White Stuff On Aquarium Glass

[Deleted member 55926]

I have some sort of white cloudy tiny fluff growing all over the aquarium glass. It's sort of like white algae?

I think it could be related to my recent nitrite spike due to the filter playing up. Any ideas what this is? I scraped it off the sides a bit with a magnet cleaner and am doing a large water change now anyway but do I need to worry about this stuff? Is it a parasite, algae, something dangerous, something the otos will eat?

Sorry for the bad photos, my camera ran out of battery so I had to use my girlfriend's. But you can see it's cloudy and some is growing on the side of the thermometer.

 

[mattlee]

is the tank a new set up?

is it slimey to touch?

when i first set up my cory fry and grow out tanks i got the same stuff all over the glass and wood etc. i scraped it off did water changes etc and i just came back. then one day it was just gone..... i was doing 50% water changes daily or every 2nd day in the tank i dont know if this helped but it is weird stuff whatever it is...

 

[BettaBoysGirl]

is the tank a new set up?

is it slimey to touch?

when i first set up my cory fry and grow out tanks i got the same stuff all over the glass and wood etc. i scraped it off did water changes etc and i just came back. then one day it was just gone.....

i was doing 50% water changes daily or every 2nd day in the tank i dont know if this helped but it is weird stuff whatever it is...

Yea I had the exact same thing 24 hours after my nitrate spike. Slimey too. I took a paper towel to it, not have them since, and this is day 5. Though i do have a small touch of brown algae on my plants... again could be becasue my tank has only been up for 2 weeks. No water change though.

 

[MikeO]

I have this too - Just developed over the last 2 weeks, co-insiding with the end of my fishless cycle - So possibly linked to Nitrite and/or nitrate.

 

[karin]

I had this too a week or two into my cycle. I just cleaned it off... have yet to do a water change and it has not come back. Just used a sponge.

 

[BettaBoysGirl]

I have this too - Just developed over the last 2 weeks, co-insiding with the end of my fishless cycle - So possibly linked to Nitrite and/or nitrate.

I think its the nitrite. I didn't get nitrate readings for 3 days after the initial nitrite spike. I'm no expert but I think it disappears in 4-6 weeks. Could be diatoms? I have no clue. Lol.it just might be one of those things that has to run your course. All possible explantions I've found say its fine as long as your not putting fry in. And most fish will eat it up.I'm planning on a zebrafish tank, and looking at another week to week and half before my cycle, so no idea if fish really do like it.

 

[BettaBoysGirl]

I posted on this same subject last week. This is the best answer I received, it comes from WaterDrop. in addition to the white spots, I also was having a dust like stuff on my plants.

Well, those sorts of things are always hard to diagnose over the internet. There are lots of type of white things, like various white fungi, that will show up in the early startup a freshwater tank. If you examine them very, very closely, especially with a magnifying glass you may find that the white things are really tiny white worms. If that's the case, these are likely to be Planaria, which is very common. Both Planaria and fungi are totally harmless and will go away on their own usually in time. In the case of Planaria the fish would even enjoy eating them if they got the chance but usually they are long gone well before fishless cycling is over.

The things on the leaves of your plants may be diatoms, a form of brown algae, assuming they continue to look like brown dust/speckles. If this is the case I would question the number of hours you are lighting the plants. Many like to start out with no more than 4 hours of light exposure and only increase that if they -don't- get algae. Algae is a problem during fishless cycling because ammonia plus light is what triggers algae spores to switch to algae cells.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[RossC]

I've got these too, I just wipe them off they look like mini dandelion fluff things if you know what I mean. I don't think its algea because the snails don't appear to eat them they just slide over the top of it.

 

[xlittlestar]

I have this on the inside of my tank as well plus the water has gone cloudy. For some reason when i came down stairs a few days ago my filter wasnt any aeration coming from it so i cleaned out the filters again (which i had done a couple of days previous) then all hell let loose. Water went so cloudy i couldnt see the fish so i did a 50% water change, although i could see some of the fish it still didnt clear. Im now 3 days later and i have the white stuff on the inside of my tank and the water is still cloudy, have scraped it off and have added another filter temporary to the tank to get aeration into it as the fish werent happy. This lunch time the fish are happy with more aeration but the water is still cloudy, will do another water change later today. Im not sure how this happened in the first place as everything was ok in there when i went to bed, but would like to no how to get rid of this cloudy water, i did try that clear cloudy water stuff but it hasnt worked. Im still a novice as its been years since i kept tropical's so any help would be appreciated.