Beckett Snot

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redfishblewfish

Ignorance Specialist
Nov 19, 2008
313
0
0
69
Central New Jersey
I’m running an MRC 3 skimmer that receives water that first passes through a 150 micron sock before getting sucked up by the skimmer. I clean the beckett, maybe every two months….I really never took note of the timing. Typically it would be encrusted in salt deposits that easily wash off in hot water.

The past couple weeks I’ve had to clean the beckett weekly because the skimmer would stop working because the beckett would be covered with snot. This snot looks just like snot….. a slightly opaque gelatinous mass. It cleans off easily under hot water.

Nothing different in the tank. Everything looks normal. If it makes any difference, it is a moderately stocked 90 gallon mixed reef tank with a 40 gallon breeder for a sump.

What’s up with the snot? Maybe some bacterial thing going on???
 

Amphiprion

Contain the Excitement...
Feb 14, 2007
5,776
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0
Mobile, Alabama
Real Name
Andrew
I’m running an MRC 3 skimmer that receives water that first passes through a 150 micron sock before getting sucked up by the skimmer. I clean the beckett, maybe every two months….I really never took note of the timing. Typically it would be encrusted in salt deposits that easily wash off in hot water.

The past couple weeks I’ve had to clean the beckett weekly because the skimmer would stop working because the beckett would be covered with snot. This snot looks just like snot….. a slightly opaque gelatinous mass. It cleans off easily under hot water.

Nothing different in the tank. Everything looks normal. If it makes any difference, it is a moderately stocked 90 gallon mixed reef tank with a 40 gallon breeder for a sump.

What’s up with the snot? Maybe some bacterial thing going on???
Yep. That's fairly consistent with biofilms. I wonder what could've tipped the bacterial population? It may be worthwhile to look into anything that may have changed--food, additives (any organic carbon dosing?), etc.
 

redfishblewfish

Ignorance Specialist
Nov 19, 2008
313
0
0
69
Central New Jersey
The only thing that has happened (changed) is that I had a fish die (starry blenny) about three months ago. This resulted in a cyano bloom. This was remedied by multiple water changes, that took about a month before the cyano was gone.
 

Amphiprion

Contain the Excitement...
Feb 14, 2007
5,776
0
0
Mobile, Alabama
Real Name
Andrew
Hard to say and maybe impossible to pin down, honestly. Populations, of course, wax and wane over time, so I suspect that, if nothing has really changed, it may just be a populational phase. My older system would get a yellow slimy biofilm on all dark portions all the time and suddenly stopped. I guess another example of the same sort of thing.
 
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