Slime Build-Up

[aussiegirl]

Help

We have a 98ltr jewel tropical tank, PH = 7.4; nitrate, nitrite, & Ammonia are all 0
3 yr old tank & set-up

Over the last couple of months we've started to get fungus problems mainly affecting our Mollies (5)
But each time we've treated the tank, the problem would clear up, we'd replace the carbon filter back in & afew days later it would be back again. Even to the point of issolating the worst affected fish.

Since reintroducing this individual fish, we've done a 40% water change, plus additional cleaning of rock/ gravel etc.
Its' come to light that a slimey coating has started to cover everthing- Pump/ Filters/ Tank sides/ Fish?

We put a new poly filter in yesterday after doing another water change (30%) and checked the tank after getting home from work today to find it Clogged & Slimey already

The slime is clear, almost gelatine colour.

We've lost 5 fish over the weekend= 1x Tetra Neon/ 1x Molly/ 2x Platies/ 1x young Angel

If anyone has a clue it will be gladdly listerned to

 

[waterdrop]

Those are pretty unusual symptoms, clear slime and fungus problems and it may be that we'll need Wilder over in emergencies or other disease-experienced members to also take a look...

...but I'll start things off with a few questions for the members and perhaps a few thoughts...

What type of testing are you doing. Are you using paper strips or a liquid-reagent testing kit? Some of your symptoms raise suspicions that perhaps we would expect to be finding some ammonia or nitrite appearing.

What are your gravel-clean-water-change habits. If you have not been aware of some of the positive effects of gravel-clean-water-changing a fairly significant percentage of your water on as frequent a basis as weekly, then you could be getting some of those symptoms wholly or partially because of a low rate of gravel/water maintenance.

What is the likely hardness nature of your water (hard?, soft?, don't know?) Molly's are fish that can be prone to lots of disease if they are not kept in water with quite a high mineral content (hard water.)

What is your level of knowledge and awareness of the two bacterial colonies needed in your filter? Its possible for people not to have ever been introduced to the need to not replace filter media such that bacteria are lost or not to know that the media housing the bacteria should not be cleaned in tap water.

Anyway, that's the best I could think of for a discussion start between you and the members.

~~waterdrop~~
oh, and Welcome to TFF!

 

[aussiegirl]

Thank you for your initial response

We live in County Down, Northern Ireland, which I believe is a soft water area, due to the lack of chalk in the local substrate.
The testing kit that we use is fluid type, with all four of the main tests contained, PH, Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite.
Whenever we do the tests the only problem we ever pick up is a slightly Alkaline PH level, to which we've removed the coral stone we've been using to counter-act this acidity in the local water

Dare I say we've not done a water change for a week/ since the first post & things seem to be calmer at the mo., but we're still interested to see if there's a reason for this problem

 

[OldMan47]

I would put the calcium source back into the tank Aussiegirl. Mollies do not do well in soft water and yours sounds like it may tend to be on the soft side. The coral is going to help with that issue a lot and should be left in the tank. Your test results sound just fine to me, a pH of over 7.8 is what my fish get to enjoy directly from my faucet. They thrive and reproduce out of control in that water. The "ideal" pH that test kits use refers to things like tetras, not mollies. Each fish has its own best conditions and the test kits make some rather gross assumptions about what kind of fish people have. Tetras, in general, do best in low mineral content water which tends to have a low pH of 7.0 or a bit less. They are not mollies by any stretch.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with OM47, I continue to think that a lack of hardness may be adding a stress factor to the lives of your mollies and leaving them more vulnerable to fungus. Another member who helps here in the freshwater beginners section, drobbyb, has a link to nice article he put together that has some further details about moving your water somewhat away (above) the hardness level of your natural tap water. Its not a thing to undertake lightly, it requires some patience and regularity because changes in hardness that are too large in too short a period of time can harm your fish, but when needed, it can be important.

If you have an external cannister filter (or any filter with accessible tray space in the filter box) it works really well to use crushed coral (which is actually crushed shells in addition to crushed coral, usually) in a mesh bag, starting with a small amount (not even a full palmful) and using a liquid-based GH/KH hardness test kit to monitor what's going on.

Another question for you is whether your current liquid test kits might be out of date or of a brand that might not be quite good enough. You certainly wouldn't want those zero ppm readings to actually turn out to be false in some way.

~~waterdrop~~