Hi all,
A few hours ago in the middle of the night I woke up and the whole apartment reeked of rotten eggs. I mean, it was/is putrid. It's all emanating from the turtle tank and I really have no idea why or what to do about it.
I've got a 55 gallon tank shared by two female YBS, both of around 5/6 inches long (I realize the tank is too small, but they grew up too fast and there's a space issue in my apt). I use a powerful Sunsun filter. I do weekly 50% partial water changes and treat new water with Reptisafe Turtle Conditioner, Microbelift Substrate Cleaner and API Sludge Destroyer. I've had them now for about four or five years since they were hatchlings and this system has usually worked.
Full disclosure, I've seen signs that one or both of them may have recently laid some eggs, though neither have displayed any gravid behaviour. I saw what looked like it might have been egg-debris recently and I've also seen one of them biting down on round white stones, which I usually see around the time they've laid eggs in the past. I kind of doubt this is the source of the egg-smell, but I have noticed that when they've laid eggs in the water before it's caused the water to cloud up pretty quickly, so I'm not sure if that's relevant.
The water problem really started about a month ago when the water turned green. This has happened before, usually from algae. Often I've found that the answer is to replace the purigen in my filter, so I did. I put in two new bags of purigen and discarded the old ones (I'd previously recharged them, so I felt it was time for a change). I also cleaned the filter, but I was out of activated carbon, so I left the old stuff in there and ordered more.
The water didn't clear up. It remained green and cloudy. I tried leaving it alone for a few days to see if it'd clear up, but it didn't.
I changed all the water in the tank, leaving only the water I had in the filter. I realize now this was probably a mistake. It certainly didn't improve matters. It remained green and cloudy and didn't clear up.
The carbon arrived less than a week later, so I dropped that into the filter. The filter looked pretty dirty even though I'd recently cleaned it. Needless to say, changing the carbon didn't clear anything up.
Since then I've tried partial water changes, changing as much as 75% of the water, and I've not really had any luck. Things got a little busy and I hadn't managed to solve the problem. Now I have to do something today because this smell is awful and I doubt it's healthy for the turtles.