What are these?

[csmith]

Figured I'd post this here, as these things don't have spines. I've found one red one and a handful of white ones. They don't really look like hydras, and they aren't lying down like the pictures make it seem, but actually standing upright. They almost look like sea fans when I get right up to the glass to look at them.

 

[Biollante]

Algae, Perhaps Nasty

(2)

Hi,

It looks like algae to me.

My guess is fluctuating CO2. Second place is low O2.

How does the tank smell?

Scrape a little off the plant and take a whiff or better yet find your significant other and see what reaction you get (aside from restraining orders) when you stick it under their nose.

If you think, it is a critter or just would like a better answer carefully take it out and photograph it on light and dark background.

Biollante

 

[csmith]

It's crazy, the better I get at this stuff the worse off I am.
The tank smells as usual, of course there was a huge water change yesterday for the fleet enema treatment so most of the water is new. I'll dig it out and take some pictures.

I did kindly ask it to go away and find another aquarium to live in. I think it refused.

 

[Biollante]

The Learning Curve

Hi,

You are getting better; you are going through the learning curve, your tank(s) are young.

If this is your 10-gallon tank, you choose easy plants that are monsters; this is hard to follow. If someone suggested placing four Oscars, Astronotus ocellatus, in a 10-gallon tank, it is easy for you as a mammal to understand the increasing food requirements as the “biomass” increases and more space. I think it is hard for many of you in the Animal Kingdom to understand that plants have similar needs, among the reasons I advise lower light and high end dosing in the beginning then as the requirements stabilize increasing the light or stepping down the dosing works.

Just as in the Oscar example, we would expect the water quality to be difficult to maintain in a 10-gallon tank, so it is with monster plants. We talk in terms of parts per million in providing for the needs of our plants, consider though that the total amount that 20-ppm of Nitrates your 10-gallon tank is still only one tenth the amount that those plants would have access to in a 100-gallon tank.

Your 10-gallon tank is subject to large nutrient swings (we will consider CO2 a nutrient for our purposes) as the plants compete for limited resources. I dare say that if you tried maintain four Oscars, you would find one or two growing rather more robustly than the others. Algae blooms, often of the nasty sort, are associated with nutrient swings.

I would say you are going to need to double (at least) whatever you are dosing and add aeration at night.

Biollante

 

[Philosophos]

Despite the fact that Tom usually pops in and proves me completely wrong about algae ID, I'm going to guess that's staghorn (Compsopogon spp.) algae. The fact that some of it is turning red means it's dieing, and that's not a bad sign.

I don't know much about the species myself as I don't run into it much. I only get it in one heavily aerated and over-lit beta cube full of RCS, so nutrients must be more of a trigger than oxygen levels.

 

[Biollante]

Pretty Sure

(3)

Hi Dan,

I am pretty sure you are correct, if it does not stink.

If it is smelly, the low oxygen is more likely. The fact of the monster plants make the possibility of oxygen depletion possible that would make for wide oxygen swings as well as wide nutrient swings.

C. Smith has just increased the nutrients so it may be that it has been caught and will die back before becoming a nuisance.

Biollante