# Weird white mold/fungus with balls in it



## xelenax (11 mo ago)

About a month ago I started noticing some small growth of mold in my pacman frog enclosure, but I have springtails so I assumed they’d take care of it, and now very suddenly there’s a large growth of completely different weird white things. Help please? is my frog in harms way?


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## mikestra (Oct 16, 2008)

I have what looks to be the same stuff in a few vivs. It spread throughout the entire substrate. Doesn't seem to bother anything. Possibly related, I did try to seed those vivs with mycorrhizae when i first started them. I'm unsure if that's what it is though.


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## xelenax (11 mo ago)

mikestra said:


> I have what looks to be the same stuff in a few vivs. It spread throughout the entire substrate. Doesn't seem to bother anything. Possibly related, I did try to seed those vivs with mycorrhizae when i first started them. I'm unsure if that's what it is though.


thank you! yeah idk i used josh’s frogs bioactive booster which has some fungal elements in it so maybe it’s from that? not completely sure. i don’t mind it if it’s not harming the tank, as long as it’s not gonna harm my frog since she burrows


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## Harpspiel (Jan 18, 2015)

Most recent thread on this topic.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

This tends to be flower pot fungus and your microfauna are unlikely to touch it, the biggest issue with it is that it can render the substrate pretty impermeable to water. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## hydrophyte (Jun 5, 2009)

Yeah that's snow mold. It does not directly harm plants, but it can grow all over the roots and block nutrients + water. I had it pretty bad in one tank and the plants really started to look sad, but I was able to get it mostly out of there by spraying with 3% hydrogen peroxide and removing the thickest growth.


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

xelenax said:


> thank you! yeah idk i used josh’s frogs bioactive booster which has some fungal elements in it so maybe it’s from that?


Possible but irrelevant, since it is a ubiquitous fungus and will grow where conditions are favorable.


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## Llehctim (9 mo ago)

I have got this flower pot fungus in my tank as well. It has slowly been taking growing more and more throughout the tank over the last 6 months. 

I'm wondering if there has been any discussion on this article about a specific more aggressive strain from NZ tree fern fiber for a specific time period:


https://houstonfrogs.com/research-articles?fbclid=IwAR23zbkNL3U93zyMSQpYHJQGOTnAvI7UN6xKgIK15N9JUJsGEUdxR2h8Jf0



The reason I ask is because I initially did not bake the ABG mix I got that does have NZ tree fern fiber. Although I got it in Nov 2021, and supposedly in August 2021 they managed to get rid of it, I am thinking that likely this fiber could have been sitting there since pre August 2021.

I don't have isopods in my tank but I do have springtails. I used to be able to see them often enough, but I rarely get a glimpse of one now. Have others noticed it affecting the populations of springtails?

Will it eventually reach an equilibrium and have a bit of a die back?
It seems the research shows it doesn't affect the frogs, so ideally if it reaches some sort of equilibrium I would be okay living with it.


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## adrianaszum (Jun 21, 2020)

xelenax said:


> thank you! yeah idk i used josh’s frogs bioactive booster which has some fungal elements in it so maybe it’s from that? not completely sure. i don’t mind it if it’s not harming the tank, as long as it’s not gonna harm my frog since she burrows


I had the same thing grow all over a newly planted viv. Yellow mushrooms also started growing after a few weeks and I freaked out changed the substrate and cleaned everything. A few days after replanting the viv, the white fungus returned. I left it alone the second time and it has been several months. There is still some of it visible, but the viv seems to have stabilized and the frogs were not harmed. They are active, eating normally and still breeding like crazy!


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## Fahad (Aug 25, 2019)

I have six tanks with NZ treefern panels as background -- one of them got a smallish outbreak of this stuff (Flowerpot fungus? Snowball fungus? Heard it referred to by various names) ... it never went wild but did multiply for a bit ... I would usually soak it with water from the pump mister when I manually sprayed. Don't know if that's what halted it but it stopped spreading and was eventually overtaken by a fairly aggressive liverwort, which may have outcompeted it for whatever nutrients it was accessing, not sure. Never did see it in other tanks. 

If it's in the substrate and there are frogs in the tank I wouldn't try drowning it as that'll just make it too wet.


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## adrianaszum (Jun 21, 2020)

adrianaszum said:


> I had the same thing grow all over a newly planted viv. Yellow mushrooms also started growing after a few weeks and I freaked out changed the substrate and cleaned everything. A few days after replanting the viv, the white fungus returned. I left it alone the second time and it has been several months. There is still some of it visible, but the viv seems to have stabilized and the frogs were not harmed. They are active, eating normally and still breeding like crazy!


Oh! I also used the bio active boost from joshsfrogs! I never thought about asking them if that could be the cause. The fungus showed up over time in all my vivs, but not right away and not to the degree of the one I mentioned above.


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

adrianaszum said:


> Oh! I also used the bio active boost from joshsfrogs! I never thought about asking them if that could be the cause. The fungus showed up over time in all my vivs, but not right away and not to the degree of the one I mentioned above.


"Analysis of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal Inoculant Benchmarks" Analysis of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal Inoculant Benchmarks

Abstract:

"Growing evidence showed that efficient acquisition and use of nutrients by crops is controlled by root-associated microbiomes. Efficient management of this system is essential to improving crop yield, while reducing the environmental footprint of crop production. Both endophytic and rhizospheric microorganisms can directly promote crop growth, increasing crop yield per unit of soil nutrients. A variety of plant symbionts, most notably the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and phosphate-potassium-solubilizing microorganisms entered the era of large-scale applications in agriculture, horticulture, and forestry. The purpose of this study is to compile data to give a complete and comprehensive assessment and an update of mycorrhizal-based inoculant uses in agriculture in the past, present, and future. Based on available data, 68 mycorrhizal products from 28 manufacturers across Europe, America, and Asia were examined on varying properties such as physical forms, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal composition, number of active ingredients, claims of purpose served, mode of application, and recommendation. Results show that 90% of the products studied are in solid formula—powder (65%) and granular (25%), while only 10% occur in liquid formula. We found that 100% of the products are based on the Glomeraceae of which three species dominate among all the products in the order of _Rhizophagus irregularis_ (39%), _Funneliformis mosseae_ (21%), _Claroideoglomus etunicatum_ (16%). _Rhizophagus clarus_ is the least common among all the benchmark products. One third of the products is single species AMF and only 19% include other beneficial microbes. Of the sampled products, 44% contain AMF only while the rest are combined with varying active ingredients. Most of the products (84%) claimed to provide plant nutrient benefits. Soil application dominates agricultural practices of the products and represents 47%. A substantial amount of the inoculants were applied in cereal production. Recommended application doses varied extensively per plant, seed and hectare. AMF inoculant seed coating accounted for 26% of the products’ application and has great potential for increased inoculation efficiency over large-scale production due to minimum inoculum use. More applied research should also be conducted on the possible combination of AMF with other beneficial microbes."

_'Leucocoprinus' _does not appear in that study, so I propose that the answer is "no". This is an ubiquitous organism._ Leucocoprinus _can be transmitted on "coco peat" (I assume coco fiber) and is widely found in potting mixes that contain no tree fern.

The linked data regarding HF's testing of heat treated media is relevant in showing that the fungus can be eliminated in that way (though the specifics of treatment procedure would have been usefully included), but the implied association of the fungus with one specific product or substrate ingredient is completely unfounded rumor as far as all the evidence shows.


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## Llehctim (9 mo ago)

Fahad said:


> If it's in the substrate and there are frogs in the tank I wouldn't try drowning it as that'll just make it too wet.


Yes, all of mine is in the substrate. I guess probably the best way to find out if it is affecting springtail population would be to get some more springtails and take some substrate out and see whether or not in a smaller system they are affected. Although controlling all the other variables might be difficult.



Socratic Monologue said:


> but the implied association of the fungus with one specific product or substrate ingredient is completely unfounded rumor as far as all the evidence shows.


That is interesting. I think we as humans like to have an easy, cut and clear answer, and maybe it is sometimes easier to blame my fungus on a specific product than take all of the extra research and data into consideration.


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