Mysterious Gelatinous Substance Coating Filter Socks and Sponge
For my 160 Gallon Tank
The tank has been running for a couple months now cycled quick and water parameters are good. Anyways I have always noticed the filter sock overflow with water and are clogged quickly. Thought that was just the tank settling and kept up on my changes. However yesterday I did my weekly maintenance which included a ten percent water change, filter socks changed, sponged rinsed out, and I cleaned out my skimmer. While changing out my socks and cleaning my sponge I noticed they were coated in a clear gelatinous slim. The sponge took forever to rinse out.Today I look at my tank and its cloudy. Not sure if they are correlated in anyway because I added a couple pieces of LR and stirred up the sand bed a bit during water change.
The main thing that worries me is the slime because the socks are already overflowing again today, no doubt from the mysterious gelatinous slime.
What could this be? It has been a few days since my last water test but everything should still be on par.
Extra info that probably may not matter........... recently had a diatom bloom I'm guessing will go away as the tank ages, This is my first fuge also within the last couple weeks my refugium has gotten quite dirty, so I added a few CUC members in there.
Still battling this, my tank still hasn't cleared up and my socks are clogged with this gunk within twenty four hours. I even added extra blue and white filter pad,floss to catch more and it is also clogging up daily. I have done two test in the last four days and water was perfect the first time and almost perfect the second time with my phosphate just under .25, but that was before my weekly water change and after I stopped running my GFO for a week because I was thinking that could have been a problem somewhere. I am running the gfo and carbon again.
My last Idea I have is to find a uv sterilizer. Anyone think this may help or have any input.
Mysterious Gelatinous Substance Coating Filter Socks and Sponge
Do you have any macro algae in your fugue? If so what kind? I had a similar problem last summer and the only thing I could narrow it down to was the calurpa in my fugue and gone asexual and as it was breaking down it was creating the same time of slime or mucuos you've been talking about. Within two days the calurpa was completely gone and my frag tank was covered in the slime. The only thing that I did was syphon as much if it out as I could during every water change and stopped carbon dosing. Plus I got a nice size ball of chaeto and put that in my fuge and probably within a week it seemed to disappear and I haven't seen it since. Or I have also heard that a certain type of bacteria can bloom inside your tank that produces that kind of slime or mucous but not sure if there's a lot of truth to that. Hope this helps shed some light on your situation.