# algae or tank spiders?



## Color Me Blue (Nov 10, 2005)

Wow, that looks spooky!  It really does look like some spider spun some webbing there. Have you touched it to see what it feels like? Is it only on that plant or is it affecting others? How fast does it show up? 

Maybe it's possibly staghorn algae?


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## Mangala (Jul 23, 2006)

This is the very first time I've seen it, and it happened as I watched! It's kind of... well, I havn't touched it. I've been watching the fish eat it. lol.. to me it looks like goopy cotton candy? And it's actually on all the plants, but that photo showed up the best so I decided to post that one. It showed up, I would say it was half an hour after I did my water change, suddenly all my plants were covered. I'm pretty sure it's my fault.

This is what happened: 

1. sick of seeing green spot algae on my tank - albeit, dying gsa, still, it was ugly and I couldn't see too well in my tank... so I wiped it all off while draining the water.

2. I put water back in, tried to run it through the filter so it wouldn't kick up tooooo much dirt (the liability of having sand as a substrate) and put my dosings of liquid fert and excel in the bucket at the same time. 

3. tank was cloudy for a bit, then stringy, then the stringy went on the plants and now the water is clear and my fish are eating the strings. 


I'm thinking that whatever green spot algae may have been in the water column that I kicked up by scraping it off and then it got in the water and... maybe got kick started to cling to the dirt in the water that got kicked up while I dumped water in AND with the addition of ferts + excel probably bonded together to make... SUPER ALGAE OF DOOM!!! (only, not really "of doom" 'cause my fish really seem to like it...) My water is actually really clear right now... The frequency of the... stuff is less, but still very much there. I'm going to not panic about this and let it sit and see how it's doing in the morning, I think. Also, I've never seen my colisa lalia (dwarf gourami) poop soooooooo much in one night. man... he's gonna give himself digestive problems or something...


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## JenThePlantGeek (Mar 27, 2006)

I've had that before - it's nothing to worry about, just another form of string algae. Excel actually does a good job getting rid of it.  I also use an old toothbrush and swirl it in circles. It grabs and removes the stringy stuff pretty well. 

Also, that's the color it turns after I nuke it with Excel. My guess is that if you keep up the dosing, it'll just die back. I'd still remove as much as you can though. roud:


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## Mangala (Jul 23, 2006)

Thanks Jen! Actually, I got up this morning and looked and it looks like my fish took care of that for me. I will see what it looks like when I get home, and probably try to snap a photo (just got a new camera, _still_ working on the particulars of it) It just really freaked me out when I first saw it!!


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## Color Me Blue (Nov 10, 2005)

LOL It would freak me out too! LOL


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## Mangala (Jul 23, 2006)

Just an update: As of last night and this morning when I looked into my fish tank (the very next day!) it is all completely gone. duno if it was the otos, the gouramis or the snails, but whatever cleaned it up I'm very grateful to! Maybe they feel that they have to live in that water, so they might as well clean house! If only my other fish felt that way lol...


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## JenThePlantGeek (Mar 27, 2006)

I had a funny feeling it wouldn't last long. roud:! 

Good job to your fish and their housecleaning skills... you didn't even need to break out the toothbrush!


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## Mangala (Jul 23, 2006)

Considering I need to use that toothbrush to rid my mouth of the "cobwebs" in the morning, I wasn't looking forward to using it in the tank. lol

-actually, I'd have probably used a chunk of filterfloss, as I already have that, and toothbrushes these days are expensive!


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