Mystery of the White Reef Slime By CORAL Editors - Posted on 27 April 2010By Lance Ichinotsubo,
Author, The Marine Fish Health & Feeding HandbookEven after decades of installing and maintaining marine aquariums, I still encounter things that are new and sometimes very perplexing. The latest surprise came after we had moved a client’s thriving and stable reef aquarium from Miami Beach north to Pompano Beach.
Approximately a month after the successful transfer and set up, both his reef tank and his son’s smaller reef became covered with a thick, copious and “goopie†white slime. The corals were dramatically affected and started to decline. As you might expect, neither the owner nor I was at all happy at this turn of events. I ran all the standard water quality tests, and the chemistry parameters were good. No clues there.
However, once before I had experienced a similar slime coating such as this one many years ago in Vegas, where our company was taking care of a dentist’s office aquarium and they developed this seemingly similar white slimy metabolic product that coated everything.
We immediately changed all chemical and mechanical filters and pads, performed huge water exchanges every week and still the horrific “Glob†returned, every time! No literature or research that I patiently pored over revealed any information for this unique metabolism.
Top-level Veterinary Advice
Fortunately I was scheduled to leave soon for the annual Fish Disease Workshop, at the University of Georgia, Veterinary College. I quickly took the advantage of the instructing staff headed up by Dr. John Gratzek (now Professor Emeritus), and after I explained the scenario, I asked if he had any idea as to what the cause could be.
Well, he certainly did! From my description, Dr. Gratzek informed me that there is an airborne bacterium that thrives in the presence of alcohol. It’s known as Alcaligenes faecalis. It certainly was not likely that the dentist’s office was having late night parties, so where in the world would alcohol be coming from? Dr. Gratzek went on to explain that many dentists’ and doctors’ offices use either chemi-claves or auto-claves to sterilize their instruments. Since the auto-claves use steam for their sterilization method, there is no problem there.
However, the “chemi-claves†use ALCOHOL for their sterilizing agent. I immediately telephoned our client and asked about which of the methods they were using. They told me right away that they had just upgraded from autoclaves to chemiclaves! As soon as I explained to our client doctor what we now believed to be the causative factor of our problem they immediately changed back to the autoclave system and the slimy metabolic exudate disappeared.
So then drawing on this experience for our Florida client with a similar white slime situation we understood that this was a very different case as there are no chemi-claves in the house nor were the clients serving or keeping alcohol near the tanks, and the problem remained. However, I was soon able to discover that the carpets had just been cleaned throughout the home, using a dry-cleaning method and not with steam cleaning. Therefore we are deducing that the chemicals contained in the cleaning fluid provided by the carpet cleaner are the causative agent for the slime.
I have systematically performed water exchanges weekly, changed the chemical filter media weekly and asked that they ventilate the house thoroughly, weather allowing. At the time of this writing, the slime coating is subsiding and the corals are looking much better, to my (and my client’s) great relief.
Therefore, my patient readers, the moral of this story is:
There still remains much for us to learn from and about living reef environments, both contained and wild.
Remain patient as your reef aquarium goes through its many changes over the years.
Try to appreciate just how many unknown ingredients there might be in many products we use so casually every day. If there is a dramatic or radical change in your otherwise stable reef, you sometimes must look beyond the obvious.
A reef just might be telling us something about the products we use if it is having an adverse or radical reaction to something in our home or business.
At this writing I am continuing to research and reach out to other qualified industry scientists who may be willing to share what they know about this phenomenon. I will provide the updates as they are revealed to me.
If any of you have had similar experiences, please be sure to write to me. I truly enjoy hearing of other aquarists’ experiences as it is my belief that through this interaction, personal growth and expansion of the hobby are greatly enhanced.
Pretty cool i thought