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What is this stuff? White, stringy, suffocating


Steelen

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This is suffocating my Clove/Zoa frag. Overtook the frag in less than a month and is now growing on my rocks also.

 

Want to get rid of it asap! Cannot find anything really online after a week of figuring it out.

 

Best picture (dont have a camera)

KrUgxTK.jpg?1

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Sponges croak when exposed to air. Take the frag out of the tank and squeeze the little buggers to get the water out of them and air into them. That should kill them.

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Sponges croak when exposed to air. Take the frag out of the tank and squeeze the little buggers to get the water out of them and air into them. That should kill them.

 

Some of the malignant ones don't give a %$&*_)& about air in my experience. I tried that with my yellow encrusting sponge for more than 30 minutes, have also injected air straight into it, and it doesn't care in the slightest.

 

I'd be more inclined to recommend smothering it in kalk paste.

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not algae, touch it is it rubbery feeling? Also is it smooth or rough textured? is it a bit slimy?

It was smooth and slimy. I got a soft tooth brush and removed most it. I'll monitor the frag of the next few days and will repeat that.

 

It came off super easy. Hope I didnt damage the zoas too much. We'll see what happens. It was a cheap frag thank god.

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It was smooth and slimy. I got a soft tooth brush and removed most it. I'll monitor the frag of the next few days and will repeat that.

It came off super easy. Hope I didnt damage the zoas too much. We'll see what happens. It was a cheap frag thank god.

not any sponge I can imagine, shape makes it not any normal tunicate, its weak grip also defys most sponges and tunicates, I'm actually going to guess it's some weird water fungus, very likely its harmless as all the weird branching ones I've heard of don't do any direct offensive damage to corals. Also if by some weird chance it is a sponge be comforted in the fact most encountered sponges in the aquarium are completely harmless filter feeders. But it could be something else entirely. But to my knowledge fungus is most likely.

I hope I helped some.

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  • 2 weeks later...

not any sponge I can imagine, shape makes it not any normal tunicate, its weak grip also defys most sponges and tunicates, I'm actually going to guess it's some weird water fungus, very likely its harmless as all the weird branching ones I've heard of don't do any direct offensive damage to corals. Also if by some weird chance it is a sponge be comforted in the fact most encountered sponges in the aquarium are completely harmless filter feeders. But it could be something else entirely. But to my knowledge fungus is most likely.

I hope I helped some.

Stuff keeps growing back... So i keep using a tooth brush to get it off my liverock now. The zoa frag did not survive so removed it and threw it away. It was also on a candy cane and had to throw that one out too. Completely dead beyond recover.

 

Still not closers to figuring what it really is. ?

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Is the coral dying from the growth ( I'll assume its a fungi until further evidence), or is the fungi growing as an opportunist feeding on already sick or dead polyps?

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Is the coral dying from the growth ( I'll assume its a fungi until further evidence), or is the fungi growing as an opportunist feeding on already sick or dead polyps?

Its dying from the growth. Completely overtaking it and just suffocating it. It grows ridiculously quick. The corals are healthy.

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Kinda reminds me of those cordycipitacae fungi, but I have never heard of an aquatic species in that group let alone saltwater.

Its dying from the growth. Completely overtaking it and just suffocating it. It grows ridiculously quick. The corals are healthy.

 

does it ever grow away from corals?
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Kinda reminds me of those cordycipitacae fungi, but I have never heard of an aquatic species in that group let alone saltwater.

does it ever grow away from corals?

It grows where ever it can reach. Because it attached itself to the rock the zoa was growing to, its now on the main portion of the rock in the tank. Growing up towards other corals.

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Doesn't look like a fungus to me. Most aquatic fungi I know of don't form hyphae like that. It also is growing way too fast and forming hyphae too quickly to be a fungi (usually, anyways) and the fungi would probably be utilizing the coral as food not just suffocating it. I think it's something else, like a sponge. Other people have suggested the same.

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Doesn't look like a fungus to me. Most aquatic fungi I know of don't form hyphae like that. It also is growing way too fast and forming hyphae too quickly to be a fungi (usually, anyways) and the fungi would probably be utilizing the coral as food not just suffocating it. I think it's something else, like a sponge. Other people have suggested the same.

 

I've seen some pretty dang quick fungal growth, entire mushrooms sprouting through the ground after a 2 day period, banana slices after no more than 2 summer days totally covered, I've seen plenty more intensely quick fungal growths and I'm sure others have seen that also.
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I've seen some pretty dang quick fungal growth, entire mushrooms sprouting through the ground after a 2 day period, banana slices after no more than 2 summer days totally covered, I've seen plenty more intensely quick fungal growths and I'm sure others have seen that also.

Mushrooms are slightly different in that those are what are used to spread the spores, so they do grow quickly. The hyphae/mycelium below the ground, which is what the mushrooms spread from, usually don't grow that quickly, especially when competing for nutrients. Banana slices being covered in fuzzy growth is different, too (those could be bacterial growth, which grow way faster than fungi). We can get into the metabolism, but the aquarium is a much more nutrient limited environment than banana slices. Even there, the fungi grow quickly because they aren't putting out hyphae (roots/arms) that are smothering out an entire coral - the banana provides rapid sugar and moisture to the fungi to grow quickly. The pictures OP put up would likely take longer than overnight simply because of the energy requirement to produce something that large/thick. Most fungi require a decent amount of time to grow, trust me.

 

It's possible that it's fungal, but if that's the case, and it's growing that quickly, OP might be SOL. Antifungals = anticoral/fish/crabs/people so using them is a major risk. Fungal cells are eukaryotes, as are everything we have in our tanks except the bacteria, so using an antifungal puts a risk of killing everything else, too.

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ReefWeeds

not any sponge I can imagine, shape makes it not any normal tunicate, its weak grip also defys most sponges and tunicates, I'm actually going to guess it's some weird water fungus, very likely its harmless as all the weird branching ones I've heard of don't do any direct offensive damage to corals. Also if by some weird chance it is a sponge be comforted in the fact most encountered sponges in the aquarium are completely harmless filter feeders. But it could be something else entirely. But to my knowledge fungus is most likely.

I hope I helped some.

It looks a little bit like that mystery white stuff I had earlier!

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Mushrooms are slightly different in that those are what are used to spread the spores, so they do grow quickly. The hyphae/mycelium below the ground, which is what the mushrooms spread from, usually don't grow that quickly, especially when competing for nutrients. Banana slices being covered in fuzzy growth is different, too (those could be bacterial growth, which grow way faster than fungi). We can get into the metabolism, but the aquarium is a much more nutrient limited environment than banana slices. Even there, the fungi grow quickly because they aren't putting out hyphae (roots/arms) that are smothering out an entire coral - the banana provides rapid sugar and moisture to the fungi to grow quickly. The pictures OP put up would likely take longer than overnight simply because of the energy requirement to produce something that large/thick. Most fungi require a decent amount of time to grow, trust me.

 

It's possible that it's fungal, but if that's the case, and it's growing that quickly, OP might be SOL. Antifungals = anticoral/fish/crabs/people so using them is a major risk. Fungal cells are eukaryotes, as are everything we have in our tanks except the bacteria, so using an antifungal puts a risk of killing everything else, too.

 

it takes energy to grow anything living, sponges for a dead certianty almost always grow slower than fungal hyphae. And lets just assume this fungi does actually have very slow growing hyphae, the fruiting body can still grow quickly, and since the presence of microscopic hyphae won't be seen with the naked eye, the fungus can spread without ever being noticed before it's too late. Its not that fungi are eukaryotes as the primary issue, algae also are eukaryotes, its that many of their proteins are quite similar to animals and body systems work similarly from that making general fungal poisons often animal poisons also.

It looks a little bit like that mystery white stuff I had earlier!

 

I noticed that also lol.
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it takes energy to grow anything living, sponges for a dead certianty almost always grow slower than fungal hyphae. And lets just assume this fungi does actually have very slow growing hyphae, the fruiting body can still grow quickly, and since the presence of microscopic hyphae won't be seen with the naked eye, the fungus can spread without ever being noticed before it's too late. Its not that fungi are eukaryotes as the primary issue, algae also are eukaryotes, its that many of their proteins are quite similar to animals and body systems work similarly from that making general fungal poisons often animal poisons also.

 

We can talk microbiology all day long. I mentioned eukaryotes specifically to talk about the fact that antifungals are anti-eukaryotic in general. Antifungals primarily target cholesterols in fungi and in other eukaryotic cell membranes. There are cholesterols in marine algae, so they theoretically could also be affected by the antifungals, if you use certain ones. Azoles would likely be fine because they target a specific compound in fungi required to produce ergosterol, the specific cholesterol in fungal cell membranes, but those still can cause problems. Also fruiting bodies are multicellular and I think it very unlikely that that many of them would just appear overnight. Seeing a few is one thing, having them overtake coral in such a way that the coral are smothered it another.

 

Definitely could be a fungus, but I don't think so based on the pictures. The filaments above do not look like any marine fungus I've ever seen. They typically have small, thin hair-like hyphae and look fuzzy - growing on fish and on corals themselves, causing massive destruction to that which they grow on. There are "Coral fungi" that grow on land (named coral fungi because they branch like coral) that look similar to those pictures, but I've never heard of a species of the coral fungi that grow in marine environments.

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We can talk microbiology all day long. I mentioned eukaryotes specifically to talk about the fact that antifungals are anti-eukaryotic in general. Antifungals primarily target cholesterols in fungi and in other eukaryotic cell membranes. There are cholesterols in marine algae, so they theoretically could also be affected by the antifungals, if you use certain ones. Azoles would likely be fine because they target a specific compound in fungi required to produce ergosterol, the specific cholesterol in fungal cell membranes, but those still can cause problems. Also fruiting bodies are multicellular and I think it very unlikely that that many of them would just appear overnight. Seeing a few is one thing, having them overtake coral in such a way that the coral are smothered it another.

 

Definitely could be a fungus, but I don't think so based on the pictures. The filaments above do not look like any marine fungus I've ever seen. They typically have small, thin hair-like hyphae and look fuzzy - growing on fish and on corals themselves, causing massive destruction to that which they grow on. There are "Coral fungi" that grow on land (named coral fungi because they branch like coral) that look similar to those pictures, but I've never heard of a species of the coral fungi that grow in marine environments.

 

lol I know you can talk really deep with microbiology, its your job. I must admit I'm as surprised as everyone of the speed this thing is growing at, and it could be possibly a new species in all actuality. Marine fungi are so pathetically understudied its sad. I think the best thing for us both is to look at this matter with a very open mind and remember the oceans are full of surprises.
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