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Snowy white dust - new tank

amberz

Seedling
Joined
20 Nov 2017
Messages
14
Location
uk
Can anyone identify this strange thing I have going on in my 2 week old, low tech, 18L planted tank? Everything in it is brand new. It isn't cycled and I haven't taken any steps towards that yet. It's running on a new sponge filter (will put a used sponge in when I come to add livestock). The substrate is just inert sand, the tank has a large piece of bogwood, some pebbles, java moss, vallis, bacopa, crypts, anubias and sagittaria subulata. I dechlorinate using Tetra Aquasafe, I have added JBL Ferropol. I use the aquasafe and Ferropol in my main tank also, so doubt it is this.

Water is soft: KH 2 GH4 pH 7

After about a week, these small clumps of white dust began to appear on everything.

On the glass and crypt leaves:
crypt.JPG



Anubias leaves:
anubias.jpg



Close up on Bacopa leaf, the pink tinge is from the light and the brown dots are bogwood fragments:
bacopa.JPG



It is clumping together on the grey rubber sucker of the heater. It looks yellow here but is white:
heater.JPG
 
Last edited:
Hi, thanks for your reply. I did a 75% water change 5 days ago and gave the sponge a swish in tank water. The snow turned up again about 2 days later, this has me thinking it's not a dirty filter issue.
 
I had this appear last week on airline hose in a tank I completely reset the cycle on, usual bacterial film appeared but with an extra granularity to the surface that grew into dusty looking clumps over a couple of days (like what you are seeing on the suction cup, the dust balls on the leaves though I didn't get), like Darrel I had never seen anything like it before and suspected it could be an unusual bacterial infection (a sick Betta died in this tank), I did nothing about it at the time because the tank was void of inhabitants and left it to see what it would do, I just had a look and it's gone. Whether it was beneficial or detrimental bacteria I have no clue.
 
Thanks for the input guys.

Darrel, no I don't have anything other than a block of sponge. It does look like bits of floss though!

X3NiTH, that's interesting and I have never seen anything like it before either. I haven't set up many tanks from scratch, this is the 4th and the only difference this time is no snails. I've always put a few pond snails in before, thinking it would help a little with the cycle. Maybe in the past, the snails have prevented the build up of this mysterious stuff. I managed to syphon a few bits to inspect them outside the tank, but out of the water they are really tiny white dots and most disappear. When I rubbed one between my fingers it just kind of vanished.
 
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