Fungus In Water?

[Corleone]

I posted in emergencies, and it was suggested to post here. I noticed some stringy white fluff in my tank today. It's free floating (though some is sticking to rocks and bog wood). I thought it was cat hair originally, but it's fluffy. did a large water change and skimmed what I could get out with a net. There looks like there's some growing on the filter outlet now.

 

[WILDER]

Bump.

 

[Corleone]

The stuff's pretty much gone now. Cleaned it off my hardware and most of the decorations, scrapped some live plants that were heavy with it just to cut the volume of it down, and did a couple more water changes and a thorough gravel vac (seemed to be a good bit of it in the gravel, too), and removed all my driftwood and boiled it (driftwood is laying out to dry right now).

Whatever it was didn't seem to hurt any of the fish - it never attached to them, and the otos even ate a bit of it, and didn't last long (though I'm not entirely sure my apple snail is well, he hasn't come out of his shell much in the last couple days and had a good bit of it sticking to his shell which I rinsed off in tank water). I'm thinking it came from the driftwood, which I've had soaking for quite a while while I prepared the new tank, but that didn't produce anything like this in the bucket.

I did a lot of googling yesterday and today, and I think it might be some kind of water mold, which would support my theory that the driftwood was to blame. Shouldn't boiling it when I got it have killed any of that, or is it possible I didn't boil it enough?

 

[Gazpug]

The stuff's pretty much gone now. Cleaned it off my hardware and most of the decorations, scrapped some live plants that were heavy with it just to cut the volume of it down, and did a couple more water changes and a thorough gravel vac (seemed to be a good bit of it in the gravel, too), and removed all my driftwood and boiled it (driftwood is laying out to dry right now).

Whatever it was didn't seem to hurt any of the fish - it never attached to them, and the otos even ate a bit of it, and didn't last long (though I'm not entirely sure my apple snail is well, he hasn't come out of his shell much in the last couple days and had a good bit of it sticking to his shell which I rinsed off in tank water). I'm thinking it came from the driftwood, which I've had soaking for quite a while while I prepared the new tank, but that didn't produce anything like this in the bucket.

I did a lot of googling yesterday and today, and I think it might be some kind of water mold, which would support my theory that the driftwood was to blame. Shouldn't boiling it when I got it have killed any of that, or is it possible I didn't boil it enough?

I had a mold in my tank some months ago. I put it down to over feeding. I feed my cory's and clown loaches jmc cat pellets. and the rest tetra pro. If the food is missed and settles into the substrate and wood it goes white and grows hair. Mabe this is the case in your tank. I would try cutting down on feeding to see if this cures your problem. I mabe wrong in your case but it is somthing worth considering.

Hope this helps

Regards

Gaz

 

[Corleone]

They've been underfed recently. I'm getting ready to move them to a new tank and wanted to minimize a possible mini cycle. It is possible the shrimp pellets were responsible, though - all the fish eat them to some extent, but not until they've dissolved a bit, so there's probably some of it down in the gravel that the snail can't get at. I'll cut down on them for the time being.