# Green stringy stuff not algae what is it?



## Kozik (Apr 22, 2015)

Hi everyone,

I tore down my tank because of this stuff growing everywhere around all my plants and I couldn't keep up with it. Now that my tank is back up and running its starting to appear again :S

I need to know what this is so I can stop it, it doesn't look like any algae looks kind of like the root of another plant or something.

In my tank I have cabomba, moneywort, Java moss, HC, Java fern, and anubias. I fertilize with csm+b, phosphorus, and co2 with Excel (used to do diy). Any ideas?

It's the green stringy stuff coming off the HC in front of the driftwood and diffuser.


----------



## Parker (Jun 30, 2014)

It's a carnivorous plant. I had it in one of my tanks and I had to just keep manually removing it until it was gone. 
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/plantfinder/details.php?id=268


----------



## Kozik (Apr 22, 2015)

Yup that's it, that's frustrating I thought I got rid of all of it... It was near impossible to get rid of it all with a tank full of plants. I don't have much now since I took 98% of them out but I'm still finding it again


----------



## default (May 28, 2011)

Utricularia Gibba is completely harmless to a planted tank though, if it's exploding out of control, that means a parameter in your tank requires some fixing. It's just like any plant and can function quite well in absorbing excess nutrients from the water column. You can just manually remove it when you see it or when it grows larger and denser, just take the whole clump out, it's not normally a nuisance as it doesn't spread with spores or grow on plants.

Certain algae eaters would eat them, but i would still recommend manual removal, just be gentle and the whole piece will come out. Once all pieces have been removed, there should be no more Gibba unless reintroduced. One of the easily battles in a planted tank, if only GSA was that easy.


----------

