Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, I have a 75 gallon tank with two filters going a Fluval 404 and a Fluval 104. It has been working GREAT for over a year now and the water has been clean and I change the water regularly (about every month) and completely clean the filters out every month. Suddenly the water is completely disgusting and stinks like sewage and no matter how many times I change it (I am changing it every other day for three weeks now) and no matter how many times I clean the filters (MANY times in the past 3 weeks) the problem of stinking, cloudy green water keeps reappearing. The filters seem to be working fine and no changes have been made to the turtles' environment or diet. Everything is as it has been for over a year. Only difference is now the water keeps getting gross within 24 hours. I changed all the media in the filters 9tital cost $80) and this had no effect. HELP!

How warm is the water in your tank, and is it near a window at all? It sounds like you're getting a bad algae bloom, which can happen almost out of nowhere. The best things to do are doing consistant water changes, I do once a week 25% for my 120 gallon, and keeping as much light out of the water as you can. algae needs nutrients and light to grow. If you can keep the basking light from shining into the water, and keep completely out of sunlight, that should help. If your turtles are over a year old, the water temp can be kept @ 76. If it's higher than that, I would say lowering the temp could help too. Another thing to do would be to get plants like duckweed and Anacharis. Both of them kill algae by using the nutrients that it needs, and blocking out light from it. The turts will also love snacking on it!

Ok, tank not getting sunlight but does have basking lamps. It may be that the temp is too high (there are heaters in the tank). The temp in the tank is about 80-85 degrees. I will turn it down to about 70-75 right now!

Also, no algae because the tank itself is sparkling clean. When I drain it out I clean everything and everything is clean (no green algae on anything).

The forum at this site is very helpful. Someone here night have more ideas.
Link

Try putting a copper penny in the water, maybe even two pennies.

you know you have to let the good bacteria build up in the filter right, I had the same problem and the pet store told me to do that, haven't had any problems since.

I know you must have solved the problem by now, but heres my two cents from my experience. The horrible sewage smell only lasted a week cos I figured out what was causing it thanks to internet research and forums like this one! I was lucky though cos if the smell had lasted any longer both myself and my turtle buds would have been homeless!! In my case it was gravel that caused it. I had just gotten a brand new 4 foot tank from my pet shop which also supplied a massive bag of gravel free of charge saying that it was okay for turtles to have in their tank. So I made the mistake of putting gravel (only a fraction of the amount supplied) into the tank thinking it would be alright. Why? because the smaller tank that I had the turtles in since they were babies had gravel in it and it never caused any problems. It never even occured to me that they would eat the gravel now that they were big enough to do just that, the new gravel must have looked much tastier than the old gravel!! A lot of people dont believe that turtles will eat gravel but they do! I didnt believe it until i saw the rock hard evidence in their poop!! People also think that it does'nt do much harm to the turtles.. they eat it and poop it.. so what! Which is fair enough providing they dont get impacted. There is another consequence to the turtles eating gravel, it increases ammonia levels in their poo and as a result in their tank which is where the nasty sewage smell comes from. The ammonia effects the water quality in your tank and if left for long enough it could reach toxic levels. so there is more than one way to kill your turtle using gravel! Okay now that that rant is out of my system, just like the gravel is out of my turt's, I'll leave you in peace!!

0.0.2 YBS (I'm pretty sure ones male (1.5 yrs) and one female (2yrs) but havent had them officially sexed yet!)