So confused...

Came in this morning and the Spiny Star Astraea hasn't moved since Friday. Not sure what's going on but he's definitely alive. I thought he might have been dead so I attempted to remove him but he reflexed and held firm to the rock. The turbo snail hasn't moved far from where he was on Friday, either. All of the other inhabitants seem to be moving fine, though.

I noticed my filter was overflowing back into the tank from the intake side of the filter. I attempted to move the Algone media to the basket side and a bunch of white, cheese-like substance came of and spilled into the tank. Well, crap. I can't seem to find any information regarding whatever it is so hopefully I didn't just contaminate my tank. I took the media to the sink and rinsed it off and more of that stuff came off. Seriously, it looks like a thin layer of sour cream. Smells like cheese, too. No idea what it is. So, again, hopefully I didn't just hurt my tank by rinsing it off if it was beneficial for the aquarium. Either decision I made is sure to have an impact on the tank. I'll have to keep a close eye on it...

There's also long, stiff, hair-like growth coming off the rock and glass which I can't determine what they are but they are not Dinoflagellates (as far as I can tell). 

I also believe I have a bunch of snail eggs attached to the back glass of the aquarium. Bunch of small, flat, white circles back there but nowhere else and the cleanup crew is ignoring them. I'm unsure what to do about these. One one hand - yay, free snails. On the other hand - crap, free snails! I suppose it's a good sign that my tank is healthy that the snails are reproducing (also, I found a bunch of amphipods the other day scuttering about!) but I'm not quite sure what I should do about them just yet. If I let them hatch, I know many of them will end up dying because of the lack of food for them to eat and that will just add a bunch of bad chemicals to the environment from the decaying matter... And they'd probably be really hard to remove from the tank once they hatch...

With the weirdnesses I've seen today, I decided to do a full water parameters check and everything seems normal; better even! The params are the best they've been in a long while.

Parameter

Value

Salinity

1.025

pH

8.4

Ammonia

.25 ppm

Nitrite

0 ppm

Nitrate

2.5 ppm

Phosphate

0 ppm

Calcium

560 ppm

Carbonate Harness

125.3 ppm

I'm thinking I should get a Magnesium test kit. Maybe the Mg levels are low and the snails are angry about that?...