suspended floating particles

[outsideinside]

65 gallon freshwater.

thanks in advance for your suggestions:

it looks like it is snowing in my tank. it has been this way since i set it up in mid november (except for the 4 weeks i had algae bloom). LOTS of white suspended particles. i have an eheim canister filter 2213, which i've cleaned at least 3 times (and changed the ehfisynth media). i've tried polyfilter as well as drops that coagulate in your filter to catch fine particles. i even stuck a 2nd filter on there (a biowheel for a 75 gallon), but neither of them will filter out this crap. i've done daily water changes for weeks at a time. some of it isn't even fine, it's big stuff. i'm not overstocked. i have plastic plants and driftwood.

4 small/medium clown loaches, 3 khuli loaches, 3 dwarf african frogs, two plecos, two kory cats, two little puffers, 3 tetra, beta, 5 or 6 guppies.

 

[TheMainer]

How big is big? I know in my tank it looks like I have a bunch of particles floating around (look white when the light is on). I know when I get close enough and look hard, they are just tiny bubbles. Any chance that is what it is?

 

[outsideinside]

thanks. it's probably a hair smaller than ground pepper (can't think what to compare it to), which isn't all that big but it definitely looks big enough for my filter to catch it. i wondered the same thing at first but it's not water bubbles .. it's some kind of substance.

 

[prettypleco]

Do you have something in your tank that is dissolving? Some ornament or rocks?

 

[outsideinside]

i have driftwood (not sure what kind) that i bought at my lfs. i soaked and scrubbed it for a week or so before i put it in the tank. a friend of mine mentioned that she thought it was the gravel causing the problem, but it's the same stuff my lfs uses. it's natural brownish looking and smaller than the colored decorative gravel. i'll find out exactly what it is and get back to this post. i've read that changing out gravel isn't such a great idea though ..

 

[jade71301]

I had that too but, it was the food i was giving my fish that turnes into small fuzzy snowflake looking particals. Also when I started my tank for the first time, it was cloudy and looked like particles were floating around, it ended up being the gravel was not rinsed propperly so i took out all the water and rerinsed the grvel and it was fine since then. So try that it might work.

 

[kerosenecounty17]

I have the same problem and haven't been able to cure it. I have very hard water, and was wondering to myself the other day if these particles could possibly be small flecks of calcium that I'm introducing every time I do a water change? Any thoughts?

kc17

 

[FroggyFox]

Are you cleaning/rinsing your filter with chlorinated water or used tank water? If you've been doing a lot of water changes and been disturbing your bacteria colonies a lot then it could be a bacterial bloom that is just being prolonged because of all of your cleaning and water changes. IF it is that...you would be able to tell after stopping your water changes and leaving the filter ALONE for at least a week. Let everything settle down, do a small change after a week and maybe take some pictures to illustrate if the problem is getting worse or better leaving the tank alone.

If its not bacterial...and its not algae (you said you had it before so I'd be correct in assuming that you're sure its not green water right?)...and you're doing gravel vacs and cleaning really well, not just literally changing water, and its not something that someone else mentioned about decorations or wood coming apart in your tank...THEN it could be a freak one time thing. You can try using a particulate clumping solution and putting a new pad in your filter. I've used P-Clear by hagen before (used to have a trouble tank with cloudy issues) and it worked well, I just followed the directions and it took two doses. Basically you put a new filter pad in, dose the tank and change (or at least rinse really well) the pad after 24 hours and dose again if necessary. I'd definitely try to find the cause before you resort to that though because even if it gets rid of the cloudyness once, then you still dont know the cause and nothing says it won't come back.

One other thought is if you bought a bag of activated carbon to put in your filter for a week or so and see if that helps. If it did, take it out after a week or two. That'd probably be cheaper to try before buying a solution.

Good luck!

 

[outsideinside]

i really appreciate everyone's suggestions.
my gravel is TXI. it's finer than usual and some of it is almost sandy. i thought i'd rinsed it pretty well, but i went ahead and changed it out last night and that seems to have fixed the problem ... for now anyway. i'll leave it alone for a week or so froggyfox and see what transpires.
btw: my new gravel (colorful pebbles) is really a lot nicer looking. i'll post a pic when i can.