Phyto overdose causing dinoflagelletes???

Addicted2Reef’n

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I have had recently dosed what I would call a heavy load of phyto. I dosed 50ml to a 36 gallon tank so probably 2ml/ per gallon of water volume. Also I have an oversized skimmer and only 4 fish with light bio load. I notice that usually the phyto will coat the glass and I scrape off no problem. Now after I did these large doses back to back I found stringy algae hanging off wall and acros. It’s a reddish brown stringy algae full of bubbles. I will try and add a picture when home. From searching online it looks exactly like Dino’s. I brew my own phyto so I was thinking that I dosed some leftover F2 fertilizer in with phyto causing nutrient spike and thus algae problems.
However I tested nutrients and my phosphate was .02 and my nitrate was 1 ppm….
My theory is that the phyto did its job and sucked up the nutrients but too many nutrients thus causing the possible Dino issue ?
Does this theory hold water ? Or is there something else in the phyto that caused the algae ?
 
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Addicted2Reef’n

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Biggest question is am I ok to continue to dose phyto at a much lower rate and is that recommended ? The phyto is tetrasillimis
Btw- the timeline from dosing phyto to the “explosion of a small to medium size algae problem “ was the span of a week.
 
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Addicted2Reef’n

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So after thinking about this problem I want to put this out as the most likely culprit. I DONT think it was the phyto. I remember my last batch of phyto I dumbed up and topped off my phyto container with tank water. So basically I introduced nuisance algae floating in tank to fertilizer and light and although I didn’t see or smell any difference in the final batch. I conclude this was where I messed up horribly and where the nuisance algae came from. Now I dump the phyto and go lights out and introduce competition such as copepods and bacteria and hope the tank will restabilize. It’s a fairly young tank at 3 months old but the dry rock was cycled for 7 months before setting it up. I only had a small case of the uglies with some tufts of hair algae but I hope my refugium will pick up pace and absorb any extra nutrients out of tank.
 

ChrisfromBrick

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phyto would probably combat the algae, if anything. That with pods will help the tank. I don’t think overdosing does anything but turn your tank green for a bit.
 

Aquariumaddictuk

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Phyto won't cause it.
I have my tank a ludicrous overdose of phyto & pods to combat Dino's & it worked well.
Plenty of tanks run ULNS without dinos also & you're above that nutrient wise.
Are you carbon or bac dosing?
Any cyano?
 

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