Algae ID and ideas how to rid this.

[n05stang]

I have a custom 45 gallon sps tank. I started carbon dosing nopox and dropped my nitrates down too low. I decreased the dosage of nopox to .25 ml per day but developed a strange algae during the nitrate dip. As the tank sits nitrate is 1ppm Red Sea test, phosphate .017 ppm Hanna meter. Alkalinity stable 8-8.2, calcium 415-420. The algae is red in color and forms strings. No bubbles form on them but it doesn’t look like cyano or Dino.

I’ve since added more hermits and snails but nothing seems to eat it. With the dip in nitrate and phosphate some of my corals have lost color. I’m ready to give up on this sps game and go back to dirty tanks with lps because for as stable as the tank has been the last two months my acros colors look terrible.

 

[Qasimja]

looks like cyano

 

[n05stang]

At first I thought it was but I took samples out and put it in peroxide and didn’t lose it’s red color. I also put it in chemiclean and survived that as well.

 

[Greg P]

You may not think so, but I see Cyano.

Try blowing the areas off with a turkey baster or such and see if it blows off/comes back.

Red Cyano will, in most cases, blow off very easily in a slime-like sheet.

 

[Arthacker87]

I think cyano as well.

 

[Greg P]

Your skull picture looks especially suspect of Cyano

 

[Arthacker87]

Whose skills do you think those are?

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Lookin like dino to me, low no3 and no4 is not a good sign either. Get a sample under a microscope. Ime cyano has never been stringy and snotty but more or a thick deep red blanket.

 

[hikermike]

Was the h2o2 strong enough? I dip mine in 1:1 for 1-5 mins and the stuff bubbles, turns white and disappears in 1-2 days. The corals reopen same days and ready to feed.

 

[n05stang]

It doesn’t blow off the rocks easily. Even when I siphon for a water change it doesn’t pull off the rocks easily.

It was food grade undiluted peroxide.

I was thinking possibly Dino but I don’t know where it came from. I really hope it’s not because I had to tear down a 90 gallon because I gave up with Dino’s a few years ago and don’t want to go down this path again. I’m slowly raising nitrate back up.

 

[n05stang]

Anyone with any ideas?

 

[35ppt]

Could be hair algae covered in cyano. Best bet is to get a scope to ID it. Doesn't have to be an expensive one, $12 amazon one works or find one second hand locally. Anything anyone tells you is going to be a guess unless you give us a microscope picture. And in my experience when I had dinos I often also had a bunch of cyano in the same sample.