gmann21193

something is going on with my water in my 5 gallon. I have live plants, a snail, a couple african dwarf frogs and a couple guppies. Recently my water has taken on a yellowish tint. What is this from? my water quality is good and the livestock is not acting any different. it just seems to have a yellowish tint. with the light on its crystal clear but with it off there seems to be a tint. anyone know what this is?

Luniyn

Acrylic can yellow over time, but we are talking years unless under direct sunlight all the time (but that would probably boil your fish and make a ton of algae before it had a chance to yellow the acrylic. However, have you taken a scrubby to the tank just to see if anything has accumulated on the sides? If you have glass then anything without any detergent on it will work, if it's acrylic then make sure it's a scrubby made for that type of material. Other then that, have you added any new chemicals to the tank recently? Anything even if it's just water treatment, vitamins, whatever, if it's something different then you normally use, list it so we can rule it out. Also, when was the last time you washed out or changed your filter media? It's possible that it's gotten too dirty to filter anymore and is actually reintroducing things back into the tank. Other then that, it could be an algae bloom of some sort, but would have to rule out everything else mentioned above first to even consider that.

gmann21193

the only thing different that i put in the tank would be some Plant fertilizer tablets that i put in there to add nutrients to the gravel for my micro sword plants. The filter media was cleaned 2 weeks ago. I have a Fluval 1 underwater filter if that helps.

Luniyn

Ah yes a fertilizer would certainly create a yellow tint, the question is how to get rid of it. Normally I would just say add some Activated Carbon to your filter and that will do it, but that's not a good idea with live plants. Something that might work (though I haven't tried it yet) is to get something like Kent Pro Clear. This is supposed to make all the little particles bind together to make larger one's that the mechanical filtration can easily remove.

Fishface

Luniyn,

is activated carbon bad for live plants?

Luniyn

It's not that activated carbon itself is bad for plants, as putting it in won't do anything to them directly. However, what it does do is remove things from the water to clean it. The problem is that it's not a perfect solution to cleaning water and will not only remove the bad from the water, but it also gets rid of the good. It will remove nutrients and vitamins from the water which tends to slow down plant growth. Will it kill the plants? Probably not but a lot of people have found better growth from their plants by removing the activated carbon from their filters. The best way to tell what's best for your tank is to try with and without and see what gives you the best overall water conditions and plant health.

Fishface

I fert the water and use laterite and eco-substrate...and since i have no floating plants, I'm not going to worry about it. I won't use it in my 75gal, though, because I do plan on floating some sprite in that.

Thanks for the reply!