Floating gold stuck together?

[goldscraphobby]

After adding SMB I had had gold float on top, they seem to be very fine single crystals like snowflakes?
They would swoosh around with a glass rod and would just filter them off and recover later.
This time they started sticking to the glass rod and when I pulled the rod up they all came out connected together like a rope, it we was neat. It was pretty long at first but when I put it into the tray they stuck together more but you can see little crystals.
Not sure why this happened, any thoughts

 

[butcher]

Nice crystal gold garden you have there.

Under certain circumstances, the gold will crystalize out (or precipitate) from the solution in larger clumps of atoms of the yellow (gold colored) reduced gold crystal particles, as opposed to the fine brown powders.

The growth or the size of the gold atom cluster and how tightly they pack together as they form probably has a lot to do with this type of formation, as well the length of time that these clusters of atoms can stay in solution before growing into the cluster and eventually overcome the solutions gravity a to precipitate.
The yellow gold is a much larger cluster of gold atoms packed tightly together, then the brown powder precipitate of gold, both being basically the same elemental gold clusters.

if you smash or smear the brown powder precipitate of gold, it will also smash the brown cluster of atoms together to make the yellow streak or gold of more gold elemental atoms more tightly packed giving the familiar yellow shine of gold color from reflective light.