Info on water mold. (or slime, or bacteria, or what ever it might be) AlL in know is that it occurs here in my water, and filtration (esp the diaton which unfortunately breaks down easily (vortex) and I am looking for another brand that won't.)(so far that has resolved it for me) I use the filter on my pre water set up as I have eight tanks. Best Sherry water mold Encyclopia Britannica Article also spelled water mould any of about 150 species of fungi belonging to the order Saprolegniales within the class Oomycetes. Many of them live in fresh or brackish water or wet soils. Most species are saprobic (i.e., they live on dead or decaying organic matter), although some cause diseases in certain fishes, higher plants, algae, protozoans, and marine invertebrates. The mycelium (filaments composing (rest one has to pay) xxxhttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chromista/oomycota.html I am leaving much out, please go to link to see all. "Water molds were once thought to be fungi. The Oomycota were once classified as fungi, because of their filamentous growth, and because they feed on decaying matter like fungi. The cell wall of oomycetes, however, is not composed of chitin, as in the fungi, but is made up of a mix of cellulosic compounds and glycan. The nuclei within the filaments are diploid, with two sets of genetic information, not haploid as in the fungi." "Parasitic water molds damage fish and many crop plants. Some water molds are parasites on other organisms; they may grow on the scales or eggs of fish, or on amphibians. The water mold Saprolegnia causes lesions on fish which cause problems when the water is rather stagnant, as in aquaria or fish farms, or at high population densities, such as when salmon swim upstream to spawn. Other species of Saprolegnia are parasitic on aquatic invertebrates such as rotifers, nematodes, and arthropods, and on diatoms." Gteat link for algae and molds. xxxhttp://members.aol.com/casey144801/aquarium/algae.htm ..................... xxxhttp://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/biofilm/molds.shtml Fungi and water molds (and slime molds too) Fungi typically work unseen, like bacteria. We notice them only by their results. Fungi are colorless; except for a few kinds, their only colors are provided by their spores; the spores make bread molds colorful. The real body of fungi, their mycelia, are less noticeable, unless a damp spadeful of garden humus reveals their frayed gauzy cobwebs. A few familiar manifestations of fungi are not at home in water. For a start, there are no aquatic mushrooms or toadstools, because those large fruiting bodies depend on currents of air to scatter their spores. Also absent in water are the lichens, a kind of catch-all group invented to describe the symbiotic pairings of a fungus with an alga or a cyanobacterium. These partnerships were among the first conquerors of the land, the tougher cell walls of the fungus protecting the alga from drought. By contrast, there's no especial advantage for lichens in a water environment; instead, aquatic fungi are more likely to be closely associated with bacteria within the biofilm. Another terrestrial role for fungi that's minimized in aquatic habitats is that of the mycorrhizae. Just about every terrestrial flowering plant, including each species of tree in the rain forest, has its own species of co-evolved mycorrhizal fungi, which coat its microscopic root hairs and penetrate the very cells of the root. The mycorrhizae bring water to the roots and share with the plant those essential nutrients that only fungal enzymes can "digest" out of the soil. The "higher" or vascular plants originally evolved on land. When some of them colonized freshwater, they largely left behind their symbiotic fungi. The mycorrhizae weren't necessary in the aquatic environment, and most of our familiar water plants don't have them. Fungal roles in water. Fungi rot the wood and leaf litter in tropical water. The fungi that have been most thoroughly studied are terrestrial, but their ecological role in freshwater is important: fungi are the main decomposers of softer plant and animal tissues . And they are the only organisms that can oxidize lignin directly. Water-saturated wood is a suitable substrate for fungal growth, as long as there is enough oxygen in the water: indeed the powerful carbon-to-carbon bonds of lignin that form the skeletal structure of wood can only be broken down by fungal enzymes. (Bacteria can break down the cellulose in plant walls, but not lignin.) Those enzymes need plentiful oxygen to create highly oxidative free radicals in order to crack the powerful chemical bonds of lignin and cellulose. By contrast, without oxygen-- for instance at the bottom of an anaerobic bog-- wood can lie for thousands of years without rotting. Closer to home, the enzyme cellulase, derived from fungi, produces your "stone-washed" jeans by dissolving away the outermost layers of cellulose-rich cotton fibers, thus releasing some dye. Two of the main divisions in the kingdom of fungi are the basidiomycetes and the ascomycetes. Comparatively few basidiomycetes are found on submerged wood, according to a recent Thailand study. Though the particular assemblage of fungi was different at each site, most of the fungi in leaf litter that has been washed into tropical streams turn out to be ascomycetes, normal terrestrial mitosporic fungi, the same Thailand study found. These are the fungi that break down leaf litter on the forest floor. "Mitosporic" simply means that these fungi normally reproduce vegetatively, dividing and elongating and forming asexual spores, rather than sexually, by exchanging genetic material within the nucleus. In contrast to the basidiomycetes, a wide assemblage of the other major group of fungi, the ascomycetes, are more or less adapted to life in the water. All they need is some vascular plant material, alive or dead, either growing in the water, or emerse like the stems of reeds and rushes, or else to be washed in from the surrounding terrain on woody debris or even in leaf litter. The planted aquarium is a haven for them. The filaments of the ascomycetes invade submerged plant stems, woody substrates and senescent leaves. They secrete enzymes to break down the cellulose of cell walls, break down the pectins that hold cells together and assimilate stored sugars and starches. These decomposers serve as food for the primary grazers in the biofilm. Without passing through their sexual state, the freshwater ascomycetes constantly produce, at the ends of some hyphae, filamentlike or hollow spores ("conidia") that float or entangle or stick to new substrates. Eventually, if conditions are good, the ascomycetes may also form sexual fruiting bodies, in the form of a disc or a sac or cup that is more or less closed, according to the species, usually less than half a millimeter across. Then they can release their spores, which are dispersed in the water currents to fetch up on new substrates. Many of the microscopic spores of these aquatic ascomycetes are provided with filaments and gelatinous coverings to help them get entangled and stick fast in suitable places. The structures of these details are extremely various. So both the sexually produced spores and the conidia are distributed all through the freshwater planted aquarium. They provide mysterious subjects in floc to puzzle amateur microscopists. At the website "Freshwater Ascomycetes and their anamorphs" (anamorphs are the non-sexual fungal life stages) you can see micropix of ascomycetes species and get some background information about the group of ascomycetes to be found in freshwater. Yeasts. Also at home in water are yeasts, the unconnected, rounded, budding forms of fungi. Instead of forming a filamentous mycelium from hyphae like most of the fungi, the yeasts are constantly budding and pinching off, fragmenting and multiplying in small clusters of cells. The yeasts have a page to themselves in this folder. Water molds. As the biofilm develops, the spores of funguslike water molds (Oomycetes) will also settle on any suitably "biodegradable" surface that they are able to penetrate with their extending rootlike process and digest. The water molds or Oomycetes, Saprolegnia and its clan (the "Saprolegniales"), are partners with bacteria and true fungi in decomposing cellulose and lignin. In the aquarium, at the early stage in the biofilm's development, the fungal mycelia have few competitors for space. Saprophytic water molds can form large whitish colonies, especially on wood, in the newly set-up tank. But fungi have such a messy manner of feeding that they attract tablemates. Fungi must exude enzymes to decompose their nourishing substrate, to break down complex organic structures into soluble sugar units and other simple molecules that can diffuse through their cell walls. Then they absorb the molecular soup they have created in a microscopic layer surrounding the fungal mycelium. The immediate neighborhood of thriving water molds and fungi offers rich rewards for bacteria. Before long, as benthic populations mature, open space will be at a premium, and saprophytic fungi will assume their usual less important role in underwater decomposition, as symbiotic partners of bacteria. Ordinarily you won't see mats of fungal hyphae forming unless there's been a temporary windfall of degradable tissues, like a dead fish. Then the saprophytic fungi will experience a population boom. But fungi and fungal spores are a major food source for many protists, and for nematodes and other minute organisms. So the resource that sparks a boom is followed by a crash, like the population of a gold-rush camp. As a rule fungi are aerobic, but under anoxic conditions the Oomycetes can switch to fermentation like yeasts. There are more than 500 species of water molds, but that figure includes those oomycetes that inhabit the water films of damp terrestrial soils, such as the one that caused the potato blight in Ireland of 1845-1848, or the closely related ones that are now causing "sudden oak death" among native Californian oaks and Coast Redwoods and the East Coast canker of beeches. Most water molds prefer clean cool waters, but a few thrive in polluted streams. Most water molds don't tolerate much salinity. Thus you raise the temperature and add salt to counter "fungal fin rot." (But since the kingdom of fungi always offers exceptions, a few of the Saprolegniales are found in slightly brackish waters.) Oomycetes do operate like typical fungi in many ways. When a fungal spore germinates, it begins a budding process, building a branching and self-grafting network of hyphae. Throughout their structure hyphae remain only a single cell thick. Fungal growth is largely confined to the tips of the hyphae, which elongate in the water and will also penetrate cells. You can easily see that, in comparison to its volume, the network structure offers huge surfaces for nutrient absorption. That's important for oomycetes and fungi, for absorption is the only way they can "feed." The oomycetes are saprobic, that is, subsisting on dead organic matter and helping decay it. But since they absorb their pre-digested food rather than ingest it whole or envelope it, say, as an amoeba does, a parasitic life-style is a natural opportunity for them. When they invade living organic matter, we consider them parasites. Opportunistic Saprolegnia can attack a weakened living fish, in the guise of "mouth fungus" or "body fungus." Saprolegnia and its kin are the only group of water molds that can attack fish eggs or tissues of living fish. But are Oomycetes fungi after all? Freshwater oomycetes are among the "primitive" group of fungi that produce motile zoospores in sac-like spore-cases called sporangia --that is, if they are in fact fungi at all! Some aspects of oomycetes set them apart from all others in the kingdom of fungi. Their zoospores have flagella, which enable them to swim in water. That's not very fungal. And there are other very fundamental differences from the typical members of the fungal kingdom. The Oomycetes contain a unique mix in their cell walls of cellulose compounds and glycan, whereas the other four phyla of fungi construct cell walls containing chitin, (which is also the material of insect exoskeletons). That's a pretty basic metabolic difference. And since oomycetes spend most of their life in the diploid state (like plants and animals), rather than in the haploid state (like other fungi), some biologists are questioning now whether the oomycetes have any true connection with the fungi at all! DNA analysis seems to confirm that they're only very distantly related, if they do have any common ancestry. So stay tuned! There's more about the possible "kingdom of Chromists," where some biologists would associate oomycetes with diatoms and even with kelp, at the Berkeley website, www.ucmp.berkeley.edu But in the aquarium we still think of the Saprolegniae as fungi. Fungi link. A really broad portal to web information concerning every aspect of fungi is at http://mycology.cornell.edu/fteach.html Slime molds (myxomycetes). Slime molds only make rare appearances in aquaria. Probably just as well, since a blob of protoplasm that very slowly shifts from one place to another may raise alarms. Slime molds commonly occur in microhabitats where bacterial populations are dense. Decaying submerged wood is the usual substrate for the aquatic myxomycetes, but their common lifestyle is ordinarily in the form of microscopic amoeboflagellate cells that live independent lives, feeding mostly on bacteria but also ingesting fungal spores and algal cells. But then, at a chemical signal, the cells congregate, moving together to join into a plasmodium, the single, amorphous, slowly-shifting mass you might see. It's a whitish blob of protoplasm like a big amoeba but with many nuclei, which very slowly shifts about. Beverly Erlebacher's slime-mold post "What was the white monster crawling in my tank?" in response to a newsgroup post is archived at theKrib.com. Myxomycetes are more common in damp forest ecosystems than underwater. The Myxomycetes homepage gives you some general information but makes the merest mention of aquatic slime molds: "Didymium aquatile has been found on submerged plant material and Didymium difforme is capable of completing its entire life cycle under water. Plasmodia have been observed submerged in glass flower vases." In Veracruz, Mexico, the plasmodia are collected and fried and eaten as the untranslatable caca de luna.

Bluegirl, that's a good point about adjusting to whatever your experience says is normal - like traffic noises or train sounds if you live near their passages, or heat in a Nevada summer, or cold in a Minnesota winter. It's just what you expect and we build positive associations with it for the pleasant events that happen in that period. As a relative outsider to cicadas, the negative associations have gotten firmly established before any positive ones could set in. Tammy and MG have plenty of their own negative experiences too, and if they start laying eggs in my rose canes we'll definitely move them into my mental "bad bug" category. Of course, I'm not big on loud repetitive uncontrollable sounds anyway - having lived in landlocked places all my life I find the sounds of ocean waves to be slightly disturbing and annoying, though not to the same extent. I'd way rather listen to crickets chirping than a tape of ocean sounds during "deep relaxation" parts of yoga class, but I realize I'm in the minority here. So, Michael, if these chirping sounds are all mating behaviors, does that mean that crickets and grasshoppers are just more, um, horny than other bugs, or is it that they have quicker life cycles and we're hearing new generations of cricket males like perpetual teenagers desperate for a date on Saturday night? You'd think if the same old thing didn't get results last night, they'd give up or try something new, but I guess that doesn't apply to teenagers either... Cynthia

Apparently I'm in good company with my butterfly bed that's stuffed with all their favorites and my oversize collection of bird feeders in the crabapple tree. I designed the butterfly bed specifically to attract them and so far am happy with the end result. There's still lots of space to fill in but it's getting there gradually. My folks planted with wildlife in mind before me so there are dogwoods, mock orange, lilacs & others to attract birds. There's a 40 ft. x 30 ft. area of white hydrangea growing on the southern boundary the birds use as a sanctuary. They stop off in the lilac bush on their way to/from the birdfeeders & birdbath. I've counted as many as 25 junkos in the mock orange during snowstorms, all puffed out like little gray tennis balls. Every year wrens nest in each of the three birdhouses hanging in the crabapple tree. One morning this summer I noticed my motion sensor light had come on. When I peaked through the curtains out the front window, there was a red fox stretching as tall as he could trying to raise his chin over the edge to get a drink from the birdbath. I felt so guilty, I washed out a big bowl & set it on the ground beside the birdbath for him. I kept it filled the rest of the season. No rain fell here from June-October so the critters were thirsty along with all my plants. The foxes took over a former rabbit & woodchuck burrow, made it bigger & raised 3 pups down behind my 80 ft. row of blueberry bushes. Yes, they ate all the blueberries this year. Like I said, there was a really bad drought here in southern New England. I took a few pictures through the window screen when they came out to play in the early mornings: A few lucky shots of robins enjoying the ancient plastic birdbath under the crabapple tree: I think the Cooper's hawks that nest down in the woods at the back help keep the rodent & bunny populations under control but the chipmunks can be a problem. Esme the snake makes her rounds of the flowerbeds and takes care of whatever varmints use the hosta leaves to hide under from the hawks.

Hey Marie - what's the name of the granite farm in Lynnfield? Sounds pretty interesting. In June I posted some pics of our new front walkway and yard. I then spent almost every free minute this hot dry summer planting! Totally crazy but I'm too busy with work in the spring and fall so summer it was. A lot of folks here were really helpful in thinking about what to plant. We ended up with a lot of hostas (an old love), a lot of hydrangeas (a new love), a pagoda dogwood (some folks here suggested), some fragrant azaleas, ferns, daphnes, rhodies, and assorted other things. We have lots of shade, though a little more sun than in the backyard so I got a little more adventurous. My question posted here was about what to plant in the bed center stage in front of our house. We never really "decided" but it kind of evolved. We saw a small red weeping Japanese Maple that we had to have (Tamukeyama). Tagged one at Weston's for the fall, but then found one on sale at Stonegate in Lincoln and bought that. That went in the front of the bed to hopefully someday weep over the big rocks along the walkway. I also wanted a green one to weep over the side wall - bought a very small A J Green Cascade. Not sure how long it will take till they're big enough to really see! Finally we were out in the Berkshires and we saw an older (10 years?) PG hydrangea at one of our favorite nurseries that we totally fell in love with. We had no way of getting it back here, so they're holding it until it goes dormant. Hopefully we can then somehow get it into the back of the Subaru! I'll post when we get everything in, though by that time it might not look like much so may wait until the spring. Today I finally finished planting - moved a couple of things from the backyard. Hurray!!!! We've also been trying to get the thousands of acorns up before they're lost in leaves. I spent most of last spring pulling up baby oak trees. I had the landscaper rake a lot of the leaves into the beds, and he raked the acorns in too. This year I think we're doing it ourselves. What do you all do about acorns? We also tried to move our old kayaks into the back yard. Turned one over and out popped a very frightened chipmunk...