Wood Slime

[Christine1014]

I have white slime on a piece of wood I just added to my planted & cycled tank about a week ago. It's apparently the result of the [topic="http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=187090&hl=slime+wood"]wood curing process[/topic] but I was planning to add fish to my tank this week... is it harmful to fish? I was just going to add some neons, but was thinking about a small algae eater too, but worried he'd be tempted to nibble... any thoughts or advice?

 

[DarkEntity]

If its the white fungus then its not harmfull, it just clouds your water and generally doesnt get any better.

 

[Christine1014]

Sorry, I just realized the link to that previous post didn't work. Anyway, I don't think it's a fungus... here's a pic:

And here's the text of the original post by doubledee that I tried to reference:
... All was going well until I added a piece of redmoor wood and after a couple of days, a clear white slime appeared to start growing on it. I haven't seen anything similar on an algae guide so I don't know what it is or whether it will just go away. None of the plants are affected other than the moss that's on the wood. I'm not adding any ferts, just a daily dose of 9.5% solution ammonia to cycle the tank. Any ideas on what it is or what I do to get rid of it?

And here's the response from karmagl:
You can't get rid of it. Your wood is curing and it will take a while to go away. Sometimes you will even see long stringy pieces. Mine still has a little and it has been 6 months.

 

[lowee]

I had the same problem with my wood, I still have a bit but it is a lot better. I just put the wood in a large bucket and poured boiling water over it, i kept pouring the boiling water on it and scrubbed off the fungus with a new toothbrush. It helped quite a lot!

 

[doubledee]

Hi,

I removed the slimy stuff and it's not come back at all. There's probably some still on the wood that I haven't been able to get at but I was assured it would do my fish (still haven't got any yet as my cycle completed when I was away and my autofeeder failed to drop any flakes in the water to keep the bacteria going. Back to square one!) no harm so I didn't worry about it.

Fruthermore I have a second piece of wood soaking in a bucket of cold water and no slime has appeared on it, so I can only assume that the heated tank water brought it out.

 

[Christine1014]

Well, that's good to know! I'd even boiled this piece of wood for a couple hours (in hopes of removing the tannins and avoiding the brown tank)... tannins haven't been a problem, but I'd never heard of this slime stuff until I read your post.
Thanks for your help. And good luck getting the tank cycled! (What a pain to have to start over!)