Help With Oscar Tank

My oscars filter decided to stop running suddenly. The impeller will not spin and I have tried to get to it to clean it but to no avail. I cannot reach it and it cannot spin in a complete 360 when plugged in. (It is a tetra ex70 6 months old)

So I substituted in a 60 gallon sponge filter in my 75 gallon tank a few days back and as of today the water is extremely cloudy. I can only see my oscar as a big black blob. Why would this happen??? Sand is the substrate but I'm so confused why this would take a day or two to cloud up like that?? I just did a water change today and it seemed to make it worse.

Any possible help with tank and seemingly broken/clogged filter??

 

What are your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings? It's possible you've got a huge bacterial bloom going on from the filter stopping and you switching it out for a sponge filter.

 

What are your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings? It's possible you've got a huge bacterial bloom going on from the filter stopping and you switching it out for a sponge filter.

I will have them in just a minute...the sponge filter came out of a cycled tank if that makes any difference, and there is another 30 gallon internal filter that has been in the tank.

 

What are your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings? It's possible you've got a huge bacterial bloom going on from the filter stopping and you switching it out for a sponge filter.

Ammonia 4 ppm. Nitrite 1 ppm. Nitrate 40 ppm. I feel so stupid. I just tested my water the other day and it was totally fine. I have ammo lock I can add right now.

 

I am not familiar with ammo lock honestly. I'd be doing some back to back 50% water changes and then adding some prime and maybe some media or gravel or something in a nylon bag to help boost the BB. Is there another hob filter you have laying around that you can throw on the tank at all? Or even another sponge filter, I'd bet that the sponge filter just isn't pulling enough water per hour to keep up.

 

with an Oscar, you need to get yourself a big hang on back or canister filter. in my experience anything aqueon or tetra has not been effective with my bigger fish (cichlids). Aquaclear, and canisters have been my best results. That and you should do water changes, and maybe get some seachem.prime.

 

I agree about the filtration. Get more. Much more.




I had an Oscar and a pleco in a 55. It is difficult to put enough filtration on this tank, and these are not full grown fish as the Oscar's only 7" and pleco about 9".

If you feed them as much as they like to eat, they will poop the place up every day, and I am changing water every day too!

I don't have a good picture of it now but I am running two Huge DIY in-tank canister filters I made from large food storage containers.

I have three powerheads inside to run these, with two sponge-filtered surface skimmers and one large Sponge Filter intake.

Each canister is stuffed with 2 liters of floss, 2 liters of plastic pot scrubbers, and four or more liters of lava.

 

I ordered Prime and added it to the tank after a 50% water change and it looks much better already. I ordered another filter (Marineland HOB) and it should arrive tomorrow. I contacted Tetra since the broken filter isn't even a year old yet in hopes to get replacement parts or whatever it needs.

 

Even through this mess my Oscar seems to be pulling through just fine. That is very relieving.

 

They are very tough fish, but they can still get diseased.