Fishtank has become a swamp!

[juliesworld]

My tank has such an awful smell! Here is my tank info posted previously by my boyfriend:

"My lady and I started a 50-gallon tank in the last month, using Legos as the decor. Lego made several underwater sets back in the mid-to-late '90s called the Aquazone series, and have a current-year set called Alpha Team; these sets offer numerous underwater vehicles and bases.

Our aquarium holds an Aquazone Deep Sea Base and two Search Subs (yellow and black blocks with transparent blue and green windows). The Base is set upon two blue baseplates, and the plates match perfectly with the two-tone blue gravel floor of the tank.

To ensure everything was non-toxic and "cleansed", we placed the Lego sets in the tank, filled the tank 50%, turned them upside-down (to allow air trapped beneath the plates to exit), then set them down into the gravel. After adding the rest of the water, we let our Emperor 400 Biowheel run for an entire week, testing the water every day for ph/nitrate/ammonia/hardness ... and everything has worked out just fine.

We now have a comminuty tank with 4 fantail goldfish *GOLDFISH* (Nixon, Flash, Goldfinger, and Fat Bastard), 2 swordtails (Spike and Diamond), 2 siamese algae eaters (Nessie and Bigfoot), and 4 otocinclus (all named Darrell, cuz I'll be damned if we can tell any of them apart). They LOVE *twirlysmi * swimming through the base and moving the crane on top of it ... and despite fears of sharp edges/toxicity/etc., we have yet to notice a problem. I have a friend who used Legos as tank decor; he still has a clown pleco and an angel which were in his Lego tank from 5-6 years ago.

Our only aquarium problem is brown algae (which is EASILY visible on yellow Legos!), but the otos and sae's should take care of the issue handily."

Could we have too much gravel? Also, we bought a new swordtail 6 days ago. That was on Monday. She had babies on Wednesday and died on Friday. Anyone have a clue what might be happening?
Thanks!*thumbsdow

 

[wayne at home]

What are you doing for water changes, gravel hoovering? When hoover , do you lift up the lego and hoover underneath, else it might be under here that the gravel has become anaerobic due to low water flow

 

[Paul]

also the amount you feed your fish can cause that horrible smell. If you over feeding then the excess fish waste and uneaten food can cause a tank to stink. Also If your tank isn't completely cycled then it can have an odor. Do 5% water changers every other day for say 2 weeks then go back to your normal 20% per week. Cut back on how much you feed, and see if that dosen't help.

 

[fishboy]

I'm betting you have some sort of decaying waste, and like paul said that if your tank isn't cycled it isn't going to smell exactly great. I would definately start making Sunday a fasting day for the fish and start to vaccum the gravel more often.


Good luck,
Daniel

 

[Avalon]

Gravel in a non-planted tank should be kept to 1-2" deep. This makes cleaning easier.

Increasing the amount of lighting a bit should cure the brown algae.

Ammonia and decay are generally responisible for smelly tanks. Doesn't that filter have spots for media? Try activated carbon. Change it out once per week. That should help as well. You may also wish to upgrade your filtration. A Marineland HOT cannister will work well. You can use is alone, or with your current filter. If I were you, I would fill a HOT with some pourous type of bacteria holding media, wrap the basket in filter floss, and use it with the other filter. This provides the best and cheapest upgrade for your (biological) filtration.

Or, you could sell off the Emporer and pick up a nice cannister filter (Eheim, Fluval, Filstar, etc). The benefits include huge media capacity to increase biological filtration. B. filtration does most of the work. It breaks down dissolved compounds (wastes), effectively promoting a healthy enviornment and getting rid of that nappy smell. Check out Eheim's 2026 filter; that would be your Cadillac