Cabomba Mutation

We have this odd thing occurring in our tank. I beleive the plant is a cabomba or in that family. Its been very happy and content for last 4 months(since entered into tank). Now it seems to be mutating at its most mature points. The fine light green leaves have gone dark green and balooned into an alien type mutation.Will the leaves explode and cause carnage amonst the fish - or is this a normal part of plant maturation. How can i find out what is occurring. Jenna

Do you have a pic this sounds odd?

jennaman said:

The fine light green leaves have gone dark green and balooned into an alien type mutation.Will the leaves explode and cause carnage amonst the fish

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I'll take this with a pinch of salt until we can see some photos

pictures?

I'm curious..................pics?

pics attached, hope they help oir at least are interresting.

I see no pics captain!

you are so right. i have them here, but theh dont seem to want to attach. I will keep trying

jennaman said:

you are so right. i have them here, but theh dont seem to want to attach. I will keep trying

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X-Files theme playing while we wait.

The suspense is deafening Can you say that

ChrisP said:

Do you have a pic this sounds odd?

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Hi,
sorry for the delay, shrinking these pictures has been a task. But as requested here are some pics. I would be very interrested in your views. The dark green casing appears to be enveloping the light green leaves. So far thje fish seem unpeterbed. What do you think.

looks like algae to me.. cyanobacteria algae BGA(blue green) I believe ... a pain to get rid of.. It should be really stinky when you smell it

Very interesting. Never seen it like that, but it looks like BGA to me too.

Yeh BGA im afraid, I had this sort of thing on my java fern and cabomba, just give them a really good clean under the tap and that should get rid of most of it, but you may have to sort something in the long term as it comes back quite quickly. In my experience it tends to be a result of not enough tank maintenance (cleaning and water changes) whats your current schedule? how much water do you change each time?

Sam

Themuleous said:

Yeh BGA im afraid, I had this sort of thing on my java fern and cabomba, just give them a really good clean under the tap and that should get rid of most of it, but you may have to sort something in the long term as it comes back quite quickly. In my experience it tends to be a result of not enough tank maintenance (cleaning and water changes) whats your current schedule? how much water do you change each time?

Sam

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It depends on the type of system you have, high-tech or low-tech. I have had terrible BGA in the past in my high-tech 15g. I got rid of it when I began dosing more macronutrients. I did a full tank vacumn and removed as much of the gunk as I could. Did then a 50% water change and began to seriously dose Nitrogen and other macronutrients. I tried to keep my Nitrates at 20ppm, which was recommended to me. Though, I never achieved those results, my dosing of Nitrates did eliminate my BGA problem. Basically, in a nutshell, I started using EI. I recommend you read Zig's article. I have not had algae issues (except for Greenwater which was my fault) in my 15g since I seriously started EI. What's your WPG and how many plants do you have in there? Increase your plant mass with more fast-growing stems. Egeria species are really, really good for this. Not the prettiest, but you can make a decent aquascape with Egeria, especially E. najas, which is prettier than E. densa. I apologize for the multitude of questions, but I want to help you as I understand your frustration.