question for seasoned keepers

If this looks similar, then it is bacterial. This is an old picture of a bacterial film in a tank cycled with uncured LR.

 

This looks very similar... I'm almost very positive it is bacterial because not many other organisms make a Biofilm like this.

So i assume it just subsided with age?

 

Dingo I've experienced this phenomenon and have yet to find out how to rid it from my tank. From my limited experience, I'm fairly sure it's something that a less than thrilled coral is exuding in the tank.

I don't know if you have corals in there, so if you don't, ignore this.

Here's what I know. It comes and goes. When it comes, it covers absolutely everything, from the perforated disks in the reactor, to the granules of carbon, to LR, to glass, to the baffles in the sump.

If I dare to keep a filter sock in the system while it's present, the sock will begin to overflow for clogging in less than 24 hours, instead of the 3 days or so I usually get when all is clean.

Lots of folks speak of "chemical warfare," and I'm reluctant to buy into things I can't prove for myself, but again--I'm almost certain coral is the culprit.

I'm tagging along this thread to see what others have to offer.

 

@reefsparkey: this is very interesting... I have a couple sps already and one favia. This started before the addition of a majority of the corals.

 

Yes it did resolve with time, about 2 months. The only interventions where the usual carbon, skimmer and water changes.

This was a friends tank that used LR right out of the ocean, he tried to remove it manually but it just returned.

I think it just has to run it's course, and when the available fuel ran out, it died back

 

I have something similar in my tank, although it's really not bad. You can only see it if you look really close in some spots. I've found it gets worse when I add too many nutrients for to the tank i.e. coral/fish food. If I limit my nutrients, it start to disappear. One method that I've found effective is to use a turkey baster to blast it right before I do a water change, then suck as much up as possible. You can also use a tooth brush to scrub it off.

 

I would try putting a filter sock in the sump and syphon it off the rock, glass, etc.... into the sock and then take the sock out and wash it. You can try blowing it off but it will spread in the tank and settle back on the rocks and sand IMPO. At least just syphoning it you can direct it to the sock. It may not help but may be worth a try.


That is if it is loose. if not you may have to scrub the rocks as your doing it.

 

I have a similar film in my tank. Any time that i add anything new into the tank it will cover the new item. A very light white film that will cover anything. I recently added 2 new pieces of cured live rock and both rocks were covered in a day. I added a new evo 750 and it was covered. It takes about a month or so for the film to go away.
I have no idea what causes it. It takes a really long time to go away on the rocks but seems to go away within a couple weeks on frag plugs.
I would also like to know the cause and a possible solution.

If it does have something to do with chemical warefare between corals would the use of carbon not be able to battle the problem. From my experiences carbon has no effect on this stuff??

 

Kracer, your post confirms to me that it is bacterial. The fact that it instantly covers new rock tells me that it out competes other bacteria easily.

I always strove for diversity in my tanks so IMO this is a negative. Oddly though, this is not existent in my fuge though

 

the same applies to my tank as well. I have no evidence of this in my fuge at all. 1 thing that I did notice is it seems to have a bit to do with lilght spectrum. I was running a uvl aqua sun for about a week (suppliment for 2 250 14k aquamaxx bulbs) to take a bit of the blue out of my tank and the film seemed to get thicker. I removed the aqua sun and installed a ati aqua blue special and it seemed to have subsided a bit in the last few days. This bulb is used with a giesemann pure actinic.
I dont know for sure if this is really the case but it seemes to have slowed a bit. I have noticed it increase any time I use any t5 bulb that has a higher amount of red spectrum.