Fungal bloom taking over my aquarium?? What is this?!?!

[Abbitha]

This seriously happened over night. Got a new plant. 3 days later fish showed signs of ich. Tested water to see why they are stressed and it read 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and 10 nitrate. Temp is 78. Did a 50% water change and went to store to get meds. Dosed with meds yesterday. Today I turned on light to see the fish gasping for air and what appears to be slime EVERYWHERE and I mean everywhere. It's so thick my filter has quit running and the air stone struggles to get bubbles out so the water flow completely stopped on top of all of this. It's on the walls the plants the water. The fish don't have it on them though. And the white spots have reduced. I quickly grabbed a bucket and put paper towels in a strainer to filter some water into bucket without the slime. And caught all of my fish. They are already acting better since they can breathe but I'm stuck on what to do next. I can't put them in there and I'd hate to start from scratch as it will recycle my tank and I have neons and an angelfish and some otos I'm afraid won't make the cycle. I also have a bunch of plants in there but they are covered in the slime as well. I just don't know what to do. I'm so bummed about this. I also realized that I forgot to turn off the uv sterilizer with the meds and I hope this didn't somehow alter the meds to cause a crazy bloom in some way. How do I post pictures?

 

[Abbitha]

Excuse the mess. I wasted no time getting the fish out and have destroyed all plants in the process. It's very difficult to see in there

 

[Abbitha]

I also retested my parameters and there is .25 ammonia. Does the mean the meds have destroyed my establishment? How do I go from here in re establishing tank without losing my fish or plants or really anything... And what's all the slime?

 

[Masha]

Could be cyanobacteria?
Check this link
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/maintenance1/p/algaebluegreen.htm

 

[Abbitha]

But it has no color. It's white and clear.

 

[Abbitha]

I need quick advice on what to do with the fish they are still in bucket

 

[Abbitha]

The white stuff is oozing out the intake valve of my filter after it shut off. My filter is stuffed with white goo

 

[Masha]

I'm sorry - don't know what to advise about fish in bucket. Do you have a air-stone you can put in there?

 

[flitabout]

Get a clean airstone to toss in the bucket and thoroughly wash your heater and put that in the too. That will buy a tun of time. I am not sure what to do. But like I said it will buy you time so that some of the other members that have more experience then me will have time to get on and give you some usable advice.

 

[flitabout]

Does it smell at all or just the oozy goo?

 

[Abbitha]

Sorry was emptying tank. It doesn't smell foul at all and my air stone is clogged. I can try and rinse but this stuff is sooo gooey it's grossing me out. The thing is my bucket is only 3 gallons and I have an angelfish, 5 neons, guarami, 2 otos, 2 Cory cats, and a betta. The water now has ammonia in it. It didn't yesterday but now it's at .25. And the ammonia will sky rocket with this amount of fish in it. The house stays at 75 ish so a heater isn't necessary. But I need some water movement so I'll get a new air stone. If my uv sterilizer is still working I can add that but idk... Everything's clogged.

 

[Abbitha]

Just drained lots of water and look at all the goo sliding down the valve. It's oozing out from the top too it's just ooze everywhere I don't know how to approach this you guys. I don't want to lose my fish or plants.

 

[Masha]

I would say -
Prioritise getting a bigger bucket - or any larger, clean, safe container. Something that's not been used for soap.

Don't use the airstone - I doubt you can get it clean and you don't want to infect your bucket as well.

If you can get your fish into a bigger bucket, you can at least do water-changes to keep them alive.

 

[Abbitha]

So instead of aquarium water add declorinated tap water for he bucket? We were going to get a big tote and filter out as much water without slime and put them in it.

 

[Masha]

I would be very careful about putting anything that's been in your aquarium, in the bucket. Just add dechlorinated water. There's no benefit to adding water from the aquarium.

 

[Abbitha]

What do you think this is fungus? Or a bacteria bloom? Maybe the meds killed all my beneficial bacteria and it caused a crazy stir in things. I'm not sure though. I just have no idea where it came from. So I don't know how far to go in cleaning it. I'm sitting here with my tank about 1/4 filled because I'm unsure if an extremely large water change will do the trick or if I'll need to go all out break it down and buy new everything, gravel, plants I mean everything. I just don't know what to do lol my husband mentioned giving my fish away and starting from scratch... But I like my fish

 

[Abbitha]

The only reason the fish were stressed was because it was so thick they couldn't breathe it's not sticking to them in any way so I have no idea lol

 

[flitabout]

I agree don't reuse the airstone, Wait until you can get to the store and get a brand new one. I am wondering if the 1-2 punch for algae might work on this??? The "One-Two Punch" Whole Tank Algae Treatment

 

[Masha]

I have no idea what it is!
I've been doing google searches and I found several more people with a similar problem, but no solution suggested. It could be a slime mold, a bacterial bloom of some kind, a slime-algae...

If I were you I would focus on keeping your fish alive for now. If you can keep that bucket water circulating, and have enough volume so ammonia does not rise too quickly, things should not be too bad. If you use Prime, dosing more than usual should help to neutralise ammonia in the short term.

Forget about treating your tank for the moment, and just do what you can for the fish. I hope a more experienced person will come along to advise you how to get rid of the slime and save your tank.

 

[Abbitha]

You think it's algae? I figured algae would need some kind of pigment as it's a photosynthesizing plant. This is white/clear. Maybe do a fungal treatment on the tank? Would I need to treat the fish for fungus too? I mean, they WERE getting treated for ich so keep in kind they still have ich while all of this is happening. Feeling overwhelmed just thinking about how I'm supposed to treat the ich while they are already dealing with this now