# BBA carpet



## Barbara Turner (25 Nov 2018)

Anyone seen this before, Sorry for the poor quality photo. 
Is it really a wall of BBA algae?


----------



## rebel (25 Nov 2018)

Looks to be. :cheers:


----------



## zozo (25 Nov 2018)

At one point all algae died for mysterious reason and this tank was completely algae free within no time.

Can't find the video back about that.. I believe it was posted somewhere in the What causes BBA sticky.


----------



## dw1305 (25 Nov 2018)

Hi all, 
It is, I've got a tank where the sponge looked like that. Last time I took it out nearly all the BBA tufts had come off, but I don't know why. 

I've <"seen similar"> carpets, but nothing as good as Rachel's.

cheers Darrel


----------



## Tim Harrison (25 Nov 2018)

Crikey, that's hideous...


----------



## Zeus. (25 Nov 2018)

Took a piece of DW out yesterday to get some trident off it for daughters tank I've just rescaped for her. found a few Big patches of BBA which was out of the line of sight, just plucked them off with tweezers


----------



## Barbara Turner (25 Nov 2018)

I find them quite interesting, I'm not sure I want to grow anything intentionally in my tank. 
I must confess I had to Google the difference between a moss and a algae. 

Looks like algae are far simpler structures. 



*Classification*
Moss is classed as a bryophyte -- a type of tiny plant suited to moist but land-based conditions. All bryophytes are believed to have evolved from tiny water plants. In fact, according to Karl Danneberger at Ohio State University, moss developed directly from algae around 350 million years ago. However, algae form a scientific classification of their own. Algae are mainly single-celled plants collected together in growing clusters.

*Appearance*
In general, moss looks fibrous, feathered or latticed when viewed up close. Carpets of moss are springy to the touch. When germinating, moss puts up thin stems sometimes with leaves on top and reproductive spores.


----------



## Zeus. (25 Nov 2018)

Barbara Turner said:


> I find them quite interesting, I'm not sure I want to grow anything intentionally in my tank.
> I must confess I had to Google the difference between a moss and a algae.
> 
> Looks like algae are far simpler structures.
> ...



Sounds like algae just started joining together to for filaments so it could break though the waters surface move to damp land and was rewarded with an abundant supply of CO2 IMO


----------



## zozo (26 Nov 2018)

An intermediate form between alga and plant are the weeds also called Marco-Algae.. <Chara> 
 Can be found in ponds and even in aqauriums looking very plant like.

Not so very long ago the Caloglossa sp. was discovered to be a decorative and atractive alga. It's also a Rodophyta sp. same as all other BBA sp.

Occasionaly in the aquarium trade, commercialy and sometimes intentionaly erroneously sold as a Red Moss..





In a way looking at it's weed like grow form, it could be considered an intermediate to Chara.


----------



## dw1305 (26 Nov 2018)

Hi all,





Barbara Turner said:


> I must confess I had to Google the difference between a moss and a algae.


There isn't really a group of organisms called "Algae", it is a colloquial term to cover nearly anything that photosynthesises, but isn't a higher plant (in this case including mosses and ferns). Blue-green Algae are really bacteria ("Cyanobacteria") and the Brown algae ("Phaeophyceae") belong to an <"entirely different kingdom"> to the Red & Green Algae and all other "plants" . 

Red algae (Rhodophyta) are also distinct from the green algae and all the higher plants, but together they form a higher level grouping (a clade) called the <"Archaeplastida">.  

The Green algae share a common ancestor with the higher plants, and the sister group to the mosses, ferns, conifers and flowering plants is the <"Charophyceae">, which look <"quite plant like">, plant with whorled leaves below. 






Zeus. said:


> Sounds like algae just started joining together to for filaments so it could break though the waters surface move to damp land and was rewarded with an abundant supply of CO2


 Quite possibly, there is very little fossil record for early plants, but <"shortly after the invasion of the land"> plants were already <"quite complex">. 

cheers Darrel


----------



## zozo (28 Nov 2018)

dw1305 said:


> There isn't really a group of organisms called "Algae", it is a colloquial term to cover nearly anything that photosynthesises, but isn't a higher plant (in this case including mosses and ferns). Blue-green Algae are really bacteria ("Cyanobacteria") and the Brown algae ("Phaeophyceae") belong to an <"entirely different kingdom"> to the Red & Green Algae and all other "plants" .



Interesting!.. I did some searching to find text on "Heterokont" in my own language.. And could not find any information as if it doesn't excist.. Had to give it a plural "Heterokontae" to finaly get redirected to the <"Chromista"> kingdom.

Darn large kindom and seeing the dates of the latest discoveries from 2017 they still are finding new species.


> *Platysulcidae* is a monotypic family of heterokonts that was recently discovered to be the earliest diverging lineage of the Heterokont phylogenetic tree.[1]


----------



## dw1305 (28 Nov 2018)

Hi all, 





zozo said:


> to finaly get redirected to the <"Chromista"> kingdom


There are a number of different names for these groupings, a lot of it is to do with <"cladistics">.

<"Cladists"> don't like groupings that are <"paraphyletic">, so they split them up into clades that are monophyletic (share a common ancestor).  Chromista isn't monophyletic, so it needs splitting into smaller clades that are monophyletic.

As an example, if you are a cladist dinosaurs didn't go extinct at the KT boundary, because they share a common ancestor with all the birds, <"so birds are dinosaurs"> (and they are).





zozo said:


> Darn large kindom and seeing the dates of the latest discoveries from 2017 they still are finding new species.


In the case of the algae it is back to the <"DNA analysis"> that has found all the different nitrifying organisms, once you start looking at "algae" you find a whole lot more genetic diversity than was apparent from morphological or biochemical analysis.

The difficulty with fossil plants is that you can't use DNA, and mainly fossils are trace fossils or spores. Because some morphologically primitive extant Bryophytes  have spores in fours (a tetrad), and tetrad spores are found in Ordovician age (~470,000,000 years BP) fossils, researchers have speculated that the first non-algal land plants <"may have been Liverwort like">.

We don't know how long ago algal mats started growing on land, but I would suspect it is way back into the Pre-Cambrian period.

cheers Darrel


----------

