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My tank smells...

TDI-line

TDI-line

Member
Joined
11 Nov 2007
Messages
1,534
Location
Yaxley, Peterborough
Is it normal for a tank to have a smelly odour, or as my other half says, "that tank stinks!"

The tank is 720 litres,i change about a 1/3 of the water every 3/4 weeks. It does have heating cables with Dennerle deponit mix, and 2-3mm gravel on top. The depth of the substrate is around 10cm. Also T5's and CO2 etc.

Any ideas?
 
My 230l was filtered with carbon in my fluval 305 for the last year and the water had no smell at all, smelt quite nice actually! 😀

Since adding plants I took the carbon out because I was using ferts and didn't want the carbon to remove anything it shouldn't.

That was a week ago and now the water 'stinks', I just thought it was the ferts I've been adding and it was how all planted tanks smelt, but obviously not!
 
mine smells like our kitchen bin after I've filled it with used cat litter. There's no rotting plants, fish ect I clean the gravel everyday, waters changed 25% a week. Was fine when the carbon was in. Just not now :cry:
 
Is it normal for a tank to have a smelly odour, or as my other half says, "that tank stinks!"
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Didn't want to say, but it's not just the tank... 😉

(j/k!)

My tank has it's own smell, but I wouldn't say it stinks or is really strong - is it just a matter of perspective perhaps?
 
aaronnorth said:
any rotting fish?

I know carbon can take away the smell.
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I don't think so, fish stock is quite low for this size, and my shrimp army soon swarm over any dead matter, ie dead tetra. 🙄
 
Matt Holbrook-Bull said:
eggy smell?
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Yes, could be an eggy / dust bin smell.


I was thinking about removing the deponit mix, heating cables and replacing with ADA amazonia, and not having such a thick substrate.

What do you think?

Could it be the deponit mix going anaerobic, or the 100's of trumpet snails digging...
 
spaldingaquatics said:
mine smells like our kitchen bin after I've filled it with used cat litter. There's no rotting plants, fish ect I clean the gravel everyday, waters changed 25% a week. Was fine when the carbon was in. Just not now :cry:
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Hey, maybe it's our local water. 😀
 
My fist thought was anearobic, try poking a pair of tweezers upside down through out the gravel substrate and watch for big gassy, smelly bubbles coming up, if you get a lot of them like over 3 on a tank your size then i'd say that would be the cause. I would have thought that with the amount of root growth you have in your tank that there would be no way you could get any dead spots in the gravel but it's worth a go.
My next thought would be to do more water changes but i can imagine that WCs are a right old task on your beast of a tank LOL.
 
Any blue/green slimy looking stuff? A healthy tank shouldn't smell strongly, in my experience.
 
I had mine for a long time and it never smelled! might be the gravel! Had a bunch of Trumpets in there if it is
 
TDI-line said:
spaldingaquatics said:
mine smells like our kitchen bin after I've filled it with used cat litter. There's no rotting plants, fish ect I clean the gravel everyday, waters changed 25% a week. Was fine when the carbon was in. Just not now :cry:
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Hey, maybe it's our local water. 😀
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🙂 🙂 Wouldn't suprise me! tell you what mate with all the ferts draining off the fields into our water supply we shouldn't even need to add anything! :lol:
Bottle our water and sell it on the forum £20 a ltr, what you reckon? 8)

BTW when my clown loach dig for food sometimes a big bubble will shoot for freedom, is that what was ment with the tweezers?
 
Ok Dan i put the tweezers in, and i did get a few little bubbles, probably around 2-5 each time. I put the tweezers right through the gravel and deponit mix, so about 10cm all the way to the bottom. So is it rip out time. 🙁 . Maybe 😀 .

Andy, i have had the odd bit of blue/green algae, but not at the moment. I do have green diaom algae on the glass, but scrape this off WC time.

LD, i have probably 100's of trumpet snails breeding in there, some are over 2 cm's too.

I'm dosing with TPN+.

One thing i have noticed today, that the tank smells more in the evening, once the lights have been on for a few hours.

SA, good idea about the bottled water. Howabout 50/50 split. 😀
 
He he, a rip out might be a bit drastic LOL if you try and keep on top of the anaerobic spots then you maybe ok, although if you wanna rip the tank apart then i know a good holiday home for aquatic plants :lol:
 
Dan Crawford said:
He he, a rip out might be a bit drastic LOL if you try and keep on top of the anaerobic spots then you maybe ok, although if you wanna rip the tank apart then i know a good holiday home for aquatic plants :lol:
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Yeah, George's house. He he. 😀 😀 😀
 
G's house, pfffft LOL

You don't know where the spots are unless you can see them in a light coloured substrate like sand, it starts to go black. Give it a couple of days of poking around to unsettle the bubbles then the sunstrate will fill the holes where the bubble used to be and in theory they won't come back. Isn't one of the purposes of a heater cable to prevent this? 😉 moving warm currents through the substrate blah blah blah 🙂
 
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