Semi-Translucent White Fungus Originating from Grapewood

[fishlooker]

I have been lurking this and other forums for weeks now looking for information on this fungus. Most forum posts I found were anywhere from 5-10 years old and information was scattered and lacking so this post is primarily for me to collect as much information as possible in one place. If you have a personal experience with this fungus please share it with me. I would also love to know what it's called. Skip to the bottom for my questions if you want to disregard the rant.

Regarding the Grapewood itself:
Preparation and setbacks associated with this wood
Against the advice of everything I read, I purchased some grapewood from the reptile section of petsmart. This wood is just densely knotted portions of grapevines that has I assume been sandblasted but is not intended for submersion.

The wood is very porous and much of it is still very soft. It will trap air inside of it for some time and it is difficult to get it to sink. It will also leach an excessive amount of tannins.
After about one week of boiling and soaking the wood has remained successfully submerged once placed into my tank and it is not leaching tannins excessively, though it is still leaching a minute amount.

With the "x-large" branch, a portion (interior half) of it was very dark and porous, resembling wet mulch. I actually chipped, carved, and ripped out as much of this as i could, leaving a sort of half-shell shape to the wood that consisted of the denser, lighter colored and fibrous wood. In order to boil this piece of wood I simply boiled a large pot of water about a gallon at a time, dumping it into a 5 gallon bucket that contained the branch

The Fungus: (I will get around to providing pictures soon but I imagine most will know what I'm talking about due to the breadth of questions I have seen)
Within 24 hours of being submerged in my tank, the entire surface of the lighter, fibrous portion had begun to grow a thick, hazy-white mucous coating with strands trailing off into other areas of the tank. The fungous continued to grow until it was almost completely opaque. As far as I have learned it is not harmful to fish and some species will even eat it. Others have noted and I have confirmed that when this fungus is scrubbed off it will simply return just as heartily almost immediately.
I have read that boiling the wood first, and warmer temperatures in general encourage this growth.

I noticed that upon submerging it into my tank, it was still leaching some tannins into the water. These tannins are not bad for fish, they can moderately lower the ph which is ideal for the environment I want to create. However, after 24 hours had passed and the fungus had enveloped the wood, I scrubbed all of it off into the water, changed 100% of the water and when the water was replaced, tannins no longer leached noticeably. So could I assume that the fungus is living on some nutrient in the wood which is also the source of the tannin colors that leach into the water?

While the water was thick with this fungus I did some tests and the ph was around 6.8 with no ammonia, nitrates or nitrites at all.

I went on to read that this fungus will die out eventually and clear itself up, so that further enforces the idea that it is just feeding on the nutrients leftover in the wood. So I decided to continue setting up the tank. It is now very heavily planted, with a DIY co2 system and plenty of water flow.

Plants:
I have Bacopa Monnieri, Egeria Densa, Staurogyne Repens, Dwarf Hairgrass, Windelov Java Fern and Anubias Barteri var. Nana.

The fungus doesn't seem to be doing any serious harm to the plants, at least nothing that I can decidedly attribute to the fungus. I have noticed that the fungus will travel in the water stream and collect and grow over the surface of my plants. It grows very rapidly but only seems to envelop certain portions of the plants. It mainly attached to the exposed ends of cut stalks, and which subsequently soften, brown, and melt that portion of the stalk. I have observed killing weaker new growths of my moneywort plant, as well as segments near freshly cut stalks. Some larger leaves, and some older roots. The larger, healthier plants seem completely unphased by it. It is thriving on the tips of my anubias plants, and it causes any dead or deadening portions of the plant to disintegrate completely leaving skeletal leaves. It coats the rhizomes which I assume will suffocate the anubias, so I try to clean it off frequently, but I have yet to see it kill off any rhizomes.

I have since added some ghost shrimp to see if they would possible eat the fungus while searching for micro-organisms on the plants and thus far they seem to be completely ignoring it. 4 out of 10 have died, but since these feeder shrimp aren't very hardy its hard to say if they starved or what. After I observed a female releasing babies into the water I decided to add some veggie wafers just in case. By the next day, all leftover portions of wafers in the tank were totally coated in the fungus, so I assume this fungus is just living on any dead organic matter. One more shrimp died today and I have decided to leave its carcass in the water to see if the fungus will envelop it. One plus is that the water is ridiculously clear due to the this fungus essentially gluing down all pollutants.


Anyway thank you for reading and on to my questions:

What is this fungus called?
Will it suffocate my plants?
Will it harm any livestock either by poisoning them, suffocating them, removing vital nutrients from the water, etc?
Does it provide any beneficial effects?

 

[fishlooker]

I understand this may not be the correct place. If so please move my thread accordingly. I posted it here because the health of the plants are my main concern, and because I could that information about a fungus is closest to that of information about plants.

 

[Brian_Nano12g]

I pretty much experienced this fungus on almost all newly introduced DW to the aquarium. I've only used manzanita, Malaysian DW, and some ADA wood (looks like roots of a manzanita or something). One thing I do know is that the DW I have chosen are all dense and are suitable for DW. In other words, they don't rot and only experience the fungus for like a week or two. I usually scrub it away during my weekly PWC's. I've also used otocinclus in my cycled tank to help clean it up. One time I had a bacterial bloom due to the excess nutrients introduced by newly submerged DW. But because my tank was already cycled, it was okay to add Purigen to the filter. I think the Purigen helped in clearing out the bloom associated with the DW/fungus. I've never experienced anything negative beyond what I just described. Sorry, I don't know the name of the fungus. But I do know that grape wood is too soft, will rot, and is not a good idea for DW. Your problem may never subside and the wood may continue to deteriorate. I haven't tried grapewood before, but I researched it once because I found an interesting piece in a home decor store that I really wanted to use. Everything I read in terms of using it in an aquarium suggested otherwise. So perhaps you should rethink the use of it.

 

[fishlooker]

I pretty much experienced this fungus on almost all newly introduced DW to the aquarium. I've only used manzanita, Malaysian DW, and some ADA wood (looks like roots of a manzanita or something). One thing I do know is that the DW I have chosen are all dense and are suitable for DW. In other words, they don't rot and only experience the fungus for like a week or two. I usually scrub it away during my weekly PWC's. I've also used otocinclus in my cycled tank to help clean it up. One time I had a bacterial bloom due to the excess nutrients introduced by newly submerged DW. But because my tank was already cycled, it was okay to add Purigen to the filter. I think the Purigen helped in clearing out the bloom associated with the DW/fungus. I've never experienced anything negative beyond what I just described. Sorry, I don't know the name of the fungus. But I do know that grape wood is too soft, will rot, and is not a good idea for DW. Your problem may never subside and the wood may continue to deteriorate. I haven't tried grapewood before, but I researched it once because I found an interesting piece in a home decor store that I really wanted to use. Everything I read in terms of using it in an aquarium suggested otherwise. So perhaps you should rethink the use of it.

During those periods of bacterial bloom did you have a lot of plants?

Well for the time being I am going to wait on adding bottom feeders because there are ghost shrimp fry. I a few weeks I will try adding a bristlenose pleco. As far as whether or not to use the wood, it's already a part of the tank and I'm just gonna wait it out. I read some good as well as bad results of grapewood.

 

[Brian_Nano12g]

Yeah all my tanks are heavily planted. Probably 80 to 90% planted with very little negative space.

Good luck with the grapewood... hope you prove my findings wrong.

 

[DragonFish71]

While I've never been able to find out the name of the "fungus", I've had this with all type of driftwood as well without any adverse effects to my plants and stock. As a matter of fact, some of my stock, otos, plecos, SAEs, seemed to enjoy nibbling at it.

I've got grapewood in some of my tanks. While it isn't the best wood because it is a softer wood than most, I have had no problems with it fouling the water of my tanks. Some pieces are going on six years now.

 

[Fresh2o]

I picked up grapewood from the reptile section for my aquarium but after some research came to the same conclusion as Brian. I took it back. Found an LFS with a good selection of Malaysian DW and went with that.
I did get some manzanita DW branches from Marshals dept store. Was marked down from $26 to $5.

 

[fishlooker]

good find fresh2o, but it's definitely NOT the price/availability that attracts me to the wood. I really like the shape of the piece I've got. It creates sort of an arm cradling around the back of the tank. And I appreciate the positive feedback dragonfish. The fungus, as well as small splints of wood on the log are part of the reason I actually want grapewood in my tank. It will be interesting if I am lucky enough to get some bottom feeders that will enjoy nibbling it. Looking forward to getting a BN pleco as soon as the fry are large enough to survive.

 

[fishlooker]

Update:
I did about a 35% water change, focusing mainly on vacuuming out as much of the fungus as possible. While it is growing back somewhat, it is not growing nearly as fast as before (about 24hrs to cover the lighter colored half of the log). Also in the absence of the fungus, much more tannins are leaching into the water. With the fungus in full bloom my water was crystal clear and it is now a foggy reddish brown. I like the coloration and haze so this is a positive change for me. Also as I think I mentioned in the original post this should make the water slightly more acidic. So far 6 out of 10 adult ghost shrimp have died, and I still catch glimpses of living fry in various hang out spots so they seem to be surviving. The fungus took about two full days before it took to a shrimp corpse. Much slower than it takes to any other dead organic material (food, dead leaves, etc).

I am curious if it is possible that the fungus actually helped to break down the dead leaves fast enough to make my nearly brand new aquarium habitable for a fry of shrimp. I know that in most cases the water not be nearly rich enough in nutrients. Can anyone validate this?

 

[wildroseofky]

I am using grapewood in a couple of my tanks. Almost all driftwood gets that on it. The snails and shrimp love it. It doesn't spread to anything else in the tank. It just grows on newly submerged wood as far as I can tell. I have had grape wood in one of my tanks for almost a year and it has not rotted. The grapewood sold for tanks is the old, hardened branches and is equivalent to any other driftwood you can buy. It will eventually rot away but it will tank a very long time. My snails love it. I suspect a combination of tannin's and the driftwood fungus has benefited your shrimp. I got an increase in ghost shrimp larva surviving when I added lots of moss to my tank.

 

[fishlooker]

I am using grapewood in a couple of my tanks. Almost all driftwood gets that on it. The snails and shrimp love it. It doesn't spread to anything else in the tank. It just grows on newly submerged wood as far as I can tell. I have had grape wood in one of my tanks for almost a year and it has not rotted. The grapewood sold for tanks is the old, hardened branches and is equivalent to any other driftwood you can buy. It will eventually rot away but it will tank a very long time. My snails love it. I suspect a combination of tannin's and the driftwood fungus has benefited your shrimp. I got an increase in ghost shrimp larva surviving when I added lots of moss to my tank.

perhaps its a different fungus? the fungus in my tank envelops any dead organic material within a day. it doesnt coat the substrate or lava rocks, but any food, dead shrimp or dead plants get eaten by it.