Betta Fish: Update on Mysterious Black Pustules on Wood

Hey everyone! I wanted to share an update on the possible fungus on u/funtimescoolguy wood from their aquarium. I received the sample yesterday and immediately took the wood out of the package. I then carefully scraped one of the black pustules off the wood and placed it on a microscope slide. I squished the black pustule and looked at it under the microscope. I was really surprised to see spores (Picture 2). I showed the fungus and the microscope slide to other mycologists in our lab and we believe it to be fungal or fungal-like (slime mold). The next steps are to extract the DNA from the sample in our lab and send the sample off for genetic sequencing to get the identity of the fungus or fungal-like organism.

Original Post; https://www.reddit.com/r/bettafish/comments/1pwh3l5/postmortem\_tank\_nuke\_what\_is\_this/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button

Picture 1: A picture of u/funtimescoolguy wood sample with black pustules covering the piece of the wood.

Picture 2: Spores of the fungus or fungal-like organism under the microscope at 400x total magnification.

Picture 3: The fungus or fungal-like organism under the stereoscope.

Picture 4: The fungus or fungal-like organism split open under the stereoscope.