fishlooker
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
- Joined
- May 16, 2014
- Messages
- 12
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?
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?