Do You Have UTS?
by Dan Marentette, Calgary Aquarium Society
originally published in The Calquarium Volume 43, Number 4, December 2000
Aquarticles
SCENARIO NUMBER 1
If you're anything like myself you just love your fish keeping hobby and you just love
scouring the local fish stores and going to your local fish club auctions a lot. But you
can’t help yourself when it comes to new and interesting species that you don’t
have at home in your tanks, right? So you buy this species here and that species there, or
the club auctioneer expertly convinces you to buy that bag of fish at the auction. And now
you have to find somewhere to put them at home in your tanks. So put some in this one,
some in that one. Everything is all right for a few days. One morning you go down to the
fish room to do your morning feedings - Zap, on go the lights and "UGHHH...
What’s wrong with this tank or that tank over there?" The water was crystal
clear yesterday but now it’s cloudy milky white. OH NO! What to do? "I know what
I’ll do, put another aged power filter on and it should be OK." Next day
the tank looks the same. The extra filtration isn’t working: Oh, ya do a water
change, say 50%, right? OK, lets do that. But a few days later the tank is still cloudy.
What’s going on? You have what I’ll call UTS - Ugly Tank Syndrome.
SCENARIO NUMBER 2
You’ve just bought some beautiful plants again from the local fish store or the club
auction. Well they’ll look really nice here or over there and presto, planted and out
of your mind. Again, a week later what do we see? There is this dark blue green algae
growing all over the place. "Oh no, it must have come from those new plants. I
didn’t have this much before." So get the algae cleaner and scrub it all off.
Overnight it all comes back everywhere, on the leaves, on the decorations, simply
everywhere. "OK, put some algae control medication in, or maybe I need to change the
lighting or something, right?" Well, a few days later the stuff is still growing
everywhere. It fact if the fish stood still for a while it looks like it would even grow
on them.
This is also what I’ll call UTS " Ugly Tank Syndrome.
There are many stories of UTS from different causes that we can come up with.
But let’s look at scenario number 1:
If you’re an avid hobbyist like me you tend to not follow the cardinal rule of 1 inch
of fish to 1 gallon of water and maybe overstock the tank, thereby stressing the filters
and the good bacteria that is vital to good filtration. So why is it that if you add
another power filter that the water still stays cloudy? It doesn’t make sense:
supposedly the more filtration, the cleaner the water should be.
I struggled with a couple of UTS tanks for almost a year. It wasn’t until one day
I was browsing on the Internet at one of the FAQ sections on a web page. Another person
also had UTS in their tanks and was as confused as I was. Luckily for us a hobbyist from
Germany answered this question and here is the reply: It seems that the manufacturers of
power filters are all scrambling to design and make the biggest and faster filters in the
market. The problem according to this German hobbyist is they are breaking some rules
about the efficiency of filters. First, they are using too small filter media and not
giving enough surface area for the good bacteria to live and attach to. Second, they are
increasing the strength of the magnetic impellers so much that the water stream going
through the small filter media is so fast and powerful that it is literally blowing away
the bacteria from the filter media straight into the tank and thus you get cloudy water.
This is not unlike an infusoria culture. His advice was to either increase the filter
surface area or slow down the speed of the flow going through the filter. Wow! So simple!
I thought, "let’s try this at home".
So that night I slowed down the filters on the problem tanks to half speed and quietly
waited for any results. To my surprise within 24 hours the cloudy tank was disappearing
and within two days it was all but gone. Thank you very much Germany.
So let’s deal with scenario number 2 and the blue green algae all over the
place:
It grows faster than wildfire and covers everything, right? I clean it all off once,
twice, three times and it comes back as fast as before. I tried algae medications, tried
fish that are supposed to like algae and all they do is stay away. I tried adjusting my
light times, tried changing the type of bulbs to those with a different spectrum. I tried,
tried, tried all with no success.
What to do? Well again I went to the Internet site that gave me the answer to my filter
problems. And again another person had similar problems in their tanks and again another
German aquarist gave good advice about the problem. This German hobbyist said that my blue
green algae are not algae but bacteria that grow and disguise themselves in the algal
form. According to this learned person if you use a medication that has erythromycin in it
will all go away in a few days. I’ve never heard of such a thing before but I’m
desperate. So off to my local fish store I go and buy a product called EM Tablets that has
this erythromycin in it. I religiously follow the directions, and within hours I noticed
that the air bubbles coming from the UG filters are all very, very small instead of the
size they were before. Well, something is happening but the algae are still there. The
next day, again to my delight, I notice that the algae is somewhat diminishing in certain
heavy areas. Within three days it is all gone and none is to be seen anywhere, even on the
downspouts of my power filter. The tank smells normal instead of like the rotting things
you might smell in a fish factory, and all the fish are still alive and happy. Thank you
Germany, again.
As an aside, some of the other interesting facts that I have also learned from the
FAQ’s on the web might be of interest to readers:
One of the other mistakes that hobbyists tend to make, myself included, is using too much
air for your sponge filters or too big bubbles through them. The reason this is an error
is that if the bubbles travelling through the uplift tubes are too big (or too many) there
is insufficient room for the water that the bubbles are supposed to carry with them. This
decreases the efficiency of the sponge filter and, well, you get my not-so-likeable UTS.
Hopefully this information is of use to you, the hobbyist, and will prompt you to take
the time to look at your tank setups a little more closely. It also reaffirms for me that
bigger and newer doesn’t necessarily mean better for my fish.
Other aquarium clubs and non-profit organizations can use this, or other articles,
in their own journals or web sites, provided that credit is given to the author, the
Calgary Aquarium Society, and The Calquarium. In the case of a reprint in a hardcopy
publication, two copies of the published work are sent to the Calgary Aquarium Society at
its mailing address. And in the case of a reprint in an Internet publication, a link back
to the original article site must be provided in a prominent location. |