Does my 6 day old tank already have BBA?

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wesb2013

Gambusia
MFK Member
Mar 5, 2019
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Is this BBA in my new aquarium? I noticed a white / greyish film growing on one of my logs. The tank was just filled with water 6 days ago and is brand new. The log had been in my garage for several years and was pressure washed before being added to the tank.

I've got 2 other logs in the tank that don't have the film. The affected log is in a high-flow area right next to the return.

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It's biofilm. Every new piece of wood does it once it's submerged. It will go away naturally in a few weeks, but some fish like to nibble at it too. Or just manually clean it off, but it'll keep coming back until the wood is done "seasoning" in the tank, if you will.
 
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It might grow some BBA. There might be some decomposing element of the bogwood that favors its proliferation. I had a big piece of bogwood that, under light and current, would grow marvelous multi-colored algae out of the more rotten portions when it was newly added. After about a year, the algae sort of shrunk away and eventually disappeared. Shame, i kinda liked it.
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Just fungus growing off of wood that hasn't been submerged before. I get it a lot. The worst I've had is on some cherry wood, the bark is still white with fungus to this day. Not harmful to fish though. Snails seem to take care of it. BBA apparently needs blue light to grow.
 
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Agree with the comments that it's not uncommon and typically temporary. I collect my own driftwood and some pieces do it more than others.
 
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duanes said:
This is BBA growing on a log.
Click to expand...

duanes duanes ...are you sure you have the correct pic? This might be a problem arising from the use of common names that mean different things in different places to different people, but...the stuff in that picture is definitely not Black Beard Algae as I know it.

I hate the stuff with a passion, have none to get a pic of, but the BBA with which I'm familiar is fairly slow-growing, black in colour (duh...), and grows in little tufts that require power equipment and high explosives to remove. It always seems to grow on wood, rocks and other surfaces that prevent one from using a blade to scrape it off. Fortunately, it never seems to get completely out of control and usually seems to disappear after a few months of being verbally abused and cursed by me. :)

I agree with other posters that the stuff in the OP's pics is just the white fungus growth on newly-submerged wood, totally harmless and temporary.
 
To me, black beard agae, is Cyanobacteria.
It can be a range of colors, and take many forms.
It is usually slimey, as oppsed to gritty, and can thrive under multlple light intensities.
To control the stuff above, I used probioltis, in the form of Rid-X, took abetween 3 weeks and a month.
 
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