its snowing...

weesiepoo · 08-05-2006, 06:46 PM

in my aquarium! anyone got a clue about this? i cleaned it very well with a solution of vinegar and water, rinsed it in super hot water for like 3 minutes straight, scraped and cleaned and all of that then set it up and let it run by itself, empty, for several days. it got very very cloudy. now the cloudiness is gone, but everything is covered with a fine patine of white-like a dusting of snow. i put the net in and tapped a pant and a cloud of white dusty paricles flew around and then resettled. i tested the water several times and everything is optimum except our water is pretty darn hard here. are these particles lime or something like it? i have never had this issue in a tank before. any ideas? what do i do?

redrose · 08-05-2006, 11:26 PM

Hi Weeiepoo,

I never encountered this type of problem before but I bet you its a calcium deposit(tiny particals of calcium that you scraped off). What I do to clean an aquarium that has a calcium build up is to fill the tank with warm water and add vinegar and let it stand over night. The next day I would scrub the whole tank with an aquarium type scrubbing pad...Wal Mart has these light green pad that don't scratch glass...they are made by aquarium pharmasitcals...about 1.99 each...in the fish section...I know they have them in Canada. I just tried this trick last week and converted my newt tank to a whites tree frog tank....all the white deposit lines from the calcium and minerals disappeared after a day of soaking. That is my advice. Oh, how big is this aquarium and what type of filter are you running??? To remove the white particals use a siphon or if you have a special filter that removes particals using diatom earth us that(diatom filter e.g vortex or hot magma filter).

Red the very tired niece sitter

weesiepoo · 08-05-2006, 11:44 PM

actually, that is exactly how i cleaned my tank. i even used a razor blade in places! and i rinsed it in hot hot water until it ran cold and then some!i just don't know wether to put my fish in there or not! the water is crystal clear, all the levels are opitmal but the white makes me a litttle nutty. does calcium hurt the fish? i really do feel like it is from the hard water, but that never happened any other time i filled or changed out a tank. it is just so darn weird.

redrose · 08-06-2006, 12:15 AM

Hi again,

I am pretty sure its your water(hard) that is causing the problem. The minerals or the calcium must be precipitating out. High concetrations of calcium are not a good thing for tropical fish. Make sure you don't have any sea shells or rock that is leaching out calcium. Are you using store bought gravel or gravel from an outside source? Some type of gravel contains calcium. I wonder if we have a chemist that belongs to this forum that could help with this problem. I would leave the tank cycle for a few more weeks before adding any fish. Good luck.

Red

weesiepoo · 08-06-2006, 01:21 AM

everything is store bought, but our water is so hard that the test strip for it was almsot black! its so weird, i have never had that problem before. i am wondering if the city did not do something to this water or something. i dunno. but i did find a reference online for this and it is a hard water issue. they suggest only keeping hard water loving fishies like platies, swordtails, guppies...or ones that don't much mind like danios, catfish, tetras, mollys, loaches, and gouramis.