FishProfiles.com Message Forums

has made my tank water blue


What can I do to get it back to something approaching normal?



-------------------------------------------------
I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

I've been using this for nearly 12 years and NEVER had that happen ... ???

I know it's blue in colour, but the blue colour disappears once it gets to work on the chlorine in the water ... are you sure you haven't added it to chlorine free water by mistake?

What dosage did you use? A 5 ml teaspoon treats 10 litres of chlorinated water.

Here's how I use it.

Step 1 : Boil 2 litres of water in a kettle.

Step 2 : Add 8 litres of water from the tap to a bucket.

Step 3 : Insert the probe from my digital thermometer into the water, and slowly add boiling hot water from the kettle, mixing as I go, until the temperature matches that of the desrination aquarium. This step wasn't needed in July because the water came out of my tap at 23 degrees C during the heatwave, but ... in a bad winter, I might need two kettles for each bucket of water.

Step 4 : Position the bucket by the aquarium (I have a nice handy table for this), add dechlorinator, then spend 30 seconds mixing the water.

Step 5 : Add treated and temperature matched water to the aquarium.

I've been doing this since December 1994, when the Panda Fun Palace first went 'live', and I've NEVER had my water turn blue.

Oops, almost forgot ... Photos of water changing in action. Click 'next' to see the next pics in sequence. Click "View Entire Album" to browse all my fish photos.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Tiny, you prolly have put in too much aquasafe,
I use it too, I once knocked a bottle of aquasafe into my 29g it was bright blue for a few days, the fish were fine,
you have two choices,
1) do a water change, and read the back of the bottle for dosage help.
2) wait for it to go away,

R_Boy

That's probably it

I don't have a reliable measuring system for my tanks, cos my bucket is with my fish in Salisbury. So I always overdose a little bit, just to be sure. It's never been a problem with Wardley's, which is what I usually use

-------------------------------------------------
I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

Okay, tiny,
Glad to help.
R_Boy

Got a branch of Wilkinsons close to hand by any chance Tiny_Clanger?

If you have, head there and go to the cooking utensils section.

There you will find the following items which I bought for the purpose:

• Plastic measuring jugs - 1 and 2 litre sizes (39p and 49p respectively when I bought them)

• Plastic teaspoons (a teaspoon is 5ml)

Moving along to the household utility section, you'll find plastic buckets that are marked with capacity on the side. Alternatively, get a big builder's bucket from Do It All or B&Q where I got mine - you'll find these buckets are marked in gallons and litres too.

If you use kettles of boiling hot water to temperature match your water as I do, remember that the boiled water will have had most of the chlorine driven off, so if, for example, you mix 8 litres of cold tap water with 2 litres from a freshly boiled kettle, dose the resulting mixture as 8 litres of chlorinated water. With practice, you learn the kind of dosage that's applicable to each bucket of new water you mix.

If you can get a plastic eye dropper (these are supplied with the King British brand of dechlorinator, and I have one of these in my 'parts bin') you can use that to work out how many drops equal a 5ml teaspoon, then work out how many drops per litre are needed fron the dropper. Not that I ever need to for the main aquaria because I do big water changes, but even so, you'll find that useful if ever you're setting up a small fry nursery, and in that case, measuring the dose precisely will be of great importance, because some fry die if they're overdosed with dechlorinator - Panda Cory fry are notorious for this in the first 2 days of life.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

do you not find that the boiled water messes with the water hardness? Brighton has silly hard water so every time we boil the ketttle, great lumps of fur come out of it (gives your tea extra flavour )

When I get my main tank back, I'll get my nice B&Q bucket back and the problem will be sorted

-------------------------------------------------
I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

The blue color in the tank is very different. I used Aquasafe for awhile, but mine wasn't blue in color..its clear. I guess its different here in the states. Its very interesting...

*Kristin*

I'm fortunate in that my water is reasonably well suited to South American type aquaria straight out of the tap. So boiling a kettle doesn't mess too much with hardness values. Which means of course that if ever I keep Rift Lake fishes I'll be adding bicarbonate and other things to the water to make it suitable!

If your water is hard enough for furballs to appear in your kettle Tiny_Clanger, then it's hard enough for you to keep the likes of Frontosas without using additives ... your hardness must be of the order of 50 degreess dH to do that ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I can't remember off the top of my head, it's been a while since I last tested it. PH is 8, though.

-------------------------------------------------
I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions