Oh Crap! what happened, what i do???

[talloulou]

I bought some more cured live rock to add to my tank. And while adding the new big pieces I was doing some rearranging when all of the sudden a bazillion white hairs came out of nowhere! What is it? Will it settle down again??? It looks like someone tossed a million pieces of 2-4 inch white threads in the tank. 8O

 

[talloulou]

Just rechecked on it and it looks different...now instead of a million white strings the stringy crap has formed together and made a couple big long strands. Here are some pictures. Is this cause I never vacumned under my live rock when I cleaned the tank or what? Should I net it out or just hope it resettles and goes back into hiding 8O 8O

 

[Stuart]

I have no real idea what that is mate. It kind of looks like comb jelly or hyrdazoiid tentacles....... might that be it?

 

[Devilishturtles]

Sorta looks like dead coral strings also. Sorta the remnants of what happens when a coral dies. I know your tank is new, but did you have any coral in there that are missing?

I never vaccum under my liverock either, but I've never seen anything like that happen before. Sorry.

 

[talloulou]

Well once it clumped together I netted out what I could.....which in turn caused some of it to unclump and look like tons of hairs floating around again. Anyway a couple hours later it was all resettled and the tank looks crystal clear. The weird thing is I would expect to see my live rock and everything covered in hairs after this crap settled and it's not! Very weird. Anyway the fish and crabs and everything seem fine. When I do my next water change I will vacumn real heavily.

I don't have any corals. I have some blue mushrooms...but they are alive and fine and I don't see how they could cause that. Perhaps something in my live rock died that I was unaware of?? Anyway I retested my nitrates and they are still between 0-5 ppm, ammonia and nitrites 0. So I don't know whatever it is it doesn't seem to have a bad effect.

When you mentioned the dead coral though.....I did have a blue linkia starfish that died. I removed the body but one of the legs was all squishy....maybe some of this stuff came out of him???

 

[jester]

I had sima;ar stuff after a star died

 

[flamingonhot]

Maybe you had a cucumber and it spewed out it's intestines? lol

 

[greenmaji]

this really looks like a ID question talloulou.. Hope you can get the right coverage here..

 

[Devilishturtles]

When you mentioned the dead coral though.....I did have a blue linkia starfish that died. I removed the body but one of the legs was all squishy....maybe some of this stuff came out of him???

That's my guess. Honestly, it looks like nothing living at all. When I had a soft coral die, it's remnants looked exactly like those strings, just a different color. Starfish legs are filled with all kinds of goodies, so that's my guess. As long as you see no spikes, all seems well. 8)