# I made a big mistake!



## Lilliemoon5ilver

Hello! Long time YBS owner here! I’ve had Spike for about 10 years now. He’s about 8” in a 100 gallon tank with a fluval FX4. I’ve literally never had issues with having a smelly tank until about 2 weeks ago. When things got smelly I did a thing I had forgotten I wasn’t ever supposed to do... I cleaned both the tank 100% water change and the filter at the same time. 🤦‍♀️ Now I’m stuck in smelly turtle hell and I can’t seem to fix it. I’ve added bacteria to the filter and I’ve been testing the water every day or two. Now I’m finding my ammonia levels are dropping off but my nitrites aren’t coming up. Spike has been living and eating in this smelly cloudy tank the whole time so I suspect there’s plenty of turtle stuff for the bacteria to get to. I’m just totally unsure what to do next. I get that there might not be any fast track method to fix my problem. (If there is, please let me know. It’s literally keeping my boyfriend from coming to my house.) Anyone know what next step I might want to take? I did a 25% water change after the first week and will likely do another on Thursday.


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## Northern_Escapism

Hope your tank has sorted itself out (it will).

In my five years Turtle keeping experience (2xYSB, 1xRazorback Musk, 1xCommon Musk) three tanks (1x1000 litres, 2x 200 litre), 4 Fluval FX6 filters and many previous years fishkeeping I can tell you that you just have to put up with the smelly tank for a week or two whilst it cycles. I think we've all been there before and that horrible sulfur like smell is just normal.

Not sure if you need to change your water to keep your turtle healthy, probably not as he's a big slider and doesn't breath underwater. The Filter will grow new bacteria that will handle the regular cycle.

For me I use coral sand as a substrate, it's fine so no chance of impaction and keeps a lot of beneficial bacteria in it. I do not change water and clean filters at the same time but have not had a bacteria bloom/cycling issues in years.


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