LOoonnggg. Cloudiness, ADA Aquasoil, weird loach behaviour

[jennisof]

Bear with me, this is long.

Trying to give enough info. Since switching to the ADA AS, we have had incredibly-to-moderately cloudy water, discoloration of the water, and "weird" fish behaviour.

-90 gallon tank
-2 Eheim 2217, media: cylinders, substrat, blue and white foams.
-Coralife compact fluorescent 2 bulbs x 65w
-Added inline CO2 to the quarantine 10G for the loaches for a week, and they were fine. Running it at just over 1 bubble/second, which is lower than my homemade reactor on the 20G.

-Ammonia 0
-pH 8 (down to 7.8 the day I let it go 30 hours)
-Nitrite 0
-NitrAte 10, lowest ever in my 3 years with this tank
-Yellow, cloudy water

Established tank (guy had it for years before I got it), with cichlid sand and no problems aside from high nitrates I inherited. Didn't know the dangers, trying to be a better fish-keeper now.


Installed the AS 2 weeks ago, planted same day, and have been doing up to 2x/day 30 - 50% waterchanges using the python at low volume, and zip drops.

Cut my stocking to less than half, added slowly in the second week. The water is still yellowish and cloudy. Looks like floating dust.

Loaches may be showing normal cichlidless behaviour, but it's new to me and I'm worried about stress levels.
Obsessive group swimming halfway-up-the wall at corners, turning as a group to go back to bottom and start all over, which may be "happy to see ya" activity? Or stress? Restless and not eating--fear of being netted again? They have been ultra-piglets in the past.

Rapid fluttering of gills when they are being hyper. (Slows when they settle or go back to the loach-motel rock, but starts up again when they freeswim.) I re-introduced them to the big tank one at a time over days. The smaller ones seemed to get over the rapid fluttering in a day or so, but they also were calmly stuck in the loach motel. On addition of the last two, big ones, the synchronized wall-surfing started, and all flutter their gills.

Whew! You made it!)

Any good ideas or advice? How do I make my water clear again? How concerned should I be about the loaches?
Thanks!

[cichlid1409]

slow down on your water changes.... let it settle

[myjohnson]

Aqua soil may take months to clear.

A friend of mine that use to work at FR had this same problem in his display tank.

Can't really do anything but wait it out.

[Mzungu]

I love your description of the loaches - "synchronized wall-surfing." That's just perfect!

Loaches, apparently, go through this every once in a while. After I type this post I'll look for one of my threads I made a while ago worried about my Kuhli loaches doing this exact same thing. I assume the rapid breathing would be simply because they're being so active, and tiring themselves out.

AquaSoil, like the others said, can be tricky. Did you add anything else new to the tank once you planted it? Like, any new driftwood? AquaSoil also releases a lot of ammonia, I've been told, and so while it might be a good idea to slow down a little on the water changes, I would recommend using your test kit often to test for ammonia and nitrites/nitrates to be sure they're not present, as I see you're able to do.

When you do the water changes, are you vacuuming the AquaSoil? If so, I would refrain from doing so. AquaSoil settles quite nicely after a time, and "erodes" (can't think of a better word right now) into smaller particles, which make their way to the bottom. Vacuuming could be making the cloudiness worse by stirring up the AquaSoil.

Good luck! Hope it clears up for you soon. :)

[Mzungu]

Here's that thread:

http://www.houstonfishbox.com/vforums/showthread.php?t=24113

[jennisof]

Never did get the ammonia spike, even before I was doing the waterchanges. Guessing that my bacteria from the cichlid sand (left over half in the tank) handled it. Tried vacuuming the AS once, sucked up so much dust I decided to leave that alone.

Forgot...there was a new-to-me driftwood in there for about 2 days at the start, before fish. Took it out because of the water color, and put it in a kiddie-pool outside to leach, but it hasn't colored that water at all.

Thank you so much for your response on the loaches, Mzungu. I am really fond of them. They're old fish and deserving of good environment. I worried since it was strange and they were breathing too hard, but it was almost as if they were partying after being apart.

[jennisof]

Just an update, this tank *finally* cleared this week. Loaches are alive and hiding during the day like they normally did.

[cichlid1409]

glad to hear it :)

[mahoro]

AS lowers the ph of the water to better suit the plant's needs... make sure your fish likes a lower ph...