I have a bit of a confession to make. We've had this turtle for a while. He's been in the tank in our office for years of my life. However, growing up, our dog took up most of my attention, while my parents took care of the turtle (named Mike). As such, I don't know when, but at some point they stopped cleaning the filter cartridge in his tank. The tank's already fairly large, but that, I'm assuming, reduced it's use even more. It was still running, though, and my mother continued to feed him.
As I grew older and started going to college (I still live with my parents for the moment), I really began to feel bad for the turtle, since a great deal of algae had built up in the tank. So first I started feeding him myself, in order to get a routine going. Then I started cleaning as much of the tank as I could. I'd scoop out bits of algae with a net, and on occasion scrub the interior as much as I could. I'd also clean the filter (I could see it hadn't been cleaned for a while, as an absurd amount of algae had built up). I kept doing this, except for cleaning the filter, since a power outage caused it to go officially kaput.
It was going well. We could see better in the tank now that algae wasn't covering a majority of the glass. But then cut to a couple months back or so. I'm afraid this was my doing in some way, because now the algae had begun to cloud the water heavily. It's become really difficult to see the far side of the tank, to the point where the turtle can practically vanish back there. The net can't do anything; I'm scared it may be making things worse, straining the algae into microscopic pieces.
My thought immediately was get a new filter. We hadn't replaced it yet, since my dad insisted that it just had to be cleaned more thoroughly (even though I'd tried that). It was only until he tried to clean it that he must have realized it was dead. So we finally got a new filter. We installed it a few weeks back.
Now; nothing's changed. The water is still green and cloudy as hell. It seems to practically slip right through the filter cartridge, and the other qualities of this new device don't seem to be having any affect either.
Maybe I should just give it more time or clean the cartridges more thoroughly or even start using replacements. I just want to know how much I should be worried, and if there's anything else I can do. The turtle doesn't seem any worse for wear, but not all issues are on the outside, and I don't want to take many chances. Any advice?
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/ba5a21/advice_for_cleaning_my_turtles_filthy_tank/
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