Aquarium smell

[Liew Yida]

Hello everyone,

I got a problem here that my aquarium smell very badly.

My 15g tank is 6months old and fill with 28 variety of neon tetras and 4 cory. I have a hang old filter and a submerged filter, 2 air pump running and a hang on cooling fan.

I does my 35% water changes every weekly.

How does my water smells so badly suddenly?
How can I prevent it or control it? For an advise please.

[Urban Aquaria]

Sounds like your tank water has become foul due to the accumulated overload of pollutants and waste over the past few months. Your filtration may be insufficient, or not cleaned regularly enough, or the tank not cleaned for long time, or you feed too much (or a combination of all those factors).

Solutions are to reduce bio-load (if possible), reduce feeding, do more frequent and larger water changes (test the parameters to make sure the tank cycle is still working, and nitrates are within moderate levels). Clean the filter and tank more often. Upgrading the filtration to a good quality canister filter with larger media volume can help alot too.

[Liew Yida]

Thank you so much for the advise.
As for right now i will reduce my feeding once per day and fast them once per week. For my filters i clean one of my filter every water change with old water and the 2nd filter i only clean it for once per month. Also, i change the wools once per 2 months. Like 1st filter during Jan then 2nd filter will be on Feb then 1st filter will be on Mar and so on. I doing this because i have to keep the beneficial bacteria. Please advise if i have doing it incorrectly.

i realize that my aquarium glass seem to have white transport blur stuff sticking on it. i checked via internet and it seem like a algae and could wipe off easily.
Every water changes, i have to wipe off some green patch on my aquarium plants leaves. My aquarium have not dead fish(touch wood) for the past six months when i started off. Please advise how to control the algae which i know there is no way to prevent the algae.

[Urban Aquaria]

Thank you so much for the advise.
As for right now i will reduce my feeding once per day and fast them once per week. For my filters i clean one of my filter every water change with old water and the 2nd filter i only clean it for once per month. Also, i change the wools once per 2 months. Like 1st filter during Jan then 2nd filter will be on Feb then 1st filter will be on Mar and so on. I doing this because i have to keep the beneficial bacteria. Please advise if i have doing it incorrectly.

Your filter cleaning routine looks okay. If the water is smelly it means that the existing filters can't manage the waste and bio-load sufficiently, so you'll just have to clean and wash them all more frequently, maybe weekly, instead of monthly. And do more water changes to flush out the accumulated dissolved waste too.

If after reducing feeding, cleaning the tank and cleaning filters more frequently, the water still smells bad... then maybe your exiting filters are just too small and inefficient to manage it. You may then need to consider reducing the bio-load and/or upgrading the filtration to a canister filter that can hold more bio-media. That would help increase the surface areas for beneficial bacteria to grow in and increase the bio-load handling capacity of the tank.

Btw, have you tested your tank parameters? Whats the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings? Those test results can help to narrow down the source of the tank issues.

i realize that my aquarium glass seem to have white transport blur stuff sticking on it. i checked via internet and it seem like a algae and could wipe off easily.
Every water changes, i have to wipe off some green patch on my aquarium plants leaves. My aquarium have not dead fish(touch wood) for the past six months when i started off. Please advise how to control the algae which i know there is no way to prevent the algae.

Sounds like just the usual algae layer on tank glass and plant leaves. You can manually scrape and wipe them off during regular tank maintenance. To slow down algae growth, do more water changes to reduce the accumulation of excess nutrients and reduce lighting intensity/photoperiod.

I notice you don't have any algae eaters amongst your tank inhabitants. Once you have solved the water smell issue and checked that your tank parameters are safe with a stable cycle, you could consider introducing a few otocinclus into the tank. They will help to eat up the soft film algae on tank glass and plant leaves. Introducing cherry shrimps or yamato shrimps will also help too, as they will also eat various other types of algae. A good combination of algae eaters can keep algae at bay and reduce your maintenance workload.

[Liew Yida]

Thank you so much for the advise.
I will start reducing the amount of food for feeding and do more frequent water change first and see how it goesz

As for algae problem, I heard the cory catfish itself can help out by consuming the algae?
actually i don't mind getting 3 otos for my tank. But I have already housed 27 neons and 4 cory in my tank. Do you think I'm still okay to get 3 more otos? Plus I heard that otos are very difficult to keep and very sensitive towards water right?

[Urban Aquaria]

So far i haven't seen cories actively eating up algae though, they might nibble on some if really hungry, but not enough to be considered efficient algae eaters.

Yeah, otos should ideally be introduced into an established tank with safe parameters and stable cycle, so you have to make sure your tank environment is like that beforehand.

As long as your tank is stable and the filtration is sufficient, it should be able to handle the additional bio-load of 3 small otos... the key here is algae eaters like otos and shrimps actively help to eat up algae in the tank so they have usefullness. Your other fishes mainly just eat food and produce waste, so they don't help in those aspects. If you find that the bio-load is getting too much, then you may need to adjust the ratio of non algae-eaters vs algae eaters.

If you look at many aquascaped tanks, they tend to stock a much higher ratio of algae eaters, rather than only "decorative" fishes.

[BFG]

The solution to pollution is dilution .

What are you using for substrate ? How are you doing water change ?

[Liew Yida]

Thank you so much for your advise!
My aquarium seem like does not smell at all after the water change. I will still monitor these few days before till next water change.
I will try to get 3 more otos for the algae problem first then I will monitor day by day and see how it goes.
Thank you for your information and I will keep that in mind

[Liew Yida]

I don't use any sand for my substrate. I used aquarium pepples and does not fully fill all the the ground. Because during doing water change, it is easily for my to suck up those small particle waste at the bottom.
I will reuse the wool in my filter by squeezing the wool by using old water. As for the water, I will remove 35% of it and replace a new water with conditioner treated. I will only change the wool once per month.
Currently my gravel most of them turned green, I will try not to wash those green patch away as I know there are some beneficial bacteria staying on the gravel substrate.
From the earlier post, I will try to get 3 otos for them to do the job on those green patch that stick on to the gravel.

[Liew Yida]

I just got my 3 oto catfish back home.
They seem to be swimming actively around and stick on the glass of my aquarium. It is a good sign and hope they would maintain my algae.

It is quite embarrassing that took my to get a oto in 2 mins when i was in aquarium shop. They swim very fast and i could not catch up their speed so i ask the shop owner for assistant to get for me the remaining 2.

[Liew Yida]

Okay tonight when i got back home, i found my 3 otos died. I read through internet said that it is common and lots of hobbyist experienced too.
My 3 otos did survived more than 24 hours because i checked them this morning before i left to work. But then, i have already found out that this morning they seem to be not active anymore.

I think i will just stick it with cleaning the algae everytime when i am doing water change. I would not want to kill any life of innocent fishes anymore.

[Urban Aquaria]

Okay tonight when i got back home, i found my 3 otos died. I read through internet said that it is common and lots of hobbyist experienced too.
My 3 otos did survived more than 24 hours because i checked them this morning before i left to work. But then, i have already found out that this morning they seem to be not active anymore.

I think i will just stick it with cleaning the algae everytime when i am doing water change. I would not want to kill any life of innocent fishes anymore.

1 oto dying out of 3 is understandable... but if all 3 otos died at the same time, then it is a warning sign that the water conditions are not good. The existing fishes might have gotten used to the deteriorated water conditions over time (even though they are slowly getting damaged by it), but any new fishes added will be shocked and can't survive. This is characteristic of "old tank syndrome".

Here is a useful article which describes this issue: http://freshaquarium.about.com/od/pr...k_syndrome.htm

Btw, have you tested your tank parameters? Because so far you haven't mentioned doing any tests to get measurable results. This can really help to narrow down the cause, otherwise you'll just be wild guessing and doing things that may or may not help.

With the setup of the tank based on your other thread (http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...quarium-plants), using non-aquatic plants which deteriorate over time, i think its best to make some changes... add more proper aquarium plants (preferably fast growing types) and a good quality light, and gradually improve the water quality before adding anymore livestock.

[tetrakid]

Many may not believe this seriously but the most important thing in any fish tank is good oxygenation. Bad smell from an aquarium is a bad sign which must be tackled immediately. Water changes will only temporarily make things better but does not treat the underlying cause. Lack of oxygen is the main cause of most aquarium problems. With insufficient oxygen, anaerobic organisms soon rule a tank causing untold problems such as water stink and fish death or disease.

[BFG]

Liew Yida , it looks like your filtration , your filter wool , is not able to keep up with your bioload . You need to upgrade your filtration as soon as possible . New filtration will take time to be establish .