driftwood fungus?

[Magdelaine]

I have a piece of driftwood in my tank that is now fishless cycling. I didn't treat it specially when I got it except to soak it for a week. It's been in there for about 4 or 5 days and I can see some white fluffy stuff growing on it that must be fungus.

I'm thinking that can't be right; the driftwood will just disintegrate in the tank if I let it continue (and what about effects on fish?). So do I give it a very strong salt bath or vinegar bath or something?

[Damon]

Are you sure its driftwood? It shouldn't fungus. Where did you get it from?

[TANKER]

The "fungus" that is growing on your wood is actually sap and other materials leaching from the wood and feeding a form of algae. This is a typicall occurance for non cured relatively fresh deadfall wood especially among the softer woods.. The best thing you can do to treat the leaching is to cure the wood by wrapping it in a towel, keeping the towel damp and allowing the sap to work its way out of the wood over the next 4-6 weeks. The only other way I know of to stop it would be to let the wood dry out completely which can take several months before the sap is completely gone from the wood.
Boiling the wood sure can't hurt, however until the sap works its way out of the wood your problems will just return.

[Magdelaine]

Got it off Ebay *sigh* I live in the desert and there just isn't much driftwood around here.

It was completely bone dry and very light when I got it; it took almost a week of soaking before it stopped floating and was totally saturated.

Algea huh? Is there such a thing as white algea? (I'm sure it's possible, I've just never seen it) Now most of the indented surfaces are covered with a thin white fuzz, and it's longer (5mm) and wavy in places. I can't post a pic right now but I will try later.

Since I'm still cycling and there's no fish to fret over I'm just going to leave it for now, but it would be nice to know how to stop it from being fuzzy.

[TANKER]

I know how you feel. I lived in Arizona myself when I started in on the aquarama. My first piece of wood did the same thing as yours is doing now. Unfortunately I didn't know that wasn't normal as this was my first tank, the algae/sap actually grew to the surface of my tank before I realised this was not a good thing to have going on. I wound up just chucking the wood and getting a different type for the tank. I suspect now looking back that I had a piece of softwood rather than a piece of hardwood like an oak or something similar. Softwoods are extremely high in sap content and rot much quicker in an aquarium than hardwoods do.

[Magdelaine]

I changed my mind and pulled out the driftwood, and a good thing too...

I've not got chunks of white fluffy swirling around my rather cloudy looking aquarium.

I'm going to boil it for a couple of hours to try and sterilize and "cure" it of this problem. It's a small peice so 2 hours should do it. I don't think it's bog wood but it is definitely not green, either. It's obviously been in water, looking at the way it has aged, but I would guess it came from a river (North. California).

[Magdelaine]

I removed the driftwood and boiled it for several hours, twice. As soon as I placed it back in the tank, however, I noticed that the white stuff reappeared. Then, this morning, guess what I found all over one of the lava rocks I placed in the tank? Yep, fuzzy white stuff. It obviously was growing while the driftwood was gettting its bath. I'm posting a pic so you can see what I mean.

No fish yet, tank is cycling ammonia to 0 daily but Nitrites are still sky high...

Will an algea eater get rid of this stuff? And are fish like the siamese algea eater Otos? I just want one, not a school.

[Mr Aquarium]

That stuff don't do anything to harm your tank,
Just makes your wood look bad.
I heard redtailed sharks and other algie picking fish love that stuff and go nuts for it.