White film/hair on drift wood

Sometimes patches of whitish fuzzy Saprolegnia appear on bogwood that's recently been placed in the aquarium. Though wood in oxygenated water at neutral pH values is almost always decaying, however slowly that may be happening, you don't want to encourage visible patches of fungus. Resist any temptation to attack the fungus by adding something toxic to the water. Don't haul out the wood and boil it in saltwater either. Be patient. As the aquarium matures, fungus on wood won't normally trouble you; in fact, bacteria are much more prominent than fungi as bio-degraders in submerged environments. Stronger light will encourage a thin coating of sessile algae, which soon brings the protists that feed on algae and on the fungal spores; the algae and bacterial polysaccharides form the basis of an increasingly balanced biofilm that will appeal to grazers like Epalzeorhyncos siamensis or Otocinclus and other Lory catfish. And the result of their grazing is that, though the spores are everywhere in water, patches of fungal hyphae don't get a chance to develop.

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