Muck on the surface

[blennymower]

There's this muck on the surface of my reservoir. This thing when I pick it up is viscous, see through, sometimes light gree, literally mucus like. Why is this??

Some pics:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f311/juicytheatomic/IMG_4017.jpg
You can see these strings, they're mucus like.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f311/juicytheatomic/IMG_4018.jpg

The white thing on the surface is the muck

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f311/juicytheatomic/IMG_4019.jpg

[Nanook]

Looks like it could be cyanobacteria....usually snotty and slimy tan strings that form on the rock, corals and sand, then bubble up to the surface. Hard to say for sure with the pic being difficult to visualize.

[blennymower]

I don't think its cyano, unless cyano can be green/transparent

[Nanook]

Doh, I meant dinoflagellates....brain far on my part.

[luther1200]

Could be Dino's, but I thhink Cyano can be a few colors. Does anybody know for sure?

[blennymower]

Alright, as you can see the caulerpa is at the surface, some even exposed to air. I removed some caulerpa so that its only in the bottom half of the refugium section (no caulerpa on the surface) and there is no longer any muck. Any reason why this happened?

[Imzadi]

The muck is on the surface tension. I have it in my center section of my sump. Every couple days I fire up a maxijet, and pump water straight down the baffle, about 2" off the surface. It pulls the suface goo down with it. If you have an extra power head, you could just perculate it at the surface to break the tension up... I don't have the room for it.

The slime almost seals the surface. All gases stay under (of over) the layer. Not good, I don't think.

[TTown]

I just noticed this same thing in my sump. Only thing new/changed was adding cheato. Could this be what is causing this jelly substance?? I never had this stuff until I added the algae. Should I pull this cheato? Has'nt really grown much since I added it.

[terri_ann]

I'm not sure what it is from the picture but I would use a net to remove it and then add a pump or powerhead to agitate the surface and see if that helps. Does your fuge have adequate flow? Do you have any corals in the DT? Where is the fuge water coming from(tee off overflow?skimmer outlet?)? Have you added/done anything differently since this has showed up?

I would say that it's probably just a build up of organics and removing the algae near the surface would allow better flow and alleviate the slime/buildup. Let us know how it turns out :-)

[TTown]

I may have tracked mine down due to blasting a couple spots of aptasia with a concentrated solution of pickling lime/water....hopefully mine will disappear soon & confirm this.