Is this limescale?

[RobinHeartella]

In recent weeks we keep getting these little thin white sticks floating in the bath. About the thickness of a shopping tag, but brittle, around an inch long. I'll try to attach a photo of one both unbroken and snapped in two.

Do I need to worry or do anything about it? Never seen them till recently. There are dozens of them each time we run a full bath. No limescale buildup on the sides of the bath or anything.

Many thanks

No idea why the images are marked as sensitive! It's just my finger holding a piece of (possibly) limescale.

I'm searching the Internet and limescale is always described as flakes but these are long thin shards

Do you live in a hard water area?

Drop some vinegar or lemon juice on it. If it dissolves its limescale.

Yes a hard water area but we've lived here for years and only seen these shards in recent weeks.

I'll try lemon juice to see what it does. I'm just vaguely worried it's harmful somehow, they're so odd looking

They look a bit like fibreglass strands? I’ve never come across this before but is your bath made of acrylic/fibreglass, and are there any fine cracks/damaged areas?

Random thought-it is a moulting nail brush fibre ?

That was my thought too

OK that's very worrying, yes i guess this is possible - I'll do the lemon thing this morning and report back

No, they are too brittle, they snap very easily like glass

(Forgot to say - thank you for the suggestions)

Thank you so much, I think @Anotherselfemployedcleaner might be right because I tried fishing some out onto a plate, squeezing lemon juice on them and nothing happened. The only thing is, I have a newish acrylic bath rather than fibreglass, and there's no sign of damage anywhere.

Could my hot water tank be the culprit? (It is old). Do I need to go about getting the hot water tank replaced?

How urgent is this? Is it harmful for my young kids to bathe in water that has fibreglass floating in it?! They have been doing for a few weeks 😥

You need to descale your bath tap, or possibly replace it. Descaling : turn off the water to the tap( isolating tap) if you can, let it dry out. Soak a rag in descaler and stuff it up the tap, leave it overnight, take it out, scrape inside and then turn the water on. Hopefully quite a lot of build up will drop out.

But if lemon juice doesn't do anything to the fibres, can they be limescale? I was expecting them to fizz/dissolve if limescale.

I'm clinging onto the hope that it's limescale but I think it must be fibreglass

The possibly good news is that there seems to be fewer of them in the bath today, I was finding it hard to find enough to do the lemon experiment