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On one of my decorations I have a growth along the side. It has a few strands and looks like it is white or pale in color.

Is this something I should be heavily concerned about?

It's a 5 gal heated tank with one betta.

It could be several things but it should not be happening any way, it could be the surface of the decoration is breaking down or it is having a reaction to something in your water.

Personally I would toss it out before it can do any damage.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

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Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

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Probably either a bit of dying hair algae or a chunk of fungal growth,as keith says, either way, ditch it asap and it might be worth checking your water quality to see if high nitrates or excess organic detritus is causing it. Might be the first sign of a water quality or light balance issue.

So giving it a good clean just and putting it back in, with keeping an eye on it mind you, wouldn't be an option?

Hi CrimsonaX

Hope you don't mind me borrowing your thread here. I have a similar problem. I have a piece of driftwood that continually grows a fluffy cotton wool type growth. Nothing else in the tank does this, not any of the other driftwood, stones, plants - nothing - just this piece of driftwood. It has a really nice nana anubia on it, which made me reluctant to remove it. Each water change (weekly) I remove it, clean it off & put it back. Each week the cotton wool growth returns. Finally had enough, so today I removed the wood, took off the anubia & boiled the subject wood for about an hour. I returned it to the tank, but reading some of the replies to your thread, I wonder if I should have.

Am I better off disposing of this wood altogether - or is it ok to see if the boiling solves the problem, before making a final decision?

Sorry again for the intrusion, CrimsonaX.

Cheers
TW

I've just been doing some of my own research on the topic and thought I may as well show it since it may be of use ^^

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070318212840AALKuyW

Seems to suggest things called Achyla and Saprolegnia.

So either way it appears to be a fungus ...

http://www.koivet.com/html/articles/articles_details.php?article_id=256&name=Newest%20Articles

there's some treatment things around soif you don't want to treat the tank maybe just soak the affected thing in some water with a fungus treatment?

Such fungi are omnipresent, and they only flourish if there is a high presence of organic detritus or waste nutrients. Treating a tank to eradicate it when the fish are not directly affected is needlessly harsh on them, and will probably set the cycle back again. Just clean it up, and watch the overfeeding. If theres nothing for the saprolegni to feed on , it can't grow, as simple as that. I know you already do water changes, but it might be time to increase them, and vacuum the substrate more thoroughly. Fungus in the tank is nearly always a cleaning and maintenance issue.

so far its the weekly change, how often should I make that into?

One other thing I was meaning to ask is how bad would it have to be to take say, the treatment measures?
Only if it begins to make the fish ill?

Im doing a tank cleaning tomorrow so I intend to give all the decos just a little rub down for now.

You wouldnt preventatively treat this because its the nutrients the stuff is living on is causing the problem. Saprolegnia as stated before is almost omnipresent, and you could treat it with chemicals only to have it return the following week, so its not a question of how bad it gets before you treat it, its a question of how dirty it gets before you clean it. Meds are for treating the fish and their eggs in emergencies, not for getting fluff off tank decor.

You might find doing stuff like scooping out some of the gravel, washing it thoroughly in a bucket and returning it will help, making sure the excess mulm is ditched from filters, and really scraping that bogwood and decor back with a wire brush might help.

If you put meds in the water when it isnt needed you may damage the filter bacteria, and force the tank into a less efficient state of ammonia neutralisation, and that can actually make your fungal problems worse over the long term, not better. Saprolegnia and a hundred other fungi and protists are in every drop of moisture, every mouthful of air you breathe. Your job is to stop them taking hold and proliferating, by denying them conditions that allow both them and dozens of other harmful bacteria to grow. Unless this is faced down, youll not win.

You prevent them by cleaning up until the point fish get directly infected, then you treat the fish with meds, because thats when the risks are worth the treatment.

As for the need to increase water changes, that depends on tanksize, stocking, and what your water quality perameters are. Most of the time issues like this are because of a maintanence issue, usually trapped detritus and eddies in the water flow that allow detritus to collect, perhaps hollow decorations may be at fault, sometimes theres some organic protiens and amino acids trapped in a piece of wood that get released as it erodes.

Only very rarely indeed is it down to a particularly virulent strain of saprolegnia, and in those circumstances the fish are often overtaken within hours, and so far since your fish are not yet infected, it probably just something you missed in the thoroughness of cleaning.

ps, what are your water perameters? Do you have a test kit to be able to test the water? The results might tell you a great deal.

If you want to try a sort of halfway med, just put a pinch of tonic salt in the tank, most freshwater strains of fungi hate salt. It might tip the balance and make it too difficult for them to grow, but there will still be the issue as to why its happening at all that will need to be addressed.I wouldnt use salt as part of regular maintenance for that tank though.