# brown water within an hour...dead fishes!!



## mattyphilly (Jun 23, 2007)

Hi I would appreciate is someone could help explain what happened.I checked on my fishes about an hour ago,went to shower and came back to find the water brown.i cdnt even see through the glass. 
And one of my guppies was floating above belly up.The rest of the fishes seem really stressed as well.I have no idea what happened!! 

My nitrite level was high four days ago and since then ive been changing the water and vacuuming the gravel and basically doing everything i can to bring down the level.Finally ,it did decrease to an ok level(everything else is fine).I did a check now and its still the same as an hour ago.So i am really at a loss as to what happpened. 

Would appreciate some answers.I dont want my other fishes to die as well. 
Im now doing some major damage control and trying to change the water in the tank.The last change i did was the day before.But its still very cloudy!!


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## fish_4_all (Nov 13, 2006)

Well this is kind of a new one because I have never seen "brown" water but it could be a couple things.

The first is a diatom bloom which could be caused from adding an ornaments or something new with a lot of silicates in it. 
The second could be some kind of algal bloom from the dead fish and an unseen ammonia source. A lot of times ammonia will be roesent in a location where a fish died and algae will bloom off the ammonia but you will never see a reading on a test kit. This could also explain the high levels of nitrites because the bacteria is changing the ammonia to nitrites. 

Keep up with the water changes, and it should clear up sooner than later. a 1 week bloom is not unheard of and most won't go away much fater. If it is diatoms, then I am not sure how to get rid of a free floating diatom bloom except to do the same thing, water changes and improved circulation.


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## Julie's Julies (Jun 11, 2007)

I had a very similar scenario in my ten-gallon tank. My water turned red, though, not brown. It destroyed my biological filter and I had to recycle the tank. I did lose a fish, but the fish was already very sick so I have no idea if the red water killed it or whether it died of its previously existing illness. I will enclose a picture of the red, murky water. It took over a week of several water changes and a new carbon filter cartridge to remove the red stuff, whatever it was. I don't think I will ever know if it was a red algae bloom, diatoms, or some other random occurrence.

Keep a close eye on your water parameters and do water changes to get rid of the colored water.


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