Do I have toxic gick?

I went for a walk today and found some orange stuff in the bottom of a little creek on my property, there was also some blue reflective stuff floating on the top. This little stream is feed from three large swampy on other peoples properties that are very mucky.

I took a video with my phone,



what do you al think this might be? Is it something I should be concerned about? Any help would be much appretiated.

The video is private.
Can you make it permies.

Also the forums doesn't embed the new youtube shorter links. You have to use the old longer version.

I changed the url and made it pubic. Did that work?

For me your post makes space for the vid but nothing is there.
But I can now see the Private video



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imt6qxH2Pvc

S Bengi wrote:For me your post makes space for the vid but nothing is there.
But I can now see the Private video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imt6qxH2Pvc

Thank You for your help in posting it!

Just watched your video, The blue reflective stuff on top of the water is motor oil. Upstream from you, someone's car was leaking oil and washed into the water system.
The orange stuff on the bottom of the creek bed is most likely a naturally occurring slime mold of some sort.

I wonder what the oil is doing to cause such a boom for the orange microbes.
Maybe it is directly food for them or its eating something that is eating the oil,
or it is killing/weakening the competition and the orange mold is eating them.
Or without the extra competition the can have a "runaway"population

I think the 2 things are unrelated. If there was enough oil to cause an algae bloom or Rampant Growth of mold, That amount of oil would have been noticed before now. I would think that it would take prolonged exposure, and the fact that Aaron is interested in permaculture and obviously pays attention to things this is most likely a new development with the oil.

i second johns opinion the orange is a naturally occuring thing
ive seen the blue film in many places and though i can not say with any certainty that it is anything else other than motor oil of some sort, it is possible that it is oil from natural sources, it seems like reed beds can omit some oily substance on top of the water after its gone through, though this may only exist in water that had it to begin with im not certain
orange stuff definately looks normal to me, oil may or may not be as well, how fast flowing is the water? ive only noticed oily bits where the water is allowed to either move very slowly or collect and stagnate, particularly along shorelines of these places...

I don't think that is motor oil. I believe that oily substance to be metabolites from chemotrophic iron eating bacteria and the orange sludge on the bottom to be a combination of the bacteria itself and the iron oxide it is feeding on. These guys are quite common in healthy wetlands where their are anaerobic niches for them to collect, like in still or slow moving water, or in heavy muck.

the more ive thought about it the more i tend to think that oil is also natural and i think Ralph described it perfectly in a way that makes sense so i agree with Ralph lol