What is the White stuff growing in my tank?

[Nugget9k]

For the past 2 months I have been battling this white stuff growing all over the rocks, snails, and glass of the tank. It looks almost like dandelion seeds but with snowflakes on the end. I can completely clean all the glass and in 2 days the white spots reappear and in 7 days it is completely covered and they are 1/4 inch long.

The first time I noticed it, some bluegills got sick at the same time. A few of them had a white coat, and later started bleeding and died.

I have tried:
- Pimafix
- Melafix
- Soaking plants in 120 F water for 2 hours
- Using a butane torch to burn it off the rocks
- Putting the snails under a heat lamp to dry them off

The only thing that works is physically scraping the white stuff off. I do water changes every few days. I can completely remove 90% of the water, clean the glass, and 2 days later the glass is coated in spots.


It covering a 1 inch snail:

This is an extreme closeup of it growing on the glass:

Blurrier pictures of it on plants:

 

[Alaecreaturae]

It does kind of look like some type of fungus/water mold. If you have dying live plants then that's a food source for it. Honestly, based on the stuff you already tried I would just tear the whole thing down, deep clean, and try again. Then quarantine your creatures and make sure none of it is growing on them before reintroducing them. Fungal spores are notoriously difficult to purge, especially since you can't see them. With fungi, the visible parts that you see are the structures that hold (and actively release) the spores. This means, by the time you see it, you've already got a mass infestation.

Another thing you might be able to try if you know someone with a microscope is to bring a little scraping of it to them and look at it together. You could probably post pics somewhere and find out if it's a fungus, biofilm, etc. This is a stretch but it helps me when I'm trying to figure out exactly what is growing in there.