White powder on walls of aquarium?

[souperdee]

Hi all -

I hope you can help me out with something. I've set up a 1 gallon tank in a plastic betta fish tank to help a friend get some shrimp out of an ecosphere.

I started the tank in January using the guide on this site, confirmed the water levels were right in February, but have not moved the shrimp in - there were vent holes in the top of the aquarium that I wanted to plug up before giving the aquarium to my friend, to lower the chance of contamination.

Well, I plugged the holes today by supergluing polyester Dura-Lar film (a thin plastic sheet used in art projects) to the vent holes, using Gorilla superglue. I put the top back on the aquarium about 5 minutes after gluing (not enough time for it to fully cure). There was still a little bit of airflow into the tank.

When I returned to check around 6 hours later, there was a powdery white substance all over the lid and walls of the tank. I can also see a thin membrane-like film on the top of the water.

I have no idea what this is - mold, due to less airflow, maybe?

I'm assuming that I'll need to dump the water out and start over, but any thoughts on what happened and how I could prevent it would be really appreciated. I'm a total aquarium novice and am just trying to help out my friend and their shrimp.

You can see pictures here.

[souperdee]

Well - I took the water to Petco, and they couldn't find anything wrong with the levels. I wiped the white powder off and it hasn't come back, so I think I'm going to move forward with the transfer tomorrow and get the shrimp in there.

There's kind of a rotten smell coming from the water, but I assume that's a natural result of leaving water sit on a table for 3 months. Does anyone know if a bad smell is a bad sign?

[Harry]

Something is amiss here. I established my eco-tank ten years ago. I have done very minimal water changes - maybe a 10% water change three times over the ten years. There is absolutely no smell coming from the tank. I don't know why your tank has that smell. But until you sort that out, I would not add shrimp.

[robokirk]

When I first cycled my tank I got a bad rotten egg smell after some bubbles had ridden up to the surface. I think it was the bacteria decomposing something. After that, it was fine. If you have algae growing you should be good to go.