Algae ID please

Thewatchmangoby · Sep 24, 2018

Tank is about 3 months old. A month ago my nitrates read zero so I took my skimmer and gfo/carbon offline, seen some colour improvements in colour on zoas and shrooms got bigger with better colour. At the time I did have diatoms, but wrote this off as the new tank uglies, however now I'm afraid this might take over my tank and kill my zoas.i can wipe it off the zoas with a qtip but it doesnt vome off the plugs. I also dont want to put the skimmer back online cuz I like my nitrates at 5ppm. Kind of lost as to what to do, I also do weekly water changes, it's a 25g lagoon. I'm wondering, if I setup a small chaeto fuge in the back compartment, will this outcompete the algae in the display?

saltyfilmfolks · Sep 25, 2018

Are you feeding a lot of coral foods fuel or aminos ?

I’d honestly put the skimmer online and just dry skim as much as you can.

Does that stuff blow off?

Thewatchmangoby · Sep 25, 2018

saltyfilmfolks said:
Are you feeding a lot of coral foods fuel or aminos ?

I’d honestly put the skimmer online and just dry skim as much as you can.

Does that stuff blow off?

No fuel or aminos. I have zooplankton and reef roids. Should i put the skimmer back online and pickup fuel? I dont have alot of coral, not much at all really besides a collection of zoa frags. Zoas are doing good besides the algae starting to take over and the algae doesnt blow off the plugs. So I'm guessing brown hair algae cuz its soft and stringy like nice silky hair. I'm just in this weird position of my water being too clean and my zoas dont look as colorful and shrooms not as fat and colorful , to having dirtier water with good colors etc but algae growth. I dont get it, the reef masters like jason fox etc all have 10 to 20 ppm nitrates but no algae issues, is it because they have alot of coral to eat up the extra nutrients before the algae does? I just dont get this hobby sometimes.

saltyfilmfolks · Sep 25, 2018

Thewatchmangoby said:
No fuel or aminos. I have zooplankton and reef roids. Should i put the skimmer back online and pickup fuel? I dont have alot of coral, not much at all really besides a collection of zoa frags. Zoas are doing good besides the algae starting to take over and the algae doesnt blow off the plugs. So I'm guessing brown hair algae cuz its soft and stringy like nice silky hair. I'm just in this weird position of my water being too clean and my zoas dont look as colorful and shrooms not as fat and colorful , to having dirtier water with good colors etc but algae growth. I dont get it, the reef masters like jason fox etc all have 10 to 20 ppm nitrates but no algae issues, is it because they have alot of coral to eat up the extra nutrients before the algae does? I just dont get this hobby sometimes.

No. Stop feeding the fancy coral food.
That just looks like a build up of brown slimey algae.
Were i you , hit those with a tooth brush and get more cuc in there.
That’s how you run a higher nutrient system.
A small amount of macros may help but not for export. Just minor competition and diversity.

Skim dry.