What are these?? PSO seeds/pods??

[AllFishNoBrakes]

I was checking out my 29 gallon Pea Puffer tank, and noticed something I’ve never seen before. They’re obviously from a plant, but it’s completely new to me. It’s entangled with my Pogostemon Stellatus Octopus, and I’m just a little baffled. I want to say seeds, or pods, but that just doesn’t make any sense. To the best of my knowledge, it’s not like an Aponogeton that flowered and I rubbed them together to make seeds. Seed or pods are just the only logical thing I can think of. No new plants have been added to this tank, and the tank is at least 3 years old. Check out the pics. 

Inside the tank here circled in red. It’s like a long string or fiber with little pods?

Here it is out of the tank and in my palm. 
 

Same thing just a little more bunched up. 
 

What is this? Anybody know?

[Lynaea]

Do you have floaters?

It looks kind of like when my duckweed gets pulled/pushed down and stuck in the frog-bit roots. 

[Odd Duck]

Looks like bladderwort - Utricularia sp.  There are several species.  If you can grow some at the surface of fairly still water it might bloom for you.  Then might be able to make an ID on the species.  Some have surprisingly large blooms for the size and delicacy of the plant.  Those bubbles are traps - the plant is carnivorous!  Very cool plant!  It is known to show up randomly because it will grow from broken bits and has very fine stems as illustrated well in your pics.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

On 9/16/2024 at 4:15 AM, Odd Duck said:

Looks like bladderwort - Utricularia sp.  There are several species.  If you can grow some at the surface of fairly still water it might bloom for you.  Then might be able to make an ID on the species.  Some have surprisingly large blooms for the size and delicacy of the plant.  Those bubbles are traps - the plant is carnivorous!  Very cool plant!  It is known to show up randomly because it will grow from broken bits and has very fine stems as illustrated well in your pics.

Super interesting! I wonder how I got it in my tank 🤔

I’m gonna leave some in there towards the surface and see if it blooms. That’s rad that it’s carnivorous! I kinda wish it ate algae, though 😂. This Pea Puffer tank is the one that struggles the most when it comes to algae. 

Edited Monday at 07:12 PM by AllFishNoBrakes

[Odd Duck]

On 9/16/2024 at 1:29 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

Super interesting! I wonder how I got it in my tank 🤔

I’m gonna leave some in there towards the surface and see if it blooms. That’s rad that it’s carnivorous! I kinda wish it ate algae, though 😂. This Pea Puffer tank is the one that struggles the most when it comes to algae. 

It likely hitched in with plants.  It breaks into small pieces that would be very hard to spot among other plants.

Pea puffer tanks are notoriously difficult to control algae since they are messy eaters.  More frequent water changes making sure to vacuum away uneaten food debris and having the tank heavily planted with plants that are heavy feeders like swords or fast growing stem plants helps limit algae.  Having some floating plants like frogbit can be helpful but they can shade out submerse plants too much if not controlled.  Using emerse plants like pothos (of any variety) or lucky bamboo (or other Dracaena species) can also help.  Pea puffers prefer having some moss to breed in but it can be tough to keep moss free of algae since the usual fish or shrimp used as moss cleaners don’t necessarily prosper in pea puffer tanks.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

@Odd Duck appreciate all the advice. I do pretty much all of those things, lol. This tank just takes the most manual work out of all of them, in addition to all those things listed that help out, too. 

[Odd Duck]

On 9/18/2024 at 7:59 AM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

@Odd Duck appreciate all the advice. I do pretty much all of those things, lol. This tank just takes the most manual work out of all of them, in addition to all those things listed that help out, too. 

And this is why I gave up on pea puffers.  Sooooo much work for fish that were experts at hiding in their heavily planted tanks.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

On 9/18/2024 at 8:11 AM, Odd Duck said:

And this is why I gave up on pea puffers.  Sooooo much work for fish that were experts at hiding in their heavily planted tanks.

Haha, for sure. At this point I just accept that the Java Ferns are gonna have some algae. I’m gonna have to use my medium magnet and scrape some algae off the front and side. The PSO goes WILD and fills in the whole tank, and at that point I don’t have to do much scraping. But then I thin it out, and it starts all over again. 
 

I have shrimp and Nerite snails successfully in this tank. I’m thinking of adding a herd of Amanos to see if that helps. Java Ferns have started some hair alagae… I wish I could throw some Rosy Barbs in here, but I don’t see that working out. The joys of owning murder beans!

[Odd Duck]

Amanos survived in my pea tanks (never tried them in with Bad Pea Daddy because he was such a jerk) and with abundant PSO, they would likely survive in yours, especially if you could find some larger ones.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

On 9/18/2024 at 8:45 AM, Odd Duck said:

and with abundant PSO, they would likely survive in yours, especially if you could find some larger ones.

Exactly my thought. If the Blue Diamond Neo culls can survive, and even breed and the shrimplets survive (at least some of them) it makes me pretty confident in the Amanos. 
 

Pretty wild, at least in my experience, to have Pea Puffers, Nerites, Shrimp, and CPO’s all cohabitating. I think the Nerites survive as the Peas simply can’t get to them. The Neo’s utilize the coverage well, and then they reach a size where the Pea’s won’t mess with them. And CPO’s are just basically bigger shrimp with claws. So far, so good. It’s just the tank that requires he most manual work on the algae. Basically all 13 other tanks are mostly hands off and super balanced after 4 years. 

The algae doesn’t look bad from far away, but close up it’s definitely there. Mostly fight it on the Java Ferns.