Is this algae or bacteria?

[JBird]

55g standard tank that is about 10yrs old. I had it empty for a couple of years and set it back up 4 days ago. Driftwood has some kind of white'ish funk on it and a little spot on the gravel behind it. Malaysian driftwood, mountain stone, Eco Complete and Gravel mixed, hygro corymbosa, crypts, bacopa, Java fern, anubias, sag subulata and I don't remember what the red stems are. 48" Finnex Planted Plus 24/7 SE

 

[awilkinson871]

Just biofilm. Totally normal.

 

[ChrissFishes01]

Driftwood tends to grow that during its' first few weeks in the tank. Harmless. It goes away after a bit, or you can scrub it off.

 

[JBird]

Sweet. Thank you.
This may be a stupid question, but does running an airstone affect flourish? I used DIY CO2 in the past and to offset co2 overdosing I used an airstone at night. I think I read that algae doesn't do well in oxygen rich water, so I thought I would run an airstone, but not sure if the oxygen rich water affects flourish.

 

[ChrissFishes01]

To my knowledge, it doesn't effect it at all. Aeration shouldn't negatively impact how plants uptake fertilizer, to my knowledge.

If you mean Flourish Excel ("liquid CO2"), Excel is really gluteraldehyde (spelling?), or an algae-killer. It doesn't really add much in the way of carbon - in fact, an airstone will actually add more carbon to the water than liquid CO2 does through gas exchange with the air.

 

[JBird]

Thank you again. I did mean Excel. I thought it was glut free. But I never used it before. I'll keep the airstone on then.

 

[ChrissFishes01]

Thank you again. I did mean Excel. I thought it was glut free. But I never used it before. I'll keep the airstone on then.

I haven't used excel in several years, but whenever I used it, it had glutaraldehyde in it. A quick Google search says that they updated the label to list a different chemical, but that it had a very similar effect. So, it appears I may be a bit outdated on that info! Seems as if most of the same things still apply to the new formula, though.