Mucus-like substance + water kefir not gassy?

[beannie]

I'm new to water kefir and have had quite a few failures so far. My neighbour gave me his grains and they kinda 'died' because it wouldn't produce any gas/didn't float/kept producing thick mucus on the surface.

Some background:
I live in a tropical country and on average our room temp is 33-35 deg Celsius (that's about 95F I think!) and im told we should ferment each batch no longer than 24h since out climate is very warm. So usually I aim to drain my grains and flavour the water within 24h.

The first batch that my neighbour gave is gone and on Friday (June 23rd) my friend passed me her batch that's growing very well. Yesterday (Saturday), I drained the grains at the 30th hour (got home much later than I planned to) and there were some mucus-like substance floating on the water surface. I scooped them off and drained my kefir grains normally.

PROBLEM 1:
I then proceeded to flavour the water with some fresh fruits (lychee, because that's what I had on hand). I was told during the flavouring, I should continue to cover the jar with a cloth and leave it outside to ferment for a few hours and once it tastes slightly fizzy I should cap it and keep it in the fridge. I did that 4 hours after I added the fruits in because I tasted a slight hint of fizz. This morning (about 7 hours after the jar went into the fridge), I opened the jar and didn't hear any gas releasing, I tasted the water and there was absolutely no fizz. Why is this so? im so confused. Because the first round I did the water was a lot more fizzy although it wasn't as fizzy as a can of soda.

PROBLEM 2:
The pictured jar is my second round fermenting her water kefir grains. So after I was done flavouring my water with the lychee, I proceeded to place my grains (which by the way grew from 4 Tbsp to 5Tbsp) in new sugar water (im now using bottled mineral water and a mix of 75% Blington's brown sugar + 25% organic muscavado molasses, following a ratio of 1 Tbsp grains to 1 Tbsp sugar to 250mils of water).
12 hours later when I checked on my jar, (see picture) I discovered this disgusting clump of mucus-like substance floating in my water kefir again - it's the biggest clump I've seen so far. What should I do?

[Robinstar]

Brown sugar and molasses is quite the heavy mineral load and that may be overwhelming the grains and causing excess yeast (and that slimy stuff on the surface). Also that extreme heat is probably not helping either. You may want to try a lighter recipe with lighter sugars to help compensate. Fizz is a complex thing and sometimes its hard to get it going. Carbonation tends to happen most when there's little to no sugar left. If there's still plenty of sugar left, the yeast and bacteria tend to still multiply instead of producing the fizz. I've had that happen where it's done nothing in the fridge for a couple days and then suddenly picks up and creates tons of fizz. So possibly just give it more time. Or try a longer 2nd ferment at room temperature next time.