General Care Discussion :: Water/Filter Mystery- Help!

[Sally's Mom]

My xp3 filter has been running for a month now. It's never held the water clear but for a few days at a time. I thought the problem was solved a few days ago when someone suggested moving the outflow and intake far from each other, which I did. Yesterday the water turned cloudy and I did a 50% change. I also noticed that the flow was not as strong as it usually is, so I made sure the intake was clean. This morning we woke up to a foul stench permiating the entire house; the tank stinks. I set up the outdoor tank to put Sally in and am contemplating a 100% water change but I know that's normally not recommended, so I did tests before I posted:

pH-6.4 (?)
ammonia- 0
Nitrate-0
nitrite-0

It's a 30 gallon tank filled to 2" from the rim. I've got all the right filter media in there. I know I must be doing some small thing wrong but I just can't figure out what it might be. I hand feed her most of her food and hang veggies from clips and feed fruits (blueberries, grapes, watermelon or strawberries daily), and scoop out food after an hour or so. The maintenance seems never ending and that is contrary to what I read on the site wiith regard to this filter. Can anyone help me solve this mystery and should I do a 100% water change and start over? (I know to rinse the ceramics in filter water and keep wet.) Also, is a 6.4 pH acceptable?

[Cramer]

This is a conundrum. All I can say, is that a complete water change might help just this once, if nothing else but to start over. Make sure there is nothing dead or rotting in the tank, tubes or filter.
Add new, well rinsed, active carbon to help with odors.

And unless they are completely mucked, don't even rinse the biomedia in it's own water: just leave it be. If it does get that dirty, then it needs more fine filter material before the bio stage.

good luck!

[Sally's Mom]

Thanks Cramer. I did a full change. I recalled that I had briefly rinsed the filter out about a week ago when I added a bag of rings to the bag of stars I had started with. I thought the mfgr. put in extra 20 & 30 sponges so I took them out. I read the cleaning instructions on the Rena site last night to see that 2 of each should be in there, so I put them back today. I also added a third bag of ceramic rings-is that too much? Could the lack of sponges have started the trouble do you think? Why would the tank stink and cloud if the if the ammonia level was at zero? Should the ceramics hold the clarity together having already been established or should I expect another bloom? Any ideas as to what should I do about the pH? Oye, so many questions!

[Cramer]

You can't have too many rings, but biorings don't directly keep the water column clean.
You need to balance the media setup to have good mechanical filtration to ensure clear water and effective biofiltration after.
So, put the sponges back in- keep em clean.

[Sally's Mom]

Gottcha; thanks.

[TheComputerGremlin]

The stink is probably not ammonia-based, but sulfa compounds that should have otherwise gotten cleared out of the tank through the filters. I'd give it some time and see if the full tank change ended up working out. If not, definitely post again. The best place that I could see improvement would be to consider feeding her out of the tank in a separate container, but so far I've been feeding mine in his tank and everything's pretty clean. I need to do a bit of cleaning this weekend, though, but it's been about a month, so I should probably give the filter a once over anyhow.

[SpotsMama]

If your ph is really 6.4, that's way low. When I accidently lowered the ph to around that level in my turtle's tank one time, it killed all the nitrifying bacteria and the tank cycled again as if it were new. In other words, the tank got cloudy.

However, if the ph is so acidic that it has killed the good bacteria and caused the tank to cycle, then you would expect to be getting high levels of ammonia and/or nitrite. Can you double check your test results? Something seems a little off.

[Sally's Mom]

Something was definately off but the pH is good today at 6.8, and the water is clear (so far). I think I got very lucky with the tank yesterday and hopefully the good bacteria made it and the contamination is gone. I didn't rinse the biomedia, but only placed them in a bucket of tank water while cleaning the rest. The filter was terribly gunky but the ceramics weren't. I didn't replace the Fancy cypress mat after cleaning the tank because when I pulled it out to rinse it was still loaded with foodstuff; although, I skim out all the time. The rotting food probably caused the problem as Cramer had mentioned early on. It was odd that the test seemed off so I tested twice to make sure.

Is there one product someone could recommend that regulates the pH to normal, whether it's too high or low?