What is this clear/white slime?

absoluteNANOreef · Nov 29, 2015

Help!
I woke up to this white/clear slime this morning. It's everywhere. I have no idea what triggered it.
Any ideas on what it could be and how to treat it?
Thanks.

VelasCorals · Nov 29, 2015

Looks like a newish setup so it's probably some type o bacteria or algae. Not necessarily something to treat. I would simply let it be and make sure it doesn't smother that nice collection you have going.

Reefing Madness · Nov 29, 2015

Im guessing thats dry rock, and you are running a gfo or some other phosphate remover, and thats phosphate leaching from the rock that is being bound.

absoluteNANOreef · Nov 29, 2015

Incredible Corals said:
Looks like a newish setup so it's probably some type o bacteria or algae. Not necessarily something to treat. I would simply let it be and make sure it doesn't smother that nice collection you have going.

The setup is about 2 months old now, so that may be the cause. I had previously went through some algae blooms and though they were done with. Hopefully this is the last. Thank you

Reefing Madness said:
Im guessing thats dry rock, and you are running a gfo or some other phosphate remover, and thats phosphate leaching from the rock that is being bound.

It's BRS dry rock. I am running chemi pure blue in the media basket. I never knew phosphates leached out like that. Thanks for the info.

Do you think doing like a 50% water change will help? Also, does anyone feel I have too much rocks? Open to any info.
I was really hoping to stock the tank with WWC live sale on Monday. Do you think I would be fine still ordering corals or will they have a high chance of not making it.

Thanks everyone

brandon429 · Nov 29, 2015

100% sure you can simply siphon it out and do a giant water change w matching params with no harm. The changes I do to a very old nano reef are just mean comparatively, it doesn't even get the courtesy of a quick or well matched refill, it gets the tidal treatment eg its a little tougher than most.

siphon away even if we never fully id it

Reefing Madness · Nov 29, 2015

Water changes will help to a degree, but until the phosphates are leached out, its a possibility your going to run into it. You can just wave the stuff off, and let the skimmer or filter get it out for you.

absoluteNANOreef · Nov 29, 2015

Ok cool. Thanks everyone.

So do you think I should sit out on this live sale or just get hardy corals? The corals currently in the tank are doing fine.

DrayB · Nov 29, 2015

having set up my tank with 60-70 % dry rock, ill just give you aheads up and say it could take a loooong time for the phosphates to die down a bit (stop leaching ). i'm about 8 months into my new tank and only just starting to see the phos come under control.

brandon429 · Nov 29, 2015

You can indeed stock. If your tank can pass a 3 ppm ammonia digestion test / 24 hours it will run the typical bioload which corals won't count towards much

Dealing with any potential po4 issues or bacterial strains that initially capitalize can be separate of the common corals stacked around. More exports and binding for a while, as mentioned. I'd make sure to have done specific isolation tests outside of the main tank before making po4 adjustments, the close balance of coral bleaching/coral health comes into play with each gram of gfo used

Evaluate the po4 in your tank and then run an external eval where a high quality po4 test kit shows freshly made reef water in a bucket to have none. Put a section of your rock into that known clean water and bubble or aerate it

Test in a week, see if clear po4 was elevated, that's critical comparative requirement IMO. A few white slime threads are in the gen forum w similar pics to here

cheek_biz · Dec 2, 2015

That's an algae bloom, I jus had that happen a month ago in my new setup.. what I did is siphon out as much as u can every time u see some, I did a 5gal water change on my 40gal DT every other day for a wk, and I also added a lot of carbon as well, and about 5-7days later it was gone and hasn't returned.. Good luck with that Caz mine was in the sumo and I was ticked, couldn't imagine the DT like that..