Help!Clear thick slime covering everything!

J

Jillyfish

Member
My tank is about five months old, everything was going well...
ammonia-----0
nitrite---------0
nitrate--------less than 5ppm
phosphate----0
calcium--------380
ph-------------8.4
dkh-----------11

A few days ago I noticed clear slime on the front glass. I wiped it off and it made my skimmer (MSX 160) go crazy, but no other ill effects. yesterday my tank water was looking a little cloudy, but I still had no ammonia or nitrite. Today my water was very cloudy, and some of my coral polyps are closed. I did a water change and noticed the slime is thick on all the liverock, especially the underside. the back acrylic has a layer 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.

I can scrape it off and it is like clear jelly.
I don't know what to do. My water params are still unchanged.
There is no way I can manually remove this stuff, it is on everything.

Any ideas as to what is going on?

Thank you,
Jill
 
Oh, I have a few hundred pounds of live rock, Much of it is from old tanks. I have two true perculas and a firefish and a tiny hippo tang. mostly gorgonians and mushrooms and a few zooanthids. One brain coral.
 
So noone has had an outbreak of this clear jelly-like stuff. I am really scared my whole tank is going to crash. I don't know what it is or what to do about it.
 
I have no idea what it is, but I keep checking back on here to see if anybody else has ideas.

Is the skimmer pulling anything today? What kind of critters do you have in there? Which tank is this in?
 
I read somewhere that this can happen when adding new LR. Also corals and many other things can release mucus from being stressed.
 
What do you feed the tank? I'll notice that on plastics in my tank sometimes, but not usually.
 
Thanks for the replies. This is in my 100 gallon. The amount of slime is enormous. It can't be just from the few corals I have in there. It is thick. I can run my hand over the tank wall and get a big scoop. Maybe I can get a picture of it. It is the consistency of jelly that you put on bread, only clear. It is growing I think because I don't have anything in the tank that could have produced that quantity of goo. I have a little caulerpa in the sump and tube worms that are not very happy right now, and Halimeda and a few shaving brush plants other than what I mentioned before. I had two anemones, but I put them in the nano cube because they were very unhappy.
 
Oh, and I feed phyto plankton that I grow myself one or twice a week, less than a cup. Frozen cyclopeeze, baby brine shrimp, omega one flakes with garlic. Coral frenzy, only like once or twice, and krill to my anemones, but only once or twice a week.
 
Lol Rae. Baby hands may have been in the sump, but it would have been something sugary if anything.

Also I have started dosing vitamin c for zooanthid health a few weeks ago. sodium ascorbate
 
So what is the skimmer pulling out today? If you disturb the slime with a power head or turkey baster, will it get into the water stream sothe skimmer can pull it out of the water?
 
My skimmer is not working. It just started going crazy. It is just shooting out clear. My skimmer is very touchy and always quits working like this when there is too much to handle.


My tank looks like crap today. I'll have to test my parameters.
 
slimeplague.jpg

slimeplaguerock.jpg

slimeplague2.jpg
 
Almost looks like a grinded up jellyfish or anemone, corals release mucus, but that is a ton! Hope someone else chimes in about this.
 
Looks like a bacteria outbreak but I can't be really sure. I take it the water does not have a milky look to it. If it did then there would be not question and I might see if the kiddies added more than their hands to the tank. ;)

I'd do like a 20% water change today and about the same every other day for the next week. If it is bacteria they will recede after they gooble up whatever they are chowing down on. It may be some sort of coral related even but I'd need one of our coral experts to pin it down.
 
Whoops trying to do 2 things at once. Reread your original post and water is cloudy. That pretty much ices the bacteria bloom theory and water changes will do the trick. You might also run a canister filter with polishing cartridge to help out. The only other thing I can think of is a macro algae spawn and that would respond to the same treatment.
 
I think another member ClownReef® went through the same thing in his tank...
 
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