Return of the grey slime

[Cavan <millsman7 at yahoo_com>]

It's back.  Some of you may remember me writing about
it back in January.

A brief refresher:  Shows up as fluffy, light grey to
slightly greenish scum on the edges of leaves.  Pearls
strongly.  You may notice oxygen bubbles on the edges
of leaves or bubbles seemingly floating above a leaf
(scum stranded upwards).  It may also form a blackish,
floating snot on the surface.  Easily removed with a
baster (usually) but will come back exactly as it was
WITHIN AN HOUR.  Absolutely horrible stuff.  

  Once I hooked up a UV unit on my 30 the last time,
it was gone in about a week.  Tom Connors says if it
shows up in his tank, 3 days of UV will remove it.  We
are both using Aquanetics 8(?) watt models.  Mine is
inline and his is hanging.  Similar flow rates go
through both.  

I thought a UV was a quick fix to the problem.  maybe
not.  The UV does not seem to have any effect this
time.  Why could that be?  The bulb is still new.  The
unit has not been running between outbreaks.  It is
not nearly as bad (yet) as last time around but still
won't go away.  Others have reported having it go away
on its own but I have not been so lucky.  I once got
rid of it for a while with a 4 day blackout, but that
did not work on subsequent tries.  

I think that it may show up after significant
disturbances in the tank.  Before my month long battle
in January, I changed the bulbs on the tank.  This
time, I think it was that I accidentally turned the
co2 down too far when adjusting it.  That and/or me
stopping the addition of Flourish Iron (a small bit of
string algae had shown up - I may have been using too
much).  Once it gets a foothold, it is EXTREMELY
difficult to get rid of, even when water parameters
are corrected, as mine have been.  Nothing is out of
line that I can think of.  

It may be that it just takes a long time for it to
disappear once things have been corrected, but this is
actually stressing me out.  My tank was doing so well
for so long and was algae free the whole time.  I am
at a loss as to what to do.  I need help big time
though.  That much is for sure.  

Does anyone know of any biologists that are algae
experts that could maybe ID it?  I would like to know
how it occurs in nature, what it likes, etc.  


Thanks, Cavan      

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs
http://www.hotjobs.com