white film on fish? and tank..

[chen88]

I've started to do WC twice a week at approx. 35% each change. I also change the filter floss at this time as well. Between water changes I would only fed them twice max 3 times of only a bag of shrimp so no over feeding. Water Parm's are good, water cystal clear, sump's all good, temp's mid 80's, lots of water movement!...but...

why am I seeing white film in my tanks sometimes covering my rays tail and their eyes? yesterday again one of my BD's eyes was completely covered white!....and had some white slime or film on their tails....so I did my water change....and this morning they were gone!? what the heck are those? driving me nuts......added salt on the changes as well to see if this will eliminate them...

Any thoughts?

 

[RTG_Gerry]

Sounds like the fish are producing and sloughing off excess slime, imo. Something is stressing them out, and when they're producing excess slime its usually something in the water.

 

[chen88]

hrm....ok....will I've check water params and kept up on WC's and slowed down feeding to every other day so we'll see..

 

[Joey]

excess body slime can be caused by an irritant in the water..... after the water change is done, the slime goes away as the irritant has been diluted....

It can also be caused by poor water quality, which also explians it going away after a water change....

Those would be my top two suspects based on it going away after a water change....

Worse case is it may be a bacterial infection, or maybe even a parasitic infection like Costia. But i doubt its parasitic at this time.

Your current course of action should help in determining if it is water quality/irritant, or an infection of some sort...

Water changes, salt and less feeding is what i would do in any of the above cases, which is what your doing anyway.

 

[xenon240]

What about the clarity of the water, is it a little cloudy? If yes and white slim is also on the filter tubing and glass, then you have an imbalance of nitrifying bacteria in your tank. Something has killed off a large percentage of the bacteria.

Take some filter material and gravel from a good tank.

 

[chen88]

tank is crispy clear no other tank in house....

 

[b-man]

perhaps something has changed in the tap/water source. i would start with some test there. do you "age" the water first?

 

[m_class2g]

my sts started scratching after i changed the water one time. i think it was the water out of my tap. i usually do big 50 percent water changes once a week. what i did was raised temp, added salt and did smaller intervals of water changes instead of just 1 big one. after a week of this, everything seemed fine.

good luck chen.

ps. some pics would help as well. might be easier to ID.