What Makes The Vortex Diatom Filter Good

This is a follow up of my previous post titled “Dealing With Fish Ich In A Fish Tank“.

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Every fish tank enthusiast will encounter a dirty fish tank at some stage of their hobby, most times through no fault of their own. We have to understand that fish are animals that feed and mess, and they can be really messy. The aquarium water needs to be constantly maintained and cleaned if you want the perfect fish tank but this is humanly impossible without the help of our best friend, fish tank filters. That is the one equipment that could make or break an aquarium environment, providing mechanical, biological and chemical filtration. But none does not it better than the Vortex Diatom Filter which uses diatomaceous earth as its filter medium.

How The Vortex Diatom Filter Functions

The diatomaceous earth used in a Vortex Diatom Filter are microscopic grains that comes from soil. These grains were originally microscopic organisms that lived in the soil. When these organisms die, they leave behind tiny fossils as their remains in the soil which fills the soil with microscopic cavities that is excellent for filtering out waste particles from the water. Because of the size of these cavities, they are able to capture waste particles that are too tiny for other conventional fish tank filters to trap. These days, this form of filter media is being used in water purification plants as well as in swimming pools.

The Vortex Diatom Filter is a highly effective mechanical filter that does an awesome job without harming the delicate colonies of bacteria in the aquarium. Modern medicine has made us believe that bacteria is bad but there are actually a lot of bacteria which actually benefits us and our environment. In an aquarium, these beneficial bacteria provides biological filtration by breaking down nitrates into less harmful components that are released into the atmosphere. If these colonies of beneficial bacteria is destroyed or harmed in any way, they will gravely affect the delicate ecosystem of your fish tank.

Because of the efficiency of the Vortex Diatom Filter, its filtration is known as polishing. The Vortex Diatom Filter is capable of polishing aquarium water at a rate of 300 gallons in an hour. This is one filter that can be comfortably used in both freshwater as well as salt water fish tanks without any problems.

This type of filter is not one that you would run twenty four hours a day like conventional filters. To use it, you would first fill the Vortex Diatom Filter jar with diatomaceous earth that can be bought from your local fish shop separately. You would then run the filter for a maximum of three hours and not more or the filter motor would burn out. But within that three hours, your aquarium water would be polish to such a pristine state that no other fish tank filter is capable of.

Is The Vortex Diatom Filter Right For You?

There are a few things you would need to consider before you run out and buy a Vortex Diatom Filter. Firstly, the diatomaceous earth needs to be handled with extreme care. Because it is microscopic, breathing in the dust can be detrimental to your health and you should use a surgical mask when handling the filter media. This would mean that it is not the right filter if you plan to let your children have a hand in taking care of the aquarium.

Secondly, is the cost. While it is not as expensive as canister fish tank filters, it does cost a little more than other conventional filters.

But other than this two factors, the Vortex Diatom Filter is, in my personal opinion, the best fish tank filter on sale today.

That Oh So Troublesome Fish Ich

This is a follow up to an earlier post entitled Spotting Aquarium Fish Diseases Before It’s Too Late.

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Fish Ich are aquarium fish diseases that are so common that almost every fish breeder will have to face it at some time. While in most cases Fish Ich really isn’t that deadly, it will cause the fish to itch, making them rub themselves against fish tank decoration to relieve themselves and this constant rubbing will cause their skin to tear. Open wounds that are untreated will eventually cause the fish to die.

The right way to solve a problem is to understand it first. Treating the cause is always better than solving the effect.

What Causes Fish Ich

Fish Ich is caused by a protozoa known as Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, which is capable of multiplying at an extreme fast rate. The enclosed condition of a fish tank and the lack of immunity of bred fish makes it even easier for Fish Ich to spread. The protozoa attaches itself to the outer skin of the fish and begin to feed on the skin and outer tissue. The protozoa will eventually cause a cyst that allows it to rapidly multiply within the enclosed tissue, feeding even more on the fish. This cyst can easily be seen as white spots on the fish and is very itchy.

After some time, the cyst will burst and the protozoa will fall onto the substrate and multiply even more, waiting to infect other fish. Warmer temperatures will speed up the multiplying rate of the protozoa and the rate of infection.

The physical symptoms of Fish Ich is of course the white spots. Initially it will be hard to notice as these cysts are tiny and look more like specks of salt on the fish but as they progress, they will cover the entire fish. Left unchecked, they will eventually damage the fish gills and vital organs, causing death.

The fish will also start to lose they appetite, seem restless and constantly scratch themselves against anything, which will cause open wounds.

Treatment For Fish Ich

Fish Ich that is encapsulated in the cyst lie in a protective shell and is almost impossible to treat. That is why we will need the cyst to burst open so that the Fish Ich is released. To do this we will firstly have to raise the temperature of the fish tank water a little in order to speed up the life cycle of the protozoa. Raise the temperature slowly over the next two days until a maximum temperature of 80 degrees Celsius but only do so if this level is not harmful to the fish.

Once you have reached this temperature, begin the treatment over a the next few days to a week. Do not remove the infected fish to quarantine tank, what you want to do is have all the cyst burst within your original tank to kill off all the protozoa.

The most effective treatment for Fish Ich contains formalin but you could also use Malachite Green. However, when using Malachite Green, be extremely careful as it is toxic to invertebrates and other aquatic life. You will need to remove any life that is not scaled into a separate tank during treatment. You can see a list of the best Fish Ich medication in the Recommended List below this article.

Another important thing that you will need to do is to remove the carbon fish tank filters media from your fish tank filters. Carbon fish tank filters are used to treat any chemicals in an aquarium so remove them or they will absorb the medication that you are using in the water.

Preventing Fish Ich From Infecting Your Aquarium

Prevention is always better than cure. It is actually quite easy to prevent Fish Ich if you know how it infects the tank. The only way for Fish Ich to get in is if you put something contaminated into the tank. This could be a new fish or even used decoration or gravel.

Before putting in new fish into the tank, inspect the fish first for any signs of disease. It would also be a great idea to quarantine the new fish for a couple of days and monitor it for signs of disease.

Before putting in any used decoration or gravel into your tank, wash it thoroughly with tap water and set it to air dry in the sun. Tap water contains chlorine which will kill off any microrganisms and the UV rays of the sun will finish off any that may be left over. Never use detergent as it will leave chemical traces that you would accidentally introduce into the tank water.

Lastly, always maintain the cleanliness of the tank, encourage good biological filtration and don’t forget your water changes.

These are some of the best ways to cure Fish Ich without harming the aquatic life too much.

Small Fish Tank Filters

This is a follow up to an earlier post titled Choosing The Right Fish Tank Filters.

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Honestly, if you’re just starting off fish keeping, having a small fish tank is really not a good idea. A small aquarium contains a small volume of water (obviously) which tends to shift conditions a little too rapidly to be easily controlled. Temperatures change very fast, pH levels fluctuate rapidly and waste build up is frequent, making it require a little more maintenance than a larger fish tank.

But having said this, almost everyone starts off with a small fish tank thinking that it is nice and small to maintain so what I’ll do in this post is to prepare you for setting up a small fish tank and what are ideal fish tank filters to get.

Complete Kits With Fish Tank Filters

Small fish tanks are usually sold as a complete setup like the Marina Aquarium Kit which you can get from That Fish Place. These kits usually comes with a hood, lights, a small pump and mostly undergravel fish tank filters. So why talk about filtration when it already comes as a package? Well, for one thing, undergravel fish tank filters are not the right fish tank filters to have for a small fish tank. Undergravel fish tank filters trap debris using its gravel as filter media. Because the fish tank is small, you will need to vacuum the gravel more regularly or else the gravel will get clogged with gunk and stop the filtration process. For a more in depth look at Undergravel Fish Tank Filters, read What Are Undergravel Fish Tank Filters?.

Ideal Fish Tank Filters

So then, what would be ideal fish tank filters for a small fish tank? Well, it would have to be one that does not have too strong a suction as well as an output. You will definitely be keeping smaller fish like tetras and guppies in a small tank and having a filter that is too strong will cause the fish to get sucked into the filter inlet. Having too strong an output will cause too much water movement and stress the fish by forcing it to keep in constant movement with no rest.

A good fish tank filter to use in a small fish tank setup is a aquarium sponge filter. Suction is distributed throughout the sponge so if your filter pump is a little too strong it will still not suck in the fish and cause it to get stuck to the inlet.  An aquarium sponge filter provides sufficient mechanical and biological filtration for a small aquarium. Also cleaning it is a breeze, just remove the sponge and give it a couple of squeezes in water to remove the large debris then swish it around a bit. To read more on Aquarium Sponge Filter, go to Aquarium Sponge Filter – Do They Really Work?.

One important thing to never overlook is water changes. You will need to perform your weekly water change to ensure that the environment you create is ideal to maintain the aquatic life you are keeping.

The last point to keep in mind is the number of aquatic life you plan to have in there. Don’t immediately dump in a bunch of fish into the water from Day 1. Firstly, a small fish tank will not support too many fish so keep it to a minimum. If you do plan to have a few more fish in there, take it in stages. Putting too many fish in at one go will raise the nutrient level in the tank, causing a bacterial bloom which will cause cloudy fish tank.

After talking about fish tank filters, let’s look at fish ich and how to cure it.

A Cloudy Fish Tank Isn’t That Bad

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The reason why anyone would want to have an aquarium is to admire the beauty within. Nothing beats sitting quietly before a fish tank, watching colorful fishes serenely swimming between swaying plants, playing tag with one another. Nothing more exciting then watching them lay their eggs, protect them and then watching the little ones hatch and swim around.

But this beauty is easily marred with a cloudy fish tank water. For most people, the sight of cloudy fish tank water makes them fear for the life of their aquatic pets. But before you attempt to clean up the mess, you do need to identify the cause of the problem before you can decide on your next steps.

It is easy to identify the cause from the color the cloudiness takes on. Generally, the cloudy fish tank water can be whitish, greenish or brownish.

Whitish Cloudy Fish Tank Water

Fish tank water turns cloudy with a shade of white because of bacterial blooms. This is when there is a sudden increase of bacterial colonies in the fish tank. Bacteria thrives on the nutrients in the water and colonies can increase very fast in nutrient rich water.

Brand new aquariums a susceptible to cloudy fish tank water. This is because the ecosystem within the tank has not had a chance to stabilize yet. But if your tank is not brand new, the main reason why the water is cloudy is because you might be overfeeding the fish. Food that is not consumed with dissolve and make the water nutritious for bacterial colonies.

Bacterial blooms are not harmful to the fish. You could just wait it out and the water will clear in a couple of days. In the mean time, limit the amount of food that you give the fish. If you’d like to speed up the process a bit, do a 20% water change, but never change the entire tank of water.

Green Cloudy Fish Tank Water

This is due to algae bloom. Again, it is more unpleasant to look at rather than harmful to the fish. And just like bacterial bloom, algae bloom is also a sign of excess nutrients in the water.

Just wait it out and the water will eventually clear. Do a 20% water change to speed up the process. Do not try to kill off all the algae at once as this will cause a greater imbalance to the water.

Preventing algae bloom is extremely easy. Just keep enough aquatic plants in your fish tank and the plants will compete with the algae for nutrients, preventing them from blooming.

Brownish or Yellowish Cloudy Fish Tank Water

When the shade of water are these or any other colors, then it is due to contaminants and not biological blooms. There are numerous reasons for this but it is generally due to something that you may have added into the tank. It could be due to a new driftwood that’s reducing tannins into the water. It could be due to new gravel that will release particles when you first soak it in the water. It could be due to decaying plants or too much fish waste.

This shade of cloudy fish tank water is not good for the fish and will not clear off by itself. Do a 20% water change along with activated carbon which will work on biological waste. Do this every other day until the water clears. Usually it would by the second or third cycle.

These are the easiest and safest ways to clear up cloudy fish tank water. Generally, fish do not die when the water gets cloudy. But if you do see your fish dying it is not because of these reasons but because of a chemical contaminant, your fish are poisoned. This would require a total water change and we will look at the steps for this in a future post.

After knowing what causes a cloudy fish tank, let’s look at ideal fish tank filters for a small aquarium.

Why Tropical Fish Breeding?

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Tropical fish breeding is one of the best hobbies to undertake. The sight of these colorful creatures lazily swimming to and fro in the aquarium is very relaxing and is the best cure to a stressful day at work. Believe me, once you sit in front of a fish tank observing these creatures chase each other about and play, time just passes by and so does all your worries.  All this make tropical fish breeding just worth the while.

But if you’re thinking of tropical fish breeding and have never done it before, you might be wondering how hard tropical fsih breeding can be. After all, just scanning the internet and reading the millions of posts out there about UV Sterilizers and Biological Filter and Protein Skimmers will definitely scare away anyone wanting to indulge in tropical fish breeding.

But it really is not as hard as you might imagine. And once you have the hang of it, it is actually simpler than caring for a dog or cat. If you’re just starting on this hobby, it is a good idea to start off with an easy fish first. Yes, there are easy fish and there are fish that are hard to care for. The easy ones are hardy, generally passive and don’t require much maintenance. In this post, we will look at some of the best fish to get started with.

1) Tropical Fish Breeding:  Guppies

This is one of the easiest fish to breed. Guppies originate from Asia, and in Malaysia where I am from, you can find these fish in drains and ditches everywhere. What you do need to know is the difference between a male and a female guppy. Male guppies are absolutely gorgeous with long colorful tails while the female guppies are a plain grey or brown with no colors at all. Most people go for only the male cos they’re beautiful and then wonder why they don’t breed…. go figure.

Then there’s also the fact that the males always want to mate and will spend the entire day chasing a female until they’re satisfied. So having too many males and not enough females is really a bad idea.

Lastly, if you plan to breed them, you have to separate the females once they are pregnant which is easy to notice cos their stomachs are more bloated than normal. Guppies give birth to their young live, they don’t lay eggs and they have the tendency to eat their young so separate the adults as soon as the fry are born.

Other than this, guppies are very easy to care for. They’ll survive even if you don’t have a filter or proper aeration. But they do need a little warmth since they do come from a warm climate.  One of the easiest tropical fish breeding types.

2) Tropical Fish Breeding:  Tetra

Tetras are small fish that come in a variety of color. There are the orange ones that have black fins and a black spot on their sides. There is also the the silver ones that have black tip fins with two horizontal stripes across them. But the ones I love are the neon tetra which have a bluish or reddish stripe across their sides that seem to glow especially with the aquarium lights on. Tetras get along with any fish and if you have a school or them it is so cool to watch them swim in sync with each other. They never grow more than an inch long at most and make nice small fish to start off with. It’s hard to tell the male from the female so just grab some and hope for the best.

3) Tropical Fish Breeding:  Danios

Danios are also called Zebra Fish because they have black or silver horizontal stripes. The males and females look the same so they too are hard to tell apart. Danios are passive fish that will never bother other fish and they are very playful, chasing each other and zipping across the tank like they were playing tag.

There is also another variation of Danios with spots instead of stripes which is fondly known as Leopard Danios. It really doesn’t matter if you mix the two cos they get along well with each other.

These are the three easiest fish for tropical fish breeding if you are a beginner. Low maintenance and hardy, these fish survive even the worst tank conditions and will give you endless hours of relaxation.

From tropical fish breeding, let’s move on to solving a cloudy fish tank.