Growth On My Pennywort's Leaves

[tropicdragon]

Does anyone know what that long growth on my pennywort's leaves is? It's been spreading in my tank over to rocks and other plants' leaves. And I am also wondering what would be the best way to get rid of it ?

Thanks in advance!

 

[fudge]

more pictures please

 

[tropicdragon]

Here is another picture of a leaf with a bunch of those things seemingly growing on it

 

[fudge]

Here is another picture of a leaf with a bunch of those things seemingly growing on it

Maybe a saltdip

 

[fudge]

Algea might just growing on the leaves

 

[-Mak-]

That looks really weird, does it come off easily?

 

[angelcraze]

Looks like diatoms (brown algae). Is this a fairly new setup? Most often diatoms plague newly setup tanks and disappear on their own with time. It's typically due to silicates leeching from substrates. Changing water helps and manual siphoning it away, as well as keeping filter and tubes clean of them. Preserve all nitrifying bacteria when cleaning the filter, you don't want a mini-cycle! I'm assuming you are aware of the nitrogen cycle, if not read first about that.
IME, nerite snails do magic on diatoms, it's their favorite food consisting of opaline skeletons high in calcium for their shells. There are other fish that are amazing at eating diatoms, like otto cats, but it's not recommended to buy animals to control algae. When the algae is gone, the fish must be fed veggies and algae rounds, sometimes these fragile wild-caught fish don't learn to eat prepared foods. Snails are a much safer invert to add, they are beautiful and only 1 is needed to clean up 10 gallons of tank.

I included a pic of my one of my nerites cleaning a vallisneria leaf in like 10 mins. I purposely placed him on the leaf because it was so dirty with diatoms hahaha. You can see the 3" area he cleaned and how bad the diatoms were before lol. So squeaky clean were he grazed.


Then the snail cleaned to the very tip and proceeded back and finished the rest!

For the record he then moved on to a dusty Amazon sword leaf. I'll stop with the pics, haha, but they really don't stop until it's gone. And I manually place my nerites to do their magic.

 

[75g Discus Tank]

That that just looks like some fish poop to me.

 

[tropicdragon]

That looks really weird, does it come off easily?

Yes, if you rub the leaf it will come off, but it has been growing back pretty quickly recently.

Looks like diatoms (brown algae). Is this a fairly new setup? Most often diatoms plague newly setup tanks and disappear on their own with time. It's typically due to silicates leeching from substrates. Changing water helps and manual siphoning it away, as well as keeping filter and tubes clean of them. Preserve all nitrifying bacteria when cleaning the filter, you don't want a mini-cycle! I'm assuming you are aware of the nitrogen cycle, if not read first about that.

Yeah so the setup is about 3 1/2 months old, and is a 10 gallon tank. Does that seem a reasonable age for the diatoms to be growing like this ? I've only recently (two weeks ago) started putting in a little bit of liquid CO2 to aid the growth of plants and I don't know if that may have a bearing on it also ? Since I started cycling the tank (3 1/2 months ago) I've been using a product called Microbe-Lift Special Blend, not sure if you will know what this is but if you do, do you know if this will help preserve the nitrifying bacteria ?

Sorry for all the questions! But thank you for the help. Just want to make sure I am doing everything right.

I actually do have two Nerites in the tank! It's just that the pennywort is a little hard for them to get to, maybe I should put them manually on the leaf as you did with yours and see them do their thing haha. Had no idea it was a source of calcium for them!

 

[angelcraze]

It could absolutely be brown algae. Unless you have silicates in your source water (like me) diatoms should disappear on their own. Be patient, the time with diatoms varies.


Although now that I look at the other pics, it does look like fish poop stuck on the leaves as well! How did it get way up there? Doesn't look like nerite poop which is usually short little turds.

I didn't Google Microbe-Lift, but it's most likely a bacterial supplement. I believe in them, I believe they help with diatoms and fish poop too.

Read this if you haven't already, I use SepticBac for $2
The Use of Probiotics in Aquaculture

If that's poop on the leaves, why is it landing there? Flow? Don't worry about questions, that is how you learn, along with research, but you have to be careful which sources you get your info from, there's a lot of untrues out there! I would try to remove the poop daily by wiping the leaves lightly with a Kleenex. Mechanical damage will cause dark marks on the leaves. Then figure out why poop is accumulating there. I used to have my pennywort leaves on the very surface, the top of the leaf was dry, so no diatoms. My pennywort had since melted away, so if it's growing, don't give up on it, it's such a pretty plant

Large Nerites might have trouble attaching and balancing on a pennywart leaf, they might be too heavy for them. TIP: Just fyi, maybe you know this, if a nerite falls upside down, it will die since it cannot right himself back up. So if you see your Nerites on their back, turn them over upright.

 

[tropicdragon]

Yeah, the only fish who ever really goes up there is my betta, and then there is one little pest snail but his poops are similiar to nerites but smaller. But I never thought that a betta's poop would look like that. It does look rather strange though because it is making a weird pattern. And just as you said, the pennywort leaves that are not under the surface have no diatoms at all!

I tried to grab one of my nerites but he was just so stuck to where he was I didn't want to bother him. (I also didn't want to have to make sure he didn't fall on his back getting off the pennywort.) So I ended up just cleaning off the leaves myself. Monitoring them to see how fast it grows back.

Thanks so much for all the tips! They are very helpful!

 

[angelcraze]

Np, btw, I think the poop must be betta poop. Remove the poop with a turkey baster daily and try to keep pennywort leaves floating on the surface for now. You can try manually cleaning softly, but since the plant is so close to the light, it's at a disadvantage for collecting algae and the diatoms recur quickly. I'm not sure if I said it, but if it's a new tank, diatoms are common and usually go awayon their own.