40 hours into Chemiclean - Dinos remain?

[bBurn18]

Hello my 50 gallon aquarium is still under a year old and I've been constantly fighting low nutrients. Even after adding more fish (6 total), I was never able to keep PO4 or NO3 stable and in desired range. Often I was bottoming out at 0.

I have been dealing with cyano for about three months at varying intensities and decided to started dosing for both PO4 and NO3a month ago. Now I'm consistently at .06 and 4.

I had been making great progress on the cyano but about two weeks ago I hit a plateau. I started noticing stringy algae on zoas and montis. I thought this was the last remnants of cyano and since I didn't make any progress for two weeks I thought I'd try Chemiclean to finally flush it all away.

While I think the Chemiclean helped clean the rocks overall, the stringy algae is still present on zoas and other rocks (see photos) and I'm starting to wonder if it's dinos now that the cyano has been removed.

Or is it I'm just not giving it enough time? I'm 40 hours into the Chemiclean treatment. Thanks for any input.

 

[bBurn18]

Just to add, I'm 99% sure (don't have microscope) that what I originally had was cyano. But dinos could have been there too all along. This photo was 4 weeks ago.

 

[taricha]

I'm 99% sure (don't have microscope) that what I originally had was cyano. But dinos could have been there too all along. This photo was 4 weeks ago.

Right. when asking yourself which nuisance algae it is, it can always be both
It is not expected that chemiclean would do much against dinos.

 

[ryanjohn1]

Lights out for like 3 days with micro bacter 7 helped my tank.

 

[bBurn18]

Right. when asking yourself which nuisance algae it is, it can always be both
It is not expected that chemiclean would do much against dinos.

So you think what is left looks like dinos?

 

[bBurn18]

Lights out for like 3 days with micro bacter 7 helped my tank.

You think what is left looks like dinos and not the final stages of cyano breaking down?

 

[ryanjohn1]

Is it more brown color than red?

 

[ryanjohn1]

In my experience. When I’ve had cyano and had to treat with chemi clean. It just disappears. Don’t recall seeing it it become stringy. You probably had both at the same time.

 

[taricha]

The strands left that I see coming off the zoas look better than 50/50 to be dinos.

 

[bBurn18]

The strands left that I see coming off the zoas look better than 50/50 to be dinos.

Hi I bought a microscope and heard you are the person to ask for ID confirmation. To me they appear to be Amphidinium. Collected two samples from rockwork and both look the same under magnification. One sample up higher and the other lower. No visible dinos on/in sand.

 

[bBurn18]

Took more samples. This one was on an encrusting monti. Looks like Ostreopsis to my untrained eye. What do you think @taricha ?

Based on what I've been reading and seeing, it appears that fortunately I have a smaller/weaker bloom. Perhaps it's due to the past months of working on stabilizing nutrients to get rid of cyano.

Im going to maintain what I've been doing and continued to siphon out as much as possible.

Any general words of advice when dealing with these two types of dinos?

 

[manaman]

Sounds like you have had a rough time of it man. Stay with it.

 

[taricha]

Took more samples. This one was on an encrusting monti. Looks like Ostreopsis to my untrained eye. What do you think @taricha ?

agreed. Small cell amphidinium in first video and ostreopsis in the second.
UV + short blackout is often an effective step against both of these.