Weird Algae/fungus?

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Jen

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My boyfriend is having problems with his tank, and we are both stumped. He came home from a week away to find some white 'algae' on parts of the gravel, some of the rocks and on the glass itself. He scrubbed it off and did a water change, only to find it back again. If he isn't able to clean it up right away (off to work or whatever) when he comes home and gets to the tank, the 'algae' has moved, of sorts. The spot from the morning is gone, and there is a new spot somewhere else. It is easy to remove and breaks up easily.

He only has a nitrate test kit, and that is reading 10ppm.

Tank is 38gals, has a single fluorescent bulb on from 8am to 9pm - 50/50 reef. Has a few plants in there, and doses general plant ferts. There are 11 danios, 1 red tail shark and 3 cats. The danios and plants are 3 weeks old, sharks went in 2 weeks go and the cats last week.

The only thing we can brainstorm is that while he was gone someone else was looking after it and may have been over feeding.

The first picture was taken today at 4pm, and the others at 9pm - just 5 hours difference. It's the same rock. Nothing has changed in the tank between the two times... water change was done at 10am.

Any thoughts?

4pm:
25295_10150174745245111_576780110_11752870_7609976_n.jpg


9pm:
25295_10150174745250111_576780110_11752871_7956481_n.jpg


on glass:
25295_10150174745375111_576780110_11752872_1918034_n.jpg
 
Also, other tanks in the house had this as well. It was in that tank for a while, and then the fish all started dying. Some fish had tufts of fungusy looking stuff, I'm sure he told me that at one point one of the fish had a milky looking slime coat.

Another tank was full of guppies, which all died overnight had none of this algae stuff in it. That tank now houses a giant catfish that was ill from meds used on other fish in the other tank with the algae, but is on the mend.

Unfortunately equipment was shared between the two tanks with the fungi, however, the first tank that got the stuff has been out of commission for 3 weeks, and nothing has been used on it since it died.

(this post seems very confusing :S sorry)
 
I solved it myself... Slime Mold. Took a lot of time (3+ hours of solid googling) and every synonym for algae, fungus, threadlike, web I could think of (my crossword loving mother would be proud!), but believe it or not, the page that finally gave me the right name was a link from google... to here! Someone else had something like this a while back, and one of the few responses suggested Slime mold. This truly is the smartest forum!
 
I solved it myself... Slime Mold. Took a lot of time (3+ hours of solid googling) and every synonym for algae, fungus, threadlike, web I could think of (my crossword loving mother would be proud!), but believe it or not, the page that finally gave me the right name was a link from google... to here! Someone else had something like this a while back, and one of the few responses suggested Slime mold. This truly is the smartest forum!

If it were me, I would dose the tank with a fungus medication. Sometimes this has worked for member with these strange infestations. The only thing is to be mindful of invertebrates in the tank and possibly the bacterial colony thingy. But some here have had success with half-dosing these medications and doing waterchanges to get rid of the infestation.

Just my two cents. I could be wrong.

llj
 

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