Following up on a previous post! (link to original post below! 😊)

[TifNee837]

My original post about an issue in my best friends tank

And these two videos are just to be able to better see what we were dealing with :: 
Video #1
Video #2

So after having a major surgery, and having literal weeks to think about my friends tank...I got to thinking........
"What in heck could this BE!?"
There was ZERO odor to this...stuff...it was all but black in color...PEELED off of the walls, sponge filters and everything else in the tank...and shows up seemingly out of nowhere...
What changed from a time when this WASN'T happening, up to now?

And then it hit me!

The ONLY THING that has changed at ALL...was her substrate!!!
It was a mixture of small rocks/pebbles, shells, and sand, that her MIL had collected from a beach somewhere in the northeast, MANY many years ago......and it's been sitting in buckets, in a shed, for YEARS.
And my friend...oy...she confessed to me, that she NEVER. EVEN. RINSED. IT OFF!!! (her MIL *baked* it all when she first collected it...but then it just SAT THERE! 🤦🏻‍♀️)

So I did the only thing I could think of to do...
Broke it down, emptied all 45 gallons, scrubbed virtually every inch of the tank, cleaned out the filter, replaced her sponge filters with some cycled spares from my own tanks, and started all over again with new, CLEANED substrate...
And then went plant-crazy!!! 😁

Here is just the "before"..

And this was the final result..

And here is a before and after!!!

Now.....fingers crossed!!! It's been 3 weeks and not a single sign of the strange film-like algae to be seen!

[Cys aquatics]

that is amazing how you could turn a tank like that in to a tank like this!

[Fish Folk]

56 minutes ago, TifNee837 said:

My original post about an issue in my best friends tank

And these two videos are just to be able to better see what we were dealing with :: 
Video #1
Video #2

So after having a major surgery, and having literal weeks to think about my friends tank...I got to thinking........
"What in heck could this BE!?"
There was ZERO odor to this...stuff...it was all but black in color...PEELED off of the walls, sponge filters and everything else in the tank...and shows up seemingly out of nowhere...
What changed from a time when this WASN'T happening, up to now?

And then it hit me!

The ONLY THING that has changed at ALL...was her substrate!!!
It was a mixture of small rocks/pebbles, shells, and sand, that her MIL had collected from a beach somewhere in the northeast, MANY many years ago......and it's been sitting in buckets, in a shed, for YEARS.
And my friend...oy...she confessed to me, that she NEVER. EVEN. RINSED. IT OFF!!! (her MIL *baked* it all when she first collected it...but then it just SAT THERE! 🤦🏻‍♀️)

So I did the only thing I could think of to do...
Broke it down, emptied all 45 gallons, scrubbed virtually every inch of the tank, cleaned out the filter, replaced her sponge filters with some cycled spares from my own tanks, and started all over again with new, CLEANED substrate...
And then went plant-crazy!!! 😁

Here is just the "before"..

And this was the final result..

And here is a before and after!!!

Now.....fingers crossed!!! It's been 3 weeks and not a single sign of the strange film-like algae to be seen!

I wonder if it was a combo of Cyanobacteria with another algae?