Habitat - Indoor :: I hate water...

[JimmyJam]

Hey everyone,

Long time no see, haha. Mary Jane is having a bit of a problem. We have a Rena Xp3, and the water gets dirty in a matter of days. we swapped out both foam filters(20 ppi and 30 ppi 2 of each) aswell as the micro filter. After cleaning out the tank and filter the qater cleared up in 1 day qnd 3 days later it started getting dirty again. Any help would be awesome, and for the record yes the pump is still pumping.

[gwennie]

Are you feeding her in the tank? How much are you feeding her?

Your tank is probably trying to cycle at the moment as well now that you've don ea full tank clean and a filter clean. If you did a full filter clean you might've killed all your beneficial bacteria that would've been in it.

[JimmyJam]

I'm not sure how much my girlfriend feeds Mary Jane, but i always clean excess food after she's done eating.

Last night i cleaned the filter out and noticed it smelled horrible, and on alot of the area had a black film on it. I never experienced this before so I guess I will buy a Bio-chem zorb to replace the carbon pouch, also as a side note the carbon bag smelled nasty too.

[gwennie]

Since you've swapped out all your filter media in your filter, you've gotten rid of all the good beneficial bacteria in it that keep ammonia levels down. It's going to take a little while for the water in your tank to cycle and settle down, and that's probably why your tank is so smelly right now.

If you do small partial water changes every two days or so (maybe 15-20% of the water), your tank will cycle and settle down ^^

Also - carbon bags in turtle filters aren't really ideal because they can only absorb so much ammonia before they start to leech it back out into the water. You might want to consider a different filter media set up that doesn't include it.