# Hornwort and BGA



## GrampsGrunge (Jun 18, 2012)

thedood said:


> I have been doing research for a native tank I will be building and I can across this website: Coontail (Ceratophyllum demersum)
> 
> From the website:
> 
> ...


Cannot say that I've seen that Hornwort will prevent BGA, what I can say is the Hornwort I have collected from Tenmile Creek, the stream that drains Lakeside's Tenmile Lake, (which has Parrot's Feather, Canadian Waterweed and Hornwort..) that you can certainly bring home a brew of critters living in the stems, and introduce about 3 or 4 kinds of diatoms and some nasty little spined Annelids that live symbiotically with the diatoms. It would be a good thing if true as I'm fighting both diatoms and BGA right now.


----------



## thedood (May 30, 2015)

Would a good bleach dip clean them enough to use? What about something that predates the worms? If you try the hornwort can you update the thread and let us know the results?


----------



## GrampsGrunge (Jun 18, 2012)

Bleach seems like a bit overkill, at least to something as delicate as Hornwort. I'd do H2O2 2% @ a ml added to a gallon of water for an overnight soak. But If I could find the Hornwort they used to sell at the Eugene LFS, it would work better than the local variety. I've never had real good luck growing it, compared to the stuff from the fish store. Our local stuff is coarser leaved and kinda 'crunchy', for lack of a better word, kind of like it's made from sand itself.


----------



## MtAnimals (May 17, 2015)

I've seen BGA on hornwort....


----------



## thedood (May 30, 2015)

MtAnimals said:


> I've seen BGA on hornwort....


Interesting. I am going to do some more research on this.


----------



## JJ09 (Sep 11, 2014)

I have hornwort I got from a local club auction. When I added the hornwort (I got a ton) it literally filled the tank with plants- at the time I had awful algae and the next day nitrates dropped and algae started dying back, I think this was just because the hornwort consumed so much nitrate. I now only have minimal GSA, BBA (introduced via a buce) and some thread algae. Hornwort is floating and some of it gets a kind of dark brown algae on the older parts of the stems, I just trim that off weekly. But I don't have _any_ cyano!

I do often see a kind of clear foam on the top of the tank where the hornwort is, I've always wondered if it's something the plant itself is emitting.

Incidentally, once early on when my tank was new I brought home a plant from nearby lake I thought was hornwort or coontail- never really identified it but the appearance is very similar. I did a 10% bleach dip for 20 min and it killed the plant. It literally bleached it white and that was the end of that.


----------



## dukydaf (Dec 27, 2004)

MtAnimals said:


> I've seen BGA on hornwort....


Can confirm the above. I have also seen hornwort several times enveloped in a BGA sheet. Nothing much to do further research on... hornwort does not directly inhibit BGA. 

Other observations were just coincidences or third+ rate causality.

Hornwort like other obligate aquatic plants is very sensitive to bleach.


----------



## thedood (May 30, 2015)

@dukydaf Thanks. I kind of wondered about the original information as I had never read it before so I knew not to take it as gospel. Would have been nice to have been true though.


----------



## Aquaticz (Dec 26, 2009)

same here - I have seen it on hornwort


----------

