Has anyone found a cure for white slime?

[Livio]

@Dr Jimmy
It sure looks similar to what I have in the old tank that got infected - in the new one where it started I get long strands of hairy mucus, not a mat - but there is a difference: I do not have air bubbles.
Air bubbles indicate dino to me.

 

[Dr Jimmy]

@Dr Jimmy
It sure looks similar to what I have in the old tank that got infected - in the new one where it started I get long strands of haisy mucus, not a mat - but there is a difference: I do not have air bubbles.
Air bubbles indicate dyno to me.

It's worth noting, only some of it has air bubbles.

I'd guess that the white slime drove down N and P, which encouraged a population of dino?

 

[Payedjay]

I had that’s same problem once it was due to air freshener no matter how much I took out and water changes it came back I just gave up and restarted my system

 

[Livio]

I'd guess that the white slime drove down N and P, which encouraged a population of dino?

yes I think that's possible
Actually during these months I was on constant lookout for air bubbles for fear of getting dino - as if white slime is not trouble enough
but now I have come to think that at least in my case the white slime outcompetes any other organism

as I said, in the new tank I have not seen any type of algae so far in 6 months - not diatoms, not hair no nothing, although I transferred some rocks from the other tank where I do have some patches of hair algae here and there

 

[taricha]

So I am not sure whether the cloudiness is dr tim's bacteria multiplying or the slime multiplying by eating Dr Tim's.

The bacteria in Waste Away are in spore form and take some time ( ~3 days ) before showing activity, but the Aquarium bacteria are already in exponential growth phase and can show visible measurable growth in less than a day. So this is your native bacteria eating the WA carbon source.

 

[Dan_P]

5. @Dan P - I do not have a microscope but I am willing to buy one, so could you let me know what is the minimum magnification needed? would 1200X suffice?

I fixed and stained some feathery white slime. Photomicrographs are around 400 and 800X. Without stain, filaments are still visible, just no detail. This particular filamentous growth seems to be covered with a sheath.

 

[brandon429]

nonbacterial we'd need much more res to see colonies, higher order organism wow???

 

[Dan_P]

* just brainstorming

what if you set up a test nano to get an idea of how a deep clean will go, at least a little idea


lift out a couple rocks and clean them manually, peroxide on the rocks after cleaning as direct application not a dip, work around any attached corals, rinse off, and set rock or test rocks in a glass container next to your reef and bubble it or circulate it other ways with a cheap heater. Let’s see how fast the new nano gets infected this is a nice mini model low work, saves whole tank blind experimenting


if you can assemble a little functioning nano off truly cleaned substrates from the ? tank we’ve made a little predictability ground

even a big glass tea pitcher could work, something clear and see through so we see mass buildup

dont nuke main tank until control using the substrates can be earned in the test setup

The nano idea is a good one. I fret up reproducing aquarium conditions on a very small scale, but this seems like a reasonable experimental scale for reproducing the aquarium conditions.

 

[Livio]

Guys, I've been thinking about the nano setup and I don't think it's going to be relevant, here's why:

1. if I understood correctly, the purpose of the expetriment is to see whether a rip clean would work;
2. in order to test this hypothesis, I need to take a bunch of rocks from the infected aquarium, scrub them with H2O2 etc, put the UV sterilizer and see if the infection re-appears in the brand new tank
3. if it does not appear, then a rip clean might work and I should do it in my infected aquariums

but there is a problem: whereas I might be able to clean the rocks and other decor, I am 100% certain there is no way I could clean 100% of the aquarium walls

so if I manage to clean the rocks properly for the nano and the infection does not appear, I cannot conclude that this would work for the main tanks, because the tanks themselves would not be free of bacteria as the nano walls are

if I don't manage to clean the rocks properly, then the nano will get the bacteria as well and I would know for certain a rip clean would not work

so it seems that in the best case scenario, the nano experiment would yield a "maybe" and unfortunately I am not willing to undertake the big hassle of a rip clean on just a "maybe", because I know there are other people who dismantled the tanks completely and set them up again and the bacteria re-appeared

instead this is what I'm going to do: I'm going to test taricha's hypothesis that I have a " persistently Carbon-excess system", where the bacteria has carbon at discretion and scavanges every bit of NO3 and/or PO4 that gets in the system

if the hypothesis is true, then this means that the limiting factor for the bacteria is N & P

what I am going to attempt it to shift this situation so that carbon becomes the limiting factor, as it should be in a normal reef system, 'cause that's why we add NOPOX or vodka etc

the way I am going to do this is to simply add NO3 and PO4 to my system; if the hypothesis of a carbon excess is correct, then I should see at first an increase in bacterial growth followed by a plateau and then a decline as carbon sources are depleted

I do not know how long it will take, especially since most likely the carbon supply will also increase (unknown source) but I think there might be a point where any new carbon will be stripped out of the water immediatelly by the bacteria and limit it's long term growth instead of NO3/PO4 doing it as we assume it is happening now

I am of course going to do a big water change first to eliminate as much carbon as possible from the system.

what do you guys think?

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

Any update? I thought I had weird gha type of algae, but I have the same stuff...did you beat it? I've tried natural methods but have held back on chemical treatment.

 

[Livio]

hi @ImaFlippinDolphin
sorry I've been meaning to do a proper update but could not find the time

yes, the situation has improved dramatically for me: I did not have an outbreak for more than 2 months. In the months of Sep and Oct there used to be a small outbrake every couple of weeks, lasting about 1-2 days.

So I think that my idea from my previous post worked - i.e. increasing No3 and Po4.
I could not get them to rise through feeding alone so I started dosing directly, using Easy Life products - in about a month or so I started again getting readings for No3 and Po4, after 6 months of zero readings.

I continued to dose sparsily dr Tim's Waste Away during the month of September, but not after that since I've ran out of it.

I also used antibiotics (ciprofloxacin) in one of the tanks - they worked, but the bacteria came back after a while, perhaps by reinfection from the other tank, I do not know.

So my conclusion is that at least in my case the most probable explanation is the the one given by Taricha, to whom I am grateful: a " persistently Carbon-excess system", where the bacteria has carbon at discretion and scavanges every bit of NO3 and/or PO4 that gets in the system.

If you have undetectable levels of No3 and Po4, I suggest to raise them and try to maintain them at "normal levels" for a reef tank so that, in time, the limited factor for the bacteria becomes carbon instead of No3/Po4.