# PICS of my green water before and after Diatom treatment. WOW!



## caymandiver75 (Sep 5, 2006)

I've been fighting this green water for the past week and things were not improving. Yesterday I bought a H.O.T. Magnum and ran the mirco filter with little luck. Today I decided to try my luck and added about 1/2 cup of diatom power to the Magnum filter and within 1 hour my water is the best I've ever seen it! The pictures just don't do it justice as the water is practically invisible now and it looks like my plants and fish are swimming about in thin air. I know that people say the filter is a temporary fix, but I've got that covered too. I have a UV filter on the way and should have it installed by the weekend. Here are a few pics from before and about 1 hour after.

These below 2 photos are of my tanks green water after 2 days of running the Magnum and the micron filter. It looks better than it did prior to using the Magnum, but obviously not good enough. Time to get serious and add in some diatom powder.

















I added 1/2 cup a diatom power to my Magnum filter and look at the results 1 hour later! the tank is amazingly clear. Yeah!!!! I'll be running the filter over night and once I get my UV installed I hope not to worry about this problem again.

















Rest of my photos from today CLICK HERE

Slide Show with some descriptions.


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## yoink (Apr 21, 2005)

That is amazing. I must be doing something wrong with mine. I have had the same filter running on my 20 gallon for three or four days. I recharge with DE once or twice a day and it still looks like your first picture. It was pea soup green with visibility of about 3 inches, so it does look much better than it did. But I thought it would work quicker, like your case.


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## George Willms (Jul 25, 2003)

I've taken a friend's 72 gallon bowfront from peasoup to crystal clear in a matter of a few hours using an ancient vortx diatom filter. 

My guess Yoink would be that something is not fitting together quite right and you're getting some bypass...


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## bharada (Mar 5, 2004)

Yoink, is it really GW? I mean does the water look green when placed in a white cup?

If it's milky white it could actually be a bacterial bloom. When I added 110 Espei Rasboras to a newly setup 120g tank I had a bacterial bloom that took 2 weeks to clear with a Vortex XL filter running 24x7 the second week.


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## danepatrick (Jul 17, 2006)

running a diatom won't save you from further outbreaks. you need to get down to the root of the problem. there's an abundance of something somewhere that's creating the outbreak.


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## epicfish (Sep 11, 2006)

This green water is NOTHING. Let me take a picture of my GW. I'll brb.


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## epicfish (Sep 11, 2006)

No money for a diatom filter.


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## yoink (Apr 21, 2005)

Yeah, mine was about like that. The root of the problem was removing the large piece of driftwood and stirring up the substrate too much. I too though it was a bacterial bloom at first, but it turned really green quick. It is kind of neat to see your fish just appear out of nowhere.


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## epicfish (Sep 11, 2006)

yoink said:


> It is kind of neat to see your fish just appear out of nowhere.


The only positive aspect of green water? =P

Oh, I get comments when people come by...."What the hell are you growing in there?" =)


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## yoink (Apr 21, 2005)

epicfish said:


> The only positive aspect of green water? =P
> 
> Oh, I get comments when people come by...."What the hell are you growing in there?" =)


My sister came over last week and told me I needed to clean it.


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## caymandiver75 (Sep 5, 2006)

yoink said:


> Yeah, mine was about like that. The root of the problem was removing the large piece of driftwood and stirring up the substrate too much. I too though it was a bacterial bloom at first, but it turned really green quick. It is kind of neat to see your fish just appear out of nowhere.


I'm pretty sure the root of the problem was when I stirred up the substrate too much last week because a day or two later I had the start of green water and I've been doing everything I can with my fluval filter in hopes of clearing it up, but it just wasn't working for me. After researching around on here I saw a few other people's posts about how they used DE to clear things up so I gave it a shot and was amazed. I'm going to leave the Magnum filter run for another day before I take it off the tank. I also think I may run it an hour or so each time I do a weekly water change I'm so impressed with this filtration. UV is on the way and will be installed shortly.


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## Betowess (Dec 9, 2004)

Yeah, it can definately come back. You have to hope you killed it all. But I have to say, that didn't look that much of a bad case of GW to me. Looked more like a bacterial bloom, but who knows with white balance settings on dig cams...BTW, Nice tank Caymandiver.

On the other hand ,Epicfish, you've got a classic case of the pea soup. You could consider renting a Vortex diatom (like $5-8 at the LFS here for a day.) A vortex will clean it up fast! But UV is definately the easy way to kill it.


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## caymandiver75 (Sep 5, 2006)

Betowess said:


> Yeah, it can definately come back. You have to hope you killed it all. But I have to say, that didn't look that much of a bad case of GW to me. Looked more like a bacterial bloom, but who knows with white balance settings on dig cams...BTW, Nice tank Caymandiver.
> 
> On the other hand ,Epicfish, you've got a classic case of the pea soup. You could consider renting a Vortex diatom (like $5-8 at the LFS here for a day.) A vortex will clean it up fast! But UV is definately the easy way to kill it.


Yeah from all the threads I've seen about green water it has on many cases come back. I should have taken a picture of the tank before running the H.O.T Magnum and micron filter as it looked about twice as worse, but still nothing compared to some of these tanks looking like pea soup. The micron filter sure helped out a bit, but as you can see from my first photos above it was still cloudy and I couldn't see from one end of the tank through to the other side. I did that white cup test and verified it was green water earlier as so many people have said to do. The UV is coming today and I'll have that installed tonight pending any issues with connecting it to my fluval. I ordered the Coralife Turbo Twist 3X - 9 Watt U.V. Sterilizer and I hope that will solve any future issues with green water or a potential bacteria bloom.

BTW... Thanks for the compliment. I think you're the first to every say so. :icon_mrgr


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