Invasive Plant

kcooley

freeswimming
Dec 14, 2005
406
0
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40
MN
the first thing everyone asks for when someone mentions something in their tank is for a picture. i dont have one so bear with me here.

a while ago i started to see what looked like fine green barbed wire in my tank. i don tknow what the heck it is but since the first few strands of it i have been removing it by clumps. it tends to grow in places about 6" from the surface in ludwigia or rotala where it can stay put.

it literally looks like barbed wire, there is no other way to explain it, a green filament with a node and two barbels sticking out of the them. the nodes are about 1cm apart and the strands are about 6" long

any help is appreciated, since it is a planted tank i am guessing there is no way to annihalate it. but any info helps!
 
Don't know for sure. Would you google pictures of staghorn algae and see if that's close?

http://www.plantgeek.net/article_viewer.php?id=9
This page says " Seems to grow mostly on tank equipment near the surface."
It has 2 pictures but when I googled, there were others to look at and they were all a bit different.

Or, maybe you can see another picture on that page that might be close, if it is indeed algae.

The only other thing I can think of, not algae, is java moss.
 
nope.

i have been searching the algae sites for about 2 hours now, i have not seen a single form that even resembles this. it is multicellular. it has a stalk, 2 nodes or blooms and 2 shorter stalks or barbs growing from the node. it literally looks like barbed wire




------}o-----}o----}o----}o-----

like that... :huh:
 
Pics!!!
 
i dont have a camera and i dont have media sharing capabilities on my phone.


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--}o---}o---}o---
/

That is as good as it gets. it is very small and stringy. very annoying i had to throw away 24" rotala bunch i have grown off of for 6 months and sold shoots to the LFS. it is ruining all of my stem plants
 
Is it some kind of runner coming from the plants? Or is it really living on its own?

It sounds like a runner, or some other comparable structure, to me. Some plants propogate by those. They spread on the substrate and grow a new plant some distance away from the parent.
 
I know what your talking about but I don't know the name. I believe the stuff grows extreamly fast if there are alot of nutrients in the tank.
 
this stuff is growing out of control.

it is no part of any of the plants in my tank. i added a rotala wallachi bunch, a rotala magenta bunch, and ludwigia peruensis bunch and a alternanthera reineckii bunch. none of these propagate any other way but trimmings and shoots. stem plants. all of the other plants in my tank are atleast 3 months old.

justin, i think you are on the right track, i add nutrients every day at 1/5 the weekly dose.

i just want to kill it!!!!!
 
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