# HELP- white/grey fuzz



## taillight

I have had some major water problems in my tank, the amonia very high. Now i have developed a white/grey fuzz on the gravel, intakes, suction cups in the tank. what is it ? mold ? algae ? and how do i get rid of it.


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## Hitch

are there any fish in the tank? what caused the ammonia spike?

as for what the white fuzz is, I am unsure without seeing a pic.


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## Jiggs

taillight said:


> I have had some major water problems in my tank, the amonia very high. Now i have developed a white/grey fuzz on the gravel, intakes, suction cups in the tank. what is it ? mold ? algae ? and how do i get rid of it.


http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/general-aquarium-plants-discussions/48251-white-mold-fungus-driftwood.html

hope that helps.


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## Darkblade48

Jiggs: If it was only affecting the driftwood, I would likely also say that a harmless fungus was the problem. 

However, as it is growing on the gravel, filter intake, suction cups, etc, it is hard to say for certain whether it is indeed a fungus or not.

In addition, as Hitch mentioned, what is your current stocking like, and what caused the ammonia spike? What are your tank parameters (and how were they measured)?


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## taillight

there are only 2 fish in the tank, 5" sino cat and a 5" clown knife and 5 cray fish in a 46G tank. i'm running [email protected] 2213's, the tank has been running fine since a june set up. i do not know what caused the spike, something could have been leading up to this but i do not know. it all started about 3 weeks ago my girlfriend did a gravel wash and a 50% water change. i did not notice that she over filled the tank and the water was over the spray tubes, there was no surface agitition for almost 2 days. the water was cloudy, so i used pro clear and it worked, i was also adding melafix cause a cat fish got into a tussel with a big crayfish.
to make a long story short a lot of chemicals were added to the tank for various things. i was doing a 20% change every other day, it did not help.
i had very high amonia 3 , my PH dropped off the stick, 0 nitrates, 0 nitrites for a week then i started putting in ammo lock every other day. after a few days nothing, so i put in a bottle of nitifing bacteria, and continued with ammo lock. a week later nothing. out of despiration, i put a 1/4 box of baking soda in the tank as the fish were peeling and i wanted to counter the acidic water. also in went another bottle of nitrifing bacteria. now another week has passed and my amonia is still 3, nitrites 0, nitrates 0. ph is 7.8 and now i have a carpet of white fuzz on everything...it looks like wet cotton batten on everything. when i go into big als and tell them, they look at me like i have 3 eyes, even though they were the ones giving advice.
my conclusion is i have completely recycled my tank cause of the 0 nitrates and nitrites for the last 3 weeks and this is the result:

1) white fuzz is the nitrifing bacteria dead and rotting ?
2) nitrifing bacteria eating the amonia and it is a waste byproduct?
3) ammo loc bonded to the amonia and this is the wasted by product?

so yesterday i did a 50% change, glass clean, cleaned out 1 filter(lots of thick slime and fuzz) , and a gravel wash.
i'll do a 25% tonight, will wait till sunday do a 30-40% with a gravel wash and clean the other filter. 

now i'm only using ammo loc and stability(seachem) and of course water conditioner for the changes
it is very upsetting that i can't get this straightened out and i'm hurting the fish, 

suggestions?


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## Hitch

wow....holy shit.....

ok.....lets see.

The ammonia spike to me seems like you have used way too many chemicals in the tank and in turn killed off all of the bacteria in the filter (pretty much you just uncycled the tank). Which is why you are seeing this constant high ammonia level with 0 nitrites and nitrates. The filter is basically starting from scratch with the nitrogen cycle. 

Also, never put baking soda in the tank...remember that this is a tank of living organisms, not a chemical reaction. 

Also, never trust the advice of BA employees or any LFS employees unless you know that they are credible (I wouldnt even trust the BA fishroom managers on advice...there is only a few people in my surrounding LFS which I ask occassionally for advice--Mike from finatics being one, and Harold from Menagerie being the other). If you are having problems, ask a fellow hobbyist or post it on forums like this where there are experienced hobbyists.

I still havent the slightest on what the white fuzz is. But judging from what you have said, its neither 1), 2) or 3). This is because: 1) there s no such thing as rotting bacteria, rotting is when bacteria and fungus start eating away at the tissue...so you cant really have a bacteria with fungus and other bacteria growing on it (or at least it wont be visible to the naked eye). 2) the waste by product of the ammonia fixers are soluble in water and not visible. And 3), again not visible.

If the fuzz is sticking on the surfaces and not just a layer of dust on the surface, then I am leaning more towards an algae bloom (since fungus will really only grow on an organic surface--so assuming its not just white fuzz on decomposing food or dead fish, it shouldnt be fungus). Algae bloom (in this case, I am thinking is brown algae--but pics would be needed to confirm) would make sense with the water parameters of the water.

but ok, what to do now:

If you have another cycled tank, I would highly recommend removing all of the livestock from the current tank into the other tank. Since right now you are pretty much just cycling the tank with all of them in there, which is a recipe for disaster and more diseases.

If there is no way for you to move the fish, then crank up the water changes to like 3 times a day about 30% each time. 

Lets assume the best possible situation in which you are able to temp rehouse the fish. Get a carbon filtration going in there, basically you want to remove all of the chemicals you have put into the tank asap. Also keep doing water changes. 

After the chemicals are removed, chuck the carbon filtration and start cycling the tank from scratch.


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## taillight

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt70/cburke2980/100_0373.jpg

http://www.sgs-europe.co.uk/grass.jpg

after doing many searches, this looks like it...white hair algae
now how to clean it. once my tank gets back to normal i will get a few algae eaters to clean it up.


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## ameekplec.

Certainly looks like yor normal thread algae.

First, stop screwing around with the tank chemistry. pH swings can kill fish very quickly - remember, it's a logarithmic scale - a 1 pt change is huge.

Let things settle down. Stop cleaning and disturbing everything. Just do normal water changes every week or so to bring your parameters into line and restore stability - stability is key, and any disturbance from a stable state usually is the cause of problems.

After two weeks or so when things have started to stabilize, do ONE thing at a time. Remove a little of the crap. Next week, wash Half or a third of the substrate. Next week after that clean one canister.

Take things slower - fast changes result in fast results, usually to the negative.


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## AquaNeko

Curiosu but if the OP put the livestock into another cycled tank then covered the affected tank for say a month with no light while cleaning it will it starve off algaes light food and die?


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## Hitch

AquaNeko said:


> Curiosu but if the OP put the livestock into another cycled tank then covered the affected tank for say a month with no light while cleaning it will it starve off algaes light food and die?


ummm...it would help, black out if often one of the solutions for a algae problem. The problem here is the messed up water chemistry that caused the algae, so if the chemistry is not dealt with, the algae would just come back.


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