Algae ID please

[Qirko]

Hello All.

My aquarium is about 5 months old. It went thru the usual diatom bloom, and the clean up crew took care of that.

Shortly after, new algae started to grow, and the clean up crew tends to ignore it. I have tried multiple water changes, running on minimal lights, and scraping it off the rocks / glass.

Its a lovely shade of brown, and really blows off the rocks with little to no effort. Here is a picture of one of the rocks in the tank:


I'm not sure what i have, so any insights as to the ID of this pain in the tank would be great.

The water parameters when i checked last week are:
PH 8.0
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
Phosphate 0.003 per Hannah
Calcium is 320, working on bringing that up
Alkalinity is 10dkh
Salt level is 1.026

Thanks!

 

[scardall]

Diatoms I think

 

[tankstudy]

Phosphate 0.003 per Hannah

Don't think the reader goes that low. I own one myself and it only reads up to two decimal places.

 

[Qirko]

Don't think the reader goes that low. I own one myself and it only reads up to two decimal places.

Hey Tankstudy. I have the Hannah HI736 phosporus ultra low, so i have to convert it from there. I do plan on checking the readings tonight, so i'll double check it at that point

 

[tankstudy]

Ah, I see. I have just the low range (2 decimals)-not ultra low (In PPB if I'm not mistaken).

Working backwards with your conversion, it would be 1 ppb. Is that what you were reading?

Even though that is low (0.003 ppm), the diatoms/algae were probably consuming PO4 as it was appearing in your tank. I generally use other things to compete for the PO4, although it doesn't totally get rid of the algae/diatoms, its not as bad. You can straight out use GFO which will literally strip your water of PO4 to starve the diatoms/algae to death but that means anyone else who uses PO4 in your tank will also suffer =d.

 

[Qirko]

I re-ran the numbers, the only change was to phosphate which gave a reading of 5 ppb, so we're looking at .015

I don't have a reactor or anything setup for GFO. I'll have to look into that next, just when you think you have everything you'd need for an aquarium . When you say you generally use other things to compete for PO4, what other things are you talking about? Right now all i have in the aquarium is two clowns, a skunk shrimp, and the clean up crew.

 

[tankstudy]

You can use things like fast growing corals like xenia or macro algae to compete for the available PO4. With 0.003, that isn't very much PO4, if you have a few competitors in the mix with the Diatom/algae you could reduce the amount of PO4 available to the diatom/algae and in the tank without dropping phosphates to >0.000 like what GFO can do. Saltwater naturally has 0.02 phosphate if I'm not mistaken.

However, be careful if you use Xenia. Once it starts growing, it can be like a weed. lol. I was only using it as an example of a coral that grows quickly.

 

[scardall]

You can use things like fast growing corals like xenia or macro algae to compete for the available PO4. With 0.003, that isn't very much PO4, if you have a few competitors in the mix with the Diatom/algae you could reduce the amount of PO4 available to the diatom/algae and in the tank without dropping phosphates to >0.000 like what GFO can do. Saltwater naturally has 0.02 phosphate if I'm not mistaken.

However, be careful if you use Xenia. Once it starts growing, it can be like a weed. lol. I was only using it as an example of a coral that grows quickly.

Anthelia alot faster for me. Now Xenia just slowly dies. Not Anthelia--bloody weed like growth.