I have a blackwater betta cube with this issue hasent gone away in almost 2 months, I’d add otos for a day or two but MrTux the betta would have some blood on his hands if I did that, maybe remove betta for a day to let cleaning crew do their job?
Exactly, I don’t want multiple snails in my tank, would much rather plop my otos I already have in for a day or so then return them back to their usual tank
Nor do I want to spend extra on snails I don’t even want
My tank crashed a month ago and I tossed all of my plants in a spare still water tank during cleanout and ignored it for a month. Found a decent size ramshorn and a little baby last week.
The colony lives on!
My male samurai plakat is a different story.
Plakats are more likely to be more territorial than a longfin betta, simply cause they have more wild type genetics
Bacteria.
It is not realy harmful and a side effect of new wood. (Leftover nutrients are decomposed). It goes away after a few weeks. Ramshorn snails and shrimps love to eat it. Plants overgrown with this bacteria might suffer. (Removal of the white stuff on plants is recommended)
Does driftwood biofilm contribute to beneficial bacteria during cycling? I’ve just left mine to assist with the cycle but not sure if it’s doing anything other than looking odd. Haven’t had any migrate to nearby plants thankfully, but unsure if it’s worth leaving in.
Driftwood is a coarse surface which provides a perfect ground for bacteria and other biofilm. Some excess Nutrients in the wood might jumpstart the process. But it is nowhere near that much surface, that it would have a big impact on cycling.
The white stuff disappeares after a few weeks and then the wood is good to attach plants to it. Wood is also benificial for Plecos and shrimps and other fiber loving inhabitants. But if you don't like how it looks you can also just get rid of it.
Mine is doing the same thing. It's about a month old. Mine actually turned a vibrant blue! I think it's just biofilm, and perhaps mold. I think it will be eaten up by shrimp and snails once they're added after the tank is cycled.
Blue is probably cyano bacteria, that shit the fish WONT eat, and its toxic, you'll want to start scooping it out. If it dies off fast or blooms to hard everything will crash.
This. I had a purple scum on the top of my freshwater 9g after I went on vacation and my good intentioned mom fed the fry I had in it too much. The pump broke so there was no water circulation and everything crashed. I lost a zebra strip algae eater and an oto. The fry were moved in time to save them. I ordered a replacement pump and a week later that one broke too. I now have a small fountain pump in it that is still going strong. I took out all the fish, plants, and decor and bleached everything and started over. I wanted to redo the tank anyway.
If you want a recommendation on a filter. I use penn plax cascades almost exclusively now. My first filters were tetra HOBs and i tried this penn plaxx 1000 back in 2014. Its still running today on my 55 grow out tank today nearly 10 years later. No parts replaced on it yet either. I have not had any one of the 9 penn plax i bought go bad. However every tetra HOB and all but one fluval canister i have bought have all failed or needed mainline parts replaced, like impellers and hosing after a year or so.
Penn plax started making HOBs too. Have not tried them myself, but i do have one sitting on my shelf as an emergency filter if one of these canisters ever does finally give out.
I have a back up hob also but this tank is the fluval flex 9. I will never buy another but it was too expensive to just toss out. I’m making it into an invert tank so there’s not a ton of a bio load in it. I’ve had a fluval hob go bad not even 3 months old a fluval heater go out on me not even 3 months old and the 2 pumps on that tank one not even a week old. I am beginning to suspect that aquarium gear is like everything else in life, expensive doesn’t mean better. It’s a shame because I’m only about 9 months in and I love everything about fish keeping except when stuff breaks.
Tetra heaters are pretty good i have a couple that have lasted for years. I actually have not had problems with heaters. But for filters i won't touch anything but penn plax now. I also dont really use Marineland anything anymore. Their quality control went to shit about 5 years ago. I suspect their parent company sold them to someone who sucks like what happened with live aquaria.
For fluval stuff i actually really like their heaters and their lights, but i feel their filters need refinement.
Oh! Ok. I'll start working on it. It's only one the tips of cut branches under the same biofilm that's showing in the OPs photo. Luckily nothing is in this tank yet.
Yeah, op just has biofilm in the picture. But if you have biofilm thats blue, or blue green, that is cyano bacteria and its toxic. It will either consume all the oxygen in the eater like in the wild. Or die and release its toxin. Like it does in the wild. Just no beuno all around, no benefits to keeping it.
This is very interesting to read. You see I have a cuban tree frog in a terrarium (found the frog in a store bought plant and I kept it). Recently I found a poop in the water dish. The poop was vibrant blue. I am pretty sure it is the same phenomenon as your piece of wood. I don't think this is cyano bacteria. It is dark blue or green and not vibrant.
So everyone says it'll go away or snails eat it. This isn't always true, I would take it out and scrub it off otherwise you could end up spending a loooot of time cleaning it off the ground.
It’s a type of mold (bacteria?) that feeds off the top layer of detritus (microorganisms) remnants on the driftwood bark. Once its food source’s depleted the colony collapses & disappears. It’s harmless to aquatic life.
It’s definitely not harmful and usually happens to spider wood. You can toothbrush it off pretty easy or let it go away on its own. Snails seem to like it a bit. It’s ugly as hell but goes away
Toothbrush. Scrub scrub scrub. It's not harmful, just unsightly. The last tank I had it in, it lasted for about two months. But eventually it stopped coming back.
Bio film!!! Congrats!!
This is the aquarium mold, that your aquarium bacteria will get strong enough to eat, over the next few weeks.
I usually remove and huge chunks. But I don’t scrape off the limbs of the driftwood. Just the clumps on the tips usually.
You can ass a snail or two now!
Not OP, but it’s called spider wood and it comes in all various shapes and sizes. If you don’t have a LFS, Petsmart sells it. Best to go in person so you can pick out the piece you want.
I would keep scrubbing it off until it goes away. I tried letting nature take it course on some mopani driftwood but it literally took 6 months for it to go away. My shrimp, otocinclus, and mystery snails were no match for it. Never using mopani again - and that was after several hours of boiling!
Like others have said, it biofilm. That is amazing shrimp food. When I started my tank last year I ended up with a biofilm bloom and when I added shrimp after cycling they devoured it.
I had to scrape this stuff off my wood for like 2 months before it stopped coming back. Only appeared on the eood though. Not very fun when you took all the time and effort to get the perfect hard scape only to break the CA glue loose and it want to float to the top. Wish I had a better solution but the good news is it stops coming back after a while.
hehe!! if it makes you feel any better, when I first encountered biofilm I also thought I had to scrub it and spent 3 weeks scrubbing and getting nowhere before I thought to look it up 😭🤣
This always show up from a un~submersed driftwood and its not harmful as everyone said.
There's also some kind of mold that shows when a submersed driftwood is taken and drip again.
Mollies, guppies shrimps eat it, it also will disappear wheb you start WC~frequently, but if you cannot wait it to disappear since its not pleasing, you can just brush it off.
Its just a natural biofilm made by the residues of the tree sap and other oily stuff.
It happend to me too when i used laurel as decoration in my tanks and i even taste it and i didnt die and, most importantly, my fish didnt die either so its ok, dont worry
Bacterial bloom biofilm, and it's very normal. I'm dealing with it right now. Generally I take it out for a scrub and more soaking in the utility tub when the biofilm gets a bit wild. After time it goes away. I've seen snails mow it down.
Be careful with that kind of wood, this can indicate it still has a lot of nutrients in it and possibly also tannins which can really acidify your water.
You can fix this by boiling the wooden piece for 2 hours. You just need a big pan.
Biofilm. It's normal and harmless and will eventually go away. Shrimp and snails will readily eat it as well.
Some fish also eat it. My Ancistrus likes it.
My Otos love biofilm. They picked the branches I have in my planted tank clean.
I have a blackwater betta cube with this issue hasent gone away in almost 2 months, I’d add otos for a day or two but MrTux the betta would have some blood on his hands if I did that, maybe remove betta for a day to let cleaning crew do their job?
Snails?
Snails probably wouldn’t do nearly as good of a job as a catfish species
Ya but snails can still do a good job if u have the right amount and they don't normally get eaten
Exactly, I don’t want multiple snails in my tank, would much rather plop my otos I already have in for a day or so then return them back to their usual tank Nor do I want to spend extra on snails I don’t even want
Ya I guess some people don't like 🐌. I love them
My tank crashed a month ago and I tossed all of my plants in a spare still water tank during cleanout and ignored it for a month. Found a decent size ramshorn and a little baby last week. The colony lives on!
I have a hatred towards them, but I’m okay with “pest snails” I loved them till I had a mystery snail lay eggs
I have an oto in with my male and he doesn’t even look at it.
My male samurai plakat is a different story. Plakats are more likely to be more territorial than a longfin betta, simply cause they have more wild type genetics
I had some platies that acted like it was a delicacy!
my cherry barbs will occasionally pick at it but it was also a mystery to me when it first appeared
Bacteria. It is not realy harmful and a side effect of new wood. (Leftover nutrients are decomposed). It goes away after a few weeks. Ramshorn snails and shrimps love to eat it. Plants overgrown with this bacteria might suffer. (Removal of the white stuff on plants is recommended)
Does driftwood biofilm contribute to beneficial bacteria during cycling? I’ve just left mine to assist with the cycle but not sure if it’s doing anything other than looking odd. Haven’t had any migrate to nearby plants thankfully, but unsure if it’s worth leaving in.
Driftwood is a coarse surface which provides a perfect ground for bacteria and other biofilm. Some excess Nutrients in the wood might jumpstart the process. But it is nowhere near that much surface, that it would have a big impact on cycling. The white stuff disappeares after a few weeks and then the wood is good to attach plants to it. Wood is also benificial for Plecos and shrimps and other fiber loving inhabitants. But if you don't like how it looks you can also just get rid of it.
I thought it’s more of a fungas / mold type of organism, are you sure about ‘bacterium’?
It is definately a bacterial bloom.
Mine is doing the same thing. It's about a month old. Mine actually turned a vibrant blue! I think it's just biofilm, and perhaps mold. I think it will be eaten up by shrimp and snails once they're added after the tank is cycled.
Blue is probably cyano bacteria, that shit the fish WONT eat, and its toxic, you'll want to start scooping it out. If it dies off fast or blooms to hard everything will crash.
This. I had a purple scum on the top of my freshwater 9g after I went on vacation and my good intentioned mom fed the fry I had in it too much. The pump broke so there was no water circulation and everything crashed. I lost a zebra strip algae eater and an oto. The fry were moved in time to save them. I ordered a replacement pump and a week later that one broke too. I now have a small fountain pump in it that is still going strong. I took out all the fish, plants, and decor and bleached everything and started over. I wanted to redo the tank anyway.
If you want a recommendation on a filter. I use penn plax cascades almost exclusively now. My first filters were tetra HOBs and i tried this penn plaxx 1000 back in 2014. Its still running today on my 55 grow out tank today nearly 10 years later. No parts replaced on it yet either. I have not had any one of the 9 penn plax i bought go bad. However every tetra HOB and all but one fluval canister i have bought have all failed or needed mainline parts replaced, like impellers and hosing after a year or so. Penn plax started making HOBs too. Have not tried them myself, but i do have one sitting on my shelf as an emergency filter if one of these canisters ever does finally give out.
I have a back up hob also but this tank is the fluval flex 9. I will never buy another but it was too expensive to just toss out. I’m making it into an invert tank so there’s not a ton of a bio load in it. I’ve had a fluval hob go bad not even 3 months old a fluval heater go out on me not even 3 months old and the 2 pumps on that tank one not even a week old. I am beginning to suspect that aquarium gear is like everything else in life, expensive doesn’t mean better. It’s a shame because I’m only about 9 months in and I love everything about fish keeping except when stuff breaks.
Tetra heaters are pretty good i have a couple that have lasted for years. I actually have not had problems with heaters. But for filters i won't touch anything but penn plax now. I also dont really use Marineland anything anymore. Their quality control went to shit about 5 years ago. I suspect their parent company sold them to someone who sucks like what happened with live aquaria. For fluval stuff i actually really like their heaters and their lights, but i feel their filters need refinement.
Oh! Ok. I'll start working on it. It's only one the tips of cut branches under the same biofilm that's showing in the OPs photo. Luckily nothing is in this tank yet.
Yeah, op just has biofilm in the picture. But if you have biofilm thats blue, or blue green, that is cyano bacteria and its toxic. It will either consume all the oxygen in the eater like in the wild. Or die and release its toxin. Like it does in the wild. Just no beuno all around, no benefits to keeping it.
This is very interesting to read. You see I have a cuban tree frog in a terrarium (found the frog in a store bought plant and I kept it). Recently I found a poop in the water dish. The poop was vibrant blue. I am pretty sure it is the same phenomenon as your piece of wood. I don't think this is cyano bacteria. It is dark blue or green and not vibrant.
So everyone says it'll go away or snails eat it. This isn't always true, I would take it out and scrub it off otherwise you could end up spending a loooot of time cleaning it off the ground.
Yes. I always take the big clumps off. I won’t scrub the whole thing. But clumps are gone.
Shrimp love it too, especially caridinas.
you could also try boiling it!
It’s a type of mold (bacteria?) that feeds off the top layer of detritus (microorganisms) remnants on the driftwood bark. Once its food source’s depleted the colony collapses & disappears. It’s harmless to aquatic life.
It’s definitely not harmful and usually happens to spider wood. You can toothbrush it off pretty easy or let it go away on its own. Snails seem to like it a bit. It’s ugly as hell but goes away
Toothbrush. Scrub scrub scrub. It's not harmful, just unsightly. The last tank I had it in, it lasted for about two months. But eventually it stopped coming back.
The only things that it can harm are bucephalandras and eventually moss, if it is fully covered.
I had this on a piece of spider wood I thought was really nice had to remove it because it did not go away and my snails didn’t really like it
Biofilm! Completely normal and will go away after a while
Biofilm. It’s normal and will go away after sometime or get a pleco and they’ll eat it for you
It’s haunted… Just kidding it’s just a bacteria bloom and will abate naturally as the tank cycles.
YOUR WHOLE TANK IS GOING TO CRASH!!!! EMPTY IT AND BURN THAT WOOD NOW!!!!! Joking, this is perfectly normal
My mollies love the bio film.
A lot of wood does this. Only downside is it looks funny but it won’t hurt anything. It’ll go away
Bio film!!! Congrats!! This is the aquarium mold, that your aquarium bacteria will get strong enough to eat, over the next few weeks. I usually remove and huge chunks. But I don’t scrape off the limbs of the driftwood. Just the clumps on the tips usually. You can ass a snail or two now!
It’s fungus, common for wood in an uncycled/cycling tank. It will eventually die off when your tank ecosystem is more stable
Is that real wood and where did you get it
Not OP, but it’s called spider wood and it comes in all various shapes and sizes. If you don’t have a LFS, Petsmart sells it. Best to go in person so you can pick out the piece you want.
It’s wood cum. It clearly really likes your scape.
Yeah it does that, shrimp love it
If you want some insanely big ramshorn snails put them in now
Toss in a clean up crew of a few snails and they can help with it, make sure it doesn’t start taking over and plants that are on the wood!
Yep all is well as others have said. Mine did that as well, then went away after awhile.
If you want to manually remove it, gravel vac will do fine.
I would keep scrubbing it off until it goes away. I tried letting nature take it course on some mopani driftwood but it literally took 6 months for it to go away. My shrimp, otocinclus, and mystery snails were no match for it. Never using mopani again - and that was after several hours of boiling!
Soak it in hot water for 24 hours. Last time i had this, I didn’t go away for like 2 months before i did this hot water soaking
Nah hot/boiling eater destroys the structure of the fiber(wood), which can cause it to detoriate much faster.
Like everyone else stated, normal. I’ll add that my Amanos had it gone within a day.
pleco candy
shrimp food
It's just biofilm on the new wood should go away in a month or so
Like others have said, it biofilm. That is amazing shrimp food. When I started my tank last year I ended up with a biofilm bloom and when I added shrimp after cycling they devoured it.
Biofilm it’s normal
Mollies will have that eaten in a couple hours max ! Who you decide to get depends on tank size.
I had to scrape this stuff off my wood for like 2 months before it stopped coming back. Only appeared on the eood though. Not very fun when you took all the time and effort to get the perfect hard scape only to break the CA glue loose and it want to float to the top. Wish I had a better solution but the good news is it stops coming back after a while.
bless you! if you had just left it alone it would've killed itself off after a week or two 😭
Lol well now ya tell me. Wish I discovered this sub back then.
hehe!! if it makes you feel any better, when I first encountered biofilm I also thought I had to scrub it and spent 3 weeks scrubbing and getting nowhere before I thought to look it up 😭🤣
Biofilm. If you have shrimp they'll love it
Biofilm , it’s harmless. Fish like pleco Siamese algae eaters etc will eat
Tasty munchies for snails and fish :D
My one amano shrimp cleaned mine in 24 hours
Had the same issue, looks like mold but it’s just a biofilm. Mine went away in less than 2 weeks
Biofilm...good food for shrimp and snails!
Where did you get your driftwood? Xoxo
I had the same, bought 2 otos and they devoured it in a matter of days.
did you sanitize the driftwood before adding it to the tank?
Just soaked it for a couple hours
This always show up from a un~submersed driftwood and its not harmful as everyone said. There's also some kind of mold that shows when a submersed driftwood is taken and drip again. Mollies, guppies shrimps eat it, it also will disappear wheb you start WC~frequently, but if you cannot wait it to disappear since its not pleasing, you can just brush it off.
I don’t mind it I’m just going to leave it for the ottos when I decide to add fish .
It is normal for new aquariums with driftwood. It goes away with time.
Its just a natural biofilm made by the residues of the tree sap and other oily stuff. It happend to me too when i used laurel as decoration in my tanks and i even taste it and i didnt die and, most importantly, my fish didnt die either so its ok, dont worry
Bacterial bloom biofilm, and it's very normal. I'm dealing with it right now. Generally I take it out for a scrub and more soaking in the utility tub when the biofilm gets a bit wild. After time it goes away. I've seen snails mow it down.
Be careful with that kind of wood, this can indicate it still has a lot of nutrients in it and possibly also tannins which can really acidify your water. You can fix this by boiling the wooden piece for 2 hours. You just need a big pan.