Foamy white/clear slime on top of sump water...

[saltyfilmfolks]

It’s actually nitrifying bacteria in most cases. So adding likey won’t help.

Can’t figure out what’s causing it though.

 

[rsumner]

I've had this stuff before immediately after I started running biopellets. After a few days, it cleared up on its own. Fast forward to today...I have it again, but I'm no longer running biopellets. It started last Sunday. I checked my display and my sump before going to bed (like I do every night) and noticed that my filter sock was flowing over. Looking down into the sump, I could see clear snot everywhere in the sock.

So, I had a few interesting things happen this past weekend:

• First Thing Saturday: Did a 10% water change
• Saturday Morn After water Change: Added 100mL of Dr Tim's Waste Away
  
• Sunday Morn: I changed Alkalinity additive from BRS Soda Ash to Seachem Carbonate (I wanted something more concentrated and got tired of mixing)
• Sunday Afternoon: Had a big pool party with a bunch of unsupervised people hovering around my tank

My skimmer has been VERY active all week. The skim much wetter then normal and I'm emptying nearly an entire collection cup daily. My process of elimination:

• if it was somebody putting their sun-tun-lotion-ridden hands in the display, I would have thought anything would have been pulled out by the skimmer by now
• I add Dr Tim's Waste Away and Ecobalance on a regular basis, so the introduction of this type of beneficial bacteria isn't new (maybe it's just working better this time)
• I'm worried that the Seachem Carbonate had bacteria in it. I noticed when I filled my dosing container that there was no quality seal on the top of the container, but couldn't remember if I removed it already (man, I'm getting old)

So.....I've been running my UV 24x7 all week and changing carbon daily to try and contain some of the bacteria. I just turned the UV back to my normal schedule of only running it at night for the first time today due to me seeing less of this stuff floating around. As a matter of fact, I am only seeing it accumulate in the return section of the sump. To make this fact even more interesting, I also moved the location of my dosing lines from dosing prior to the socks in my sump to the return section. The result? Call this coincidental, but no more clogged socks.

So, I don't want to blame the Seachem entirely quite yet, but I am shopping around for hobby-grade microscopes that don't cost an arm and a leg that can see bacteria so I can take a simple of the Seachem to see if it's infested.

 

[Dustinryan2010]

I've had this stuff before immediately after I started running biopellets. After a few days, it cleared up on its own. Fast forward to today...I have it again, but I'm no longer running biopellets. It started last Sunday. I checked my display and my sump before going to bed (like I do every night) and noticed that my filter sock was flowing over. Looking down into the sump, I could see clear snot everywhere in the sock.

So, I had a few interesting things happen this past weekend:

• First Thing Saturday: Did a 10% water change
• Saturday Morn After water Change: Added 100mL of Dr Tim's Waste Away
  
• Sunday Morn: I changed Alkalinity additive from BRS Soda Ash to Seachem Carbonate (I wanted something more concentrated and got tired of mixing)
• Sunday Afternoon: Had a big pool party with a bunch of unsupervised people hovering around my tank

My skimmer has been VERY active all week. The skim much wetter then normal and I'm emptying nearly an entire collection cup daily. My process of elimination:

• if it was somebody putting their sun-tun-lotion-ridden hands in the display, I would have thought anything would have been pulled out by the skimmer by now
• I add Dr Tim's Waste Away and Ecobalance on a regular basis, so the introduction of this type of beneficial bacteria isn't new (maybe it's just working better this time)
• I'm worried that the Seachem Carbonate had bacteria in it. I noticed when I filled my dosing container that there was no quality seal on the top of the container, but couldn't remember if I removed it already (man, I'm getting old)

So.....I've been running my UV 24x7 all week and changing carbon daily to try and contain some of the bacteria. I just turned the UV back to my normal schedule of only running it at night for the first time today due to me seeing less of this stuff floating around. As a matter of fact, I am only seeing it accumulate in the return section of the sump. To make this fact even more interesting, I also moved the location of my dosing lines from dosing prior to the socks in my sump to the return section. The result? Call this coincidental, but no more clogged socks.

So, I don't want to blame the Seachem entirely quite yet, but I am shopping around for hobby-grade microscopes that don't cost an arm and a leg that can see bacteria so I can take a simple of the Seachem to see if it's infested.

I’m battling this now as well. Filter floss clogged within 6 hours, strings of slime hanging off rocks, and long strands of it in the sump area of my AIO Nuvo 30. New setup with dry rock and sand used Dr. Tim’s originally.. there’s a few threads on here that find slime associated with tanks that were set up with dry rock and seeded with Dr. Tim’s. Some have questioned whether this specific strain of bacteria is found in Dr. Tim’s and thrives with the introduction of an outside carbon source. I’ve ran UV, tried Dr Tim’s refresh and waste away, airstone bringing air in from outdoors, indoor air purifier in the aquarium room, no candles, air fresheners, you name it. Nothing is making this crap budge. I’m going to start dosing phosphorous and nitrogen as well as get my skimmer and fuge light offline, to hopefully get some algae in hopes of competition. Cause this bacteria crap keeps my nutrients bottomed out at 0. If that doesn’t work, I plan to run a chemi-clean treatment and see if there’s any response. There’s a YouTube video I’ll link below of a woman who was battling this issue as well and either coincidentally or in result of, got rid of it all after a flatworm exit treatment. That will be my last resort. I’m also tempted to set up a small test tank here in the same room and use live rock and get it cycled and see what happens. Then I’ll know it’s not environmental and has more to do with what’s in the tank opposed to in my home. I wish you luck! It’s a very taxing thing to compete with.

 

[rsumner]

A quick update from me. I'm completely rid of the slime at this point. The fix for me was:

• changing/cleaning filter socks daily
• changing GAC daily or every two days
• running UV 24x7
• no carbon dosing
• clean the skimmer and make sure it's running at 100%

And finally, to give myself an extra level of comfort that I wasn't dealing with a random bacterial strain that was tucked away somewhere in my sump or return lines, I did something similar to the video @Dustinryan2010 linked above. I gave all plumbing a deep clean:

• drained and pulled the 40G sump
• disconnected all overflow and return hard plumbing
• soaked the sump and all PVC in muriatic acid and scrubbed them down so they were brand new again
• soaked the return pump, skimmer, and power heads in citric acid

So, the deep cleaning may have been totally unnecessary, but I'm very happy with the results. The sump is spotless, I gained about 30GPH in display turn-over from the cleaned plumbing lines, and it gave me an opportunity to do some other sump-area perfection while it was pulled. It took me about 14 hours from start to finished, but I'm convinced it was well worth it.