Need help with Algae ID

Daenion · Jan 25, 2023

Friends,

Can you please help me with ID ing the algae? I have a feeling I got some weird dinos.

Saltyreef · Jan 25, 2023

The name is escaping me but you would greatly benefit from removing all your coral into a 5g bucket with heater and powerhead, taking each rock out one by one and scrubbing the bejesus out of them with a nylon brush.
After you scrub them, rinse them off good with the hose and then dunk em in a bucket of RODI to rinse the tap water off.
After the rocks, remove all the sand and blast it with the hose until it runs clear. Quick rinse in RODI.

Put sand back in, rocks and fill with new salt water.

You'll be happy you did it.

Daenion · Jan 25, 2023

Saltyreef said:
The name is escaping me but you would greatly benefit from removing all your coral into a 5g bucket with heater and powerhead, taking each rock out one by one and scrubbing the bejesus out of them with a nylon brush.
After you scrub them, rinse them off good with the hose and then dunk em in a bucket of RODI to rinse the tap water off.
After the rocks, remove all the sand and blast it with the hose until it runs clear. Quick rinse in RODI.

Put sand back in, rocks and fill with new salt water.

You'll be happy you did it.

Unfortunately that is not possible for me at this stage. Anything else I can do?

vetteguy53081 · Jan 25, 2023

Daenion said:
Friends,

Can you please help me with ID ing the algae? I have a feeling I got some weird dinos.

I see gha and on rocks wire algae. With the gha, you will want to start with pulling as much as you can by hand. The rock- Best is to pull from tank and place in a container of tank water and with a very firm toothbrush or automotive detail brush scrub the rock with addition of 3% peroxide. With the wire you can at times get lucky and press it with your thumb and peel it off.
After cleaning, return to tank, lower white light intensity or hours of white light for about 2 weeks and assure your nitrate and phosphate levels are not elevated.
Then add snails such as : astrea, chiton, ninja star. Pitho crabs and emerald crab(females). Also a tuxedo urchin

Is this tank at or near a window?

Daenion · Jan 25, 2023

vetteguy53081 said:
I see gha and on rocks wire algae. With the gha, you will want to start with pulling as much as you can by hand. The rock- Best is to pull from tank and place in a container of tank water and with a very firm toothbrush or automotive detail brush scrub the rock with addition of 3% peroxide. With the wire you can at times get lucky and press it with your thumb and peel it off.
After cleaning, return to tank, lower white light intensity or hours of white light for about 2 weeks and assure your nitrate and phosphate levels are not elevated.
Then add snails such as : astrea, chiton, ninja star. Pitho crabs and emerald crab(females). Also a tuxedo urchin

Is this tank at or near a window?

Hey there,

Let me try to give everyone some general about the tank.

It has been up for a little over 6 months. It is a 625 so capacity of 164g total. I assume I have about 120ish gallons of water with all the rock sand and equipment. the nitrates are around 6 the phosphates are rather high at around 0.25. I had very low nitrates for awhile never let then hit 0 for more than a few hours (at one point was testing almost twice daily) and I was actually dosing nitrates. I have also been dosing peroxide around 1ml per 10g every day.

After I added the corals with reef roids the nutrients in the water increased significantly.

The algae that you see can easily be blasted off with a turkey blaster. The resulting algae in the water column is mostly intact. It is slimy when touched. I don’t think it is gha as I have never seen it grow long tendrils.

I am getting a UV filter and will hook up gfo this weekend.

To address the questions. It is not near a window. I have astrea turbo and cerith snails.

Daenion · Jan 26, 2023

Ashamed for the bump but need a bit more help

ChiCity · Jan 26, 2023

based on your description,
i think you have a type of chrysophytes…

you’ll need to examine a bit of it
under a microscope to confirm.

(if so, here’s a helpful link…)

Chrysophytes, AKA "Golden Algae" - How to identify, treat and remove it from your tank!

A wikipedia image for chrysophytes. For some time, I've been dealing with a mystery ailment in my aquarium. A wispy, slimy mass grew on almost every exposed area of my tank - no matter what I had tried, it kept coming back and stubbornly stuck with me for months. I started my current tank in...

www.reef2reef.com

saltyhog · Jan 26, 2023

If the color rendition is good, there are probably more than one type of pest algae here. The green stuff near the sand in the second picture isn't chrysophytes or dinos. Could be some green cyano. The stuff on the rock could definitely be chrysophytes but depending again on the color rendition in the photos could also be dinoflagellates. Agree with ChiCity, microscopic views would greatly help know what you're up against and how to combat it.

Daenion · Jan 26, 2023

Every pest algae in the aquarium is a shade of green. The pasture

Daenion · Feb 11, 2023

After some treatment.

vetteguy53081 · Feb 11, 2023

Daenion · Feb 25, 2023

I still have these on sand but the rest is mostly under control.

brandon429 · Feb 25, 2023

hey great job that's hard to work back a big tank like that. what was the main way you used to guide some compliance there in a month

vetteguy53081 · Feb 25, 2023

Daenion said:
After some treatment.

Remaining may be lobophora which is imbedded in crevices and is consumed by ninja star snails and possibly Tuxedo urchin as well as carribean blue leg hermits which are tiny

Daenion · Feb 25, 2023

Well not sure if I want to promote some of the dumb stuff I did but following is what I ended up doing:

First Day:

1. Took out the most infested and accessible rocks. Brushed them as much as I could.
2. Did a 30 gallon water change.
3. Dumped in half dose of dr tim refresh.
4. Turned off skimmer.
5. Installed UV. It is off due to dr tim treatment.
6. Started 3 day blackout.

Subsequent days basically did what @vetteguy53081 says in the threads. Blasted rocks every night dosed peroxide and changed socks. At the same time did dr tim 2 week refresh/waste away. 3 day blackout 2 day 15% blue.

The nutrients spiked beyond anything I have seen. Nitrate was at 17 and phosphate .74. Keep in mind both of them were almost 0 a month before this.

6th day did a 35 gallon water change. Kept the lights at 40%. Took out some more rocks did full peroxide treatment for 15 mins.

Kept doing Dr tim 2 week and vette’s blasting. Algae continued to die and the peroxide directly on rocks killed a lot of amphipods. Water changes were barely making a dent in nutrients so installed gfo-carbon reactor.

I finished the two weeks. The rocks looked fair. The green coloration decreased substantially but I didn’t have to courage to go full light at those nutrient levels. 11 nitrate .40 phosphate. Continued to do 25-30 gallon water changes twice a week.

My nutrients are still high. 8 ish nitrate and 0.15 phosphate. Lights are at 70%. Still can’t solve the green algae on sand thing. I will go 100% blue once phosphate is below .1. I think the rocks are leeching OR I still have a lot of algae dying since phosphates seem stuck and the twice a week water changes don’t seem to work. Replaced the GFO and hope couple more weeks of water changes will get me to below .1.

I think I was feeding way too much and was getting “false” low readings due to algae.

vetteguy53081 · Feb 25, 2023

Daenion said:
Well not sure if I want to promote some of the dumb stuff I did but following is what I ended up doing:

First Day:

1. Took out the most infested and accessible rocks. Brushed them as much as I could.
2. Did a 30 gallon water change.
3. Dumped in half dose of dr tim refresh.
4. Turned off skimmer.
5. Installed UV. It is off due to dr tim treatment.
6. Started 3 day blackout.

Subsequent days basically did what @vetteguy53081 says in the threads. Blasted rocks every night dosed peroxide and changed socks. At the same time did dr tim 2 week refresh/waste away. 3 day blackout 2 day 15% blue.

The nutrients spiked beyond anything I have seen. Nitrate was at 17 and phosphate .74. Keep in mind both of them were almost 0 a month before this.

6th day did a 35 gallon water change. Kept the lights at 40%. Took out some more rocks did full peroxide treatment for 15 mins.

Kept doing Dr tim 2 week and vette’s blasting. Algae continued to die and the peroxide directly on rocks killed a lot of amphipods. Water changes were barely making a dent in nutrients so installed gfo-carbon reactor.

I finished the two weeks. The rocks looked fair. The green coloration decreased substantially but I didn’t have to courage to go full light at those nutrient levels. 11 nitrate .40 phosphate. Continued to do 25-30 gallon water changes twice a week.

My nutrients are still high. 8 ish nitrate and 0.15 phosphate. Lights are at 70%. Still can’t solve the green algae on sand thing. I will go 100% blue once phosphate is below .1. I think the rocks are leeching OR I still have a lot of algae dying since phosphates seem stuck and the twice a week water changes don’t seem to work. Replaced the GFO and hope couple more weeks of water changes will get me to below .1.

I think I was feeding way too much and was getting “false” low readings due to algae.

Im ok with those nutrient levels as long as steady or lower but .4 phos is concerning. You could add a pouch of chemipure blue or Elite which will gradually bring down phod and keep it in check