The Puffer Forum

Wow....my cycled, planted FW tank is not looking so good.

Is it the bloodworms by any chance? I may be over feeding a bit, but holy cats, I haven't had a tank go south this quick in a very long time. The water is clouding up, and there's actually foam on the waterline. I did a 25% water change last week, and just did about a 35-40% now. I've been using a little Mela-fix since it started. Doesn't seem to make much difference (never used it before).

All the fish look fine. There's no smell to the water, but I know something is not right.

Some of the plants were dying due to low light, which I have since corrected and there's new growth. I'm still siphoning out dead slimy stuff off the ones that are showing life.

New carbon, water changes, correct temps, cut back a bit on feeding....any other suggestions? I'm about ready to pop a skimmer on this tank!

I have a skimmer on mine also. I did a DIY conversion at first and then ditched that and installed a pond skimmer

That foam / film on the surface is probably robbing the plants of the much needed light. Installing the skimmer was the best thing I did.. water quality has drastically improved.

Edit:

Surface agitation + skimmer = lovely tank

Overfeeding bloodworms or feeding out dead ones, can definitely do this to your tank. Never feed out worms that might look dead.

in the frozen cube, are those the grey ones?

I meant the ones that are sold live, that die.

A surface skimmer made a WORLD of difference for the turtle tank at my parents house. Just the cheap aquclear/fluval model you see all over for just over 10$ on average.

I feed only frozen bloodworms at this point. I ordered some blackworms from a guy on eBay and he stuck me so I have to go thru the nonsense to get my money back and report him. If anyone wants his eBay ID, PM me so you don't get burned, too.

Anyway, I can get a nano-skimmer at the LFS and I bet it would make a big difference. I'm seeing an oily scum develop on the other tank as well so I guess it's bloodworms. So far none of my 4 puffers will eat anything else. I have some snails in a small tank but not enough to feed every day. I'm going to have to locate a large source of snails soon.

J-P wrote:in the frozen cube, are those the grey ones?

No, they are red and very easy to see. One of my marine cubes has bloodworms in it, and they are real obvious once the cube melts. The grey ones could be mosquito larvae or mysis.

Pufferpunk wrote:Overfeeding bloodworms or feeding out dead ones, can definitely do this to your tank. Never feed out worms that might look dead.

I feed one cube to two tanks. All the worms get consumed pretty quickly. All the fish go nuts for them. I don't know if that constitutes overfeeding or not.

You should always defrost those cubes in a small glass (shot glass will do for 1 cube) & then strain the "juice" off in a brine shrimp net.

Do you rinse the worms in tap water after they finish thawing? The biggest source of food slime is that (usually) vitamin and mineral enhanced solution they freeze the worms in, which also contains a lot of red worm juices because their bodies "weep" as they thaw.

LOL, we posted the same advice at exactly the same time!

LOL, frozen cube hivemind.

Pufferpunk wrote:You should always defrost those cubes in a small glass (shot glass will do for 1 cube) & then strain the "juice" off in a brine shrimp net.

Yes, I know. I do.

Nick wrote:Do you rinse the worms in tap water after they finish thawing? The biggest source of food slime is that (usually) vitamin and mineral enhanced solution they freeze the worms in, which also contains a lot of red worm juices because their bodies "weep" as they thaw.

No I do not rinse them. I thaw them in about a tsp of tank water. That's the way I've done it with my SW frozen foods too. I'll try the rinse, thanks.