What on Earth is this and how do I get rid of it?

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Marinemom

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Apr 8, 2006
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OK. This may be weird but in all the years I have been fish keeping I have never seen this or even know what it is.

I have several tanks but the one in question is my 25 gallon freshwater tank. It has been up and running with no serious problems for the last ten years or is it eleven? Anyways, in the last few days I have noticed something all over the plants and decorations in this tank. It looks like a thick layer of grey dust and does not come off easily. It almost looks like some kind of dead algae laying all over everything. It is completely unsightly and I need to get rid of it but I have never seen this before and I do not know what it is. so,if I do not even know really what this is,it is hard to figure out how to get it out of my tank. Like I said it looks like a thick layer of dust covering the real and the fake plants. apparently it is indiscrimminate as to what it affects. I have also noticed this on the filter intake tubes and the outlets where the water comes into the aquarium.

I decided to try to get rid of this on my own so I did two water changes back to back yesterday and that did not do much if anything to it. So today I trimmed the real plants and took out the fake plants and soaked them in a solution of one part bleach to twenty parts clean water. I rinsed them completely before returning them to the tank. I also cleaned the tank glass and sucked up as much of it as I could with the gravel vac today when I did a 50% water change. I also took the filter apart and rinsed that just in case some of this was living inside the filter. I put everything back togather, got the filter going again and noticed it is starting all over again. I do not know what this is or how to get rid of it.

The tank specs are;

25 gallon fresh water tank.
some real plants and some fake plants
eco-complete substrate

7 rummy nose tetras
1 hatchet fish(all that is left from the school I had)
1 clown pleco
2 otos

Ammonia-0
Nitrite-0
Nitrate-15-20
PH-7.2

The tank has been up and running for at least ten years so it is well established. Water changes done weekly except in the last two day it has had 3 water changes.

Please help!

Marinemom
 

ct-death

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Feb 27, 2007
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Perfect response to your issue I must say, but darned if I can help you ATM :(

The usual suspects can easily be ruled out in your case, but it's not an "algae" that I am aware of (unless dead as you suggest).

I just keep finding gray-slime, gray-slime, cloudy water, gray-slime :angry:

Hopefully others will chime in...Sorry
 

Marinemom

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Apr 8, 2006
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Thanks ct-death for responding. This one really has me stumped.

Any and all suggestions and responses are always welcome.

Marinemom
 

msjinkzd

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Feb 11, 2007
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What does the grey stuff feel like? I have been poking around trying to come up with ideas for you, but all I saw was weird random cases of grey bga.
 

Rbishop

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Dec 30, 2005
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yeah, saw some similar links..wonder if it feels gritty or smooth...
 

Marinemom

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Apr 8, 2006
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It is really kind of gritty. Not smooth at all. It is really difficult to remove. I cannot get any of it off with just my fingers. I had to throw away parts of the real plants that were infested with it and I used a bleach/clean water solution to remove it from the fake plants. It is hard to gravel vac from the substrate and clings to the filter intake tube of the filter.It is really disgusting!

Now that I think about it, I wish I had snapped a few pictures of it before I attempted to rid my tank of this mess.I noticed I am getting a light film on things already again and all of this after spending 2 hours on this tank today.

The filter for this tank is a Penguin 350. It almost looks as if the filter is spitting some of this back into the water even though I rinsed that out today too.

Very frustrating!

Marinemom
 
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