.

She had two inches of gravel underneath it..and two inches on top of it..

So combined with her only scooping water out...literally every piece of waste in the tank never came out..and sunk below the plastic thing.

She said that the previous owner had told her to do so...which explains why the previous owner had green water...

I was rather angry..

I spent all day finding out the causes of green water..only to find out that someone I love is stupid enough to think that 1. some how poop disappears..2. that is what and underground filter is for, to put gravel on.

When I pulled out the thing the remaining water turned the blackest, greenest color you could imagine and the smell was worse than a dead snail.

[J-P]

that is why UGF suck instead of blow

[purplecandle]

I think it was some kind of under gravel filter from 1983...it was not hooked up to any sort of machine.

But, that is the only thing it could have been-it covered the whole bottom of the tank and had places where you could stick plastic plants to it..IDK

I do not know much about under gravel filters..

[Ajepalmer]

Very nice horror story before bed I'll read the happy ending in the morning