Habitat - Indoor :: smell

[speedynlucky]

I recently changed from crushed coral to river rock substrate and I've noticed a smell coming from the tank even though I changed the water monday night. This has happened twice and I never got any smells when using coral and now I'm wondering if the coral was helping with the smell. What can I do to get the smell to stop? I'm using a fluval 405 in a 55 gallon with the filter aid and carbon in the filter trays.

[Daniel3507]

did you boil the river rocks before adding them? it could be that the rocks are trapping alot of waste and that is were the smell is coming from

[speedynlucky]

The water wasn't at a boil but I did wash and soak them in water so hot it gave me a blister. Could it just be the smell of wet rock cause the water is clear?

[BullDog]

How much river rock is there? As Daniel said, debris can get caught between the rocks (whereas crushed coral is more compact, and therefore less can get caught in it).
Give the rocks a stir, and see if there's a lot of gunk down there.

[speedynlucky]

Nothing, I changed the water monday night and I feed them by hand. You seen the pic Bulldog, it's about 1 1/2 layers deep in medium rock

http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19823

[thegrandpoohbah]

Most likely the tank is going through a mini-cycle. When you removed the crushed coral you removed a lot of the nitrifying bacteria that was in it (assuming the tank was well established). The smell is probably ammonia since there now isn't enough bacteria to break it all down. Just keep up with your water changes and give it a couple weeks and everything should go back to normal.

[speedynlucky]

I'm going sand cause I have a feeling junk is getting trapped even though I had feed them I seen some food fall down between the rocks