# Foggy tadpole water



## LexisaurusRex (Aug 8, 2013)

So I have a couple tads (some in tadpole tea some in normal spring water, i just kept them how I bought them) but one keeps making the water foggy so I can't keep an eye on its development unless I drain it and replace the water. Even the after a few days its just as foggy as before. I haven't seen this in any of the others . Should I be worried? He/she seems to be developing just fine so far. Any ideas of the cause?










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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

what are you feeding? what kind of tad? is it the same as the rest? how big is the tad? and you shoudl always change the water when its like that to be safe.


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## heatfreakk3 (Oct 15, 2008)

I started having this problem a little while ago, and think it was from overfeeding. All my tads were fine, and then I switched to a higher protein fish flake and was feeding too much and all the waters got cloudy.. I had to do a water change on allllll my tads. Ever since I've been feeding less and haven't had a problem.


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## LexisaurusRex (Aug 8, 2013)

Julio said:


> what are you feeding? what kind of tad? is it the same as the rest? how big is the tad? and you shoudl always change the water when its like that to be safe.


It's a Patricia (none of the others pictured are a Patricia) but I had one morph before and never had any fog. He/she is a tiny bit smaller than the luec to the right of it 


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

are they all being fed the same food and same amount?


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

The cloudyness is from bacteria that's growing in the container. I would recommend moving the tad to a new container.


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## LexisaurusRex (Aug 8, 2013)

Oh and I feed them this pellet food that's tiny I'm not sure of the name, when I bought the first tads the guy gave me a bunch of it. I also feed melanogaster flies. They all get fed the same amount and seem to eat all of it 


I was wondering if it was bacteria thanks hypo ill try that. 


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

I've never fed my tadpoles FFs


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## LexisaurusRex (Aug 8, 2013)

hypostatic said:


> I've never fed my tadpoles FFs


I've only recently tried it (after the water was foggy) and they seem to like it. They eat them a hell of a lot faster than the pellet stuff. They're also all pretty big now and growing back legs.
Is there something wrong with feeding FFs? I figured they need more vitamins and what not than just the FFs could provide that's why I still feed the other food more


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

I don't know if there's anything wrong with it, but I've never done it personally lol.

If you're treating all the tad cups the same, and that cup is the only one that has a problem, it must be specific to that cup -- or else you'd have the same problem in all the cups.

It's always possible that some bacteria or mold spore found its way into the cup and made itself at home, which is why I recommended moving the tad to a new cup. Cloudy white is usually a sign of bacterial blooms.

I see leaves, so I assume you're using/making tadpole tea?


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## LexisaurusRex (Aug 8, 2013)

Oh okay I was like oh no!
And I'm using it but haven't made any myself thus far. I purchased 3 yellow galact tads and he had put magnolia leaves in with them when they first went into the water. I figured if its not broke don't fix it so I've let them be.  


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## LexisaurusRex (Aug 8, 2013)

No fog at all so far! Changed cups and water completely. Before it took 2-4 days for it to become completely foggy again. You guys rock  


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

Most likely what happened here was a microbial population issue. Basically when you start a new cup it has a small number of microbes in it. These are likely random, then they grow when you add water, tads and nutrients. If a particular microbe causes this issue, well it might die, or be out competed by others. But in some cases it might be the one that thrives and out competes the others taking over and making the water cloudy, probably also formed a biofilm on the cup sides. Everytime you put more water in, those microbes are the dominant ones in the system and just grow to take advantage of the nutrients. 

Resetting the system with a new cup and water can work, but the microbe could be all over the tadpole and it might just take over again. In your case it appears that the reset worked. 

However if the water goes cloudy again I would suggest trying to set up a new system with a new microbial population. A way to do that might be to take a tadpole from a normal cup and move it into a new cup with 1/2 water the water from the original cup. Then move the "cloudy" tadpole into the cup vacated by the previously mentioned tadpole and add a little more water. The previously mentioned tadpoles cup should have an already established microbial population that will make it hard for the cloudy microbe to take over again.


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