Bacterial bloom and nutrients

[Chlorinated]

Hi all, a little background. I have a nuvo 20 that has been up and running about 5 years. AI Prime 16hd (bulk reef settings), MJ900 return, MP 10 (50% constant mode). Mixed reef.

For the last 5-6 months I have been battling a bacterial bloom of some kind. My water is not cloudy, but I get this clear gelatinous bacteria that clogs my filter floss in like 12 hours and when it collects on the rocks and glass it gets strings and blows around in the current.

All fish and corals are happy and open nithing seems to be particularly bothered by the bacteria it is just unsightly and cloggs all if my filtration.

I change the floss daily when I feed and use a baster on the sand and rocks a couple times a week, bi-weekly water changes, but it never goes away.

A little over a year ago I started doing Vibrant. I had some alagae issues...bubble and hair....so I gave it a try. Did half dose for like 6mo and all the algae finally meted and has been gone ever since. I stopped dosing once the algae melted, then a couple months later the bacteria bloom started.

I dont run a skimmer only floss in the overflows. I have both media racks filled with Siporax and carbon in a MiniMax reacto that cloggs in a day due to bacteria rendering it useless.

I am truely at a loss as to what to do to resolve the issue.

I just purchased a Hanna ULR Phosphate kit and the Nyos Nitrate kit. Ive always tested the big 3 but ive never had kits for Nitrate and Phosphate. They were delivered today so I tested everything.

Salinity 1.025 - refractometer
Temp 77 - Inkbird/glass
pH 8.0 - API
Alk 10.8 - Hanna
Ca 450 - Salifert
Mag 1350 - Salifert
Phosphate 0.07 - Hanna
Nitrate 0 - Nyos

All looks good. But I was shocked by my Nitrate reading....probably from the abundance of Siporax. I feed pretty heavy LRS reef frenzy daily with 4 fish....2 clowns, yellow watchman and orchid dottyback.

I am assuming the bacteria is just consuming all of my Nitrate bottoming it out. Luckily my Phosphate isn't too high.

So I guess my question is where do I go from here? My fish and corals are happy, but growth is slow, and color could be better. Bacteria are probably outcompeting the corals for Nitrate which would effect both. So my options are feed more to try and raise levels....feed less to try and starve off the bacteria, remove some Siporax, or something else? Hahaha

Any guidance is greatly appreciated!

 

[Deep]

Doesnt sound like bacteria at all, more like Dinos. Have pics ?

 

[Timfish]

Seems like a pretty clear case of biofilms to me. If you haven't changed feeding and water chages since you started Vibrant my guess is you traded this biofilm (whatever species make it up) for the algae. You already mentioned stuff I would try first to correct it. I would be very patient when trying solutions and do make just one change first then see for a couple weeks how that affects the growth of this stuff.

A side note on corals growth, Fast growth has been shown to have a negative effect on coral immune systems so don't put too much weight on fast growth correlating to a corals health. And the same goes with coral coloration, they make fluorescing pigments to deal with less than optimal environmental conditions and corals can be hurt by tryong to force them to be too colorful. The flips side of this coin is melanin, which make corals brown, is an important part of corals immune system so you might be seeing subdude colors due to melanin production to deal with a heavy bacterial load from the clear gelatinous stuff you're seeing. To reiterate I would just make one change then see how things change over a couple weeks

 

[Chlorinated]

Doesnt sound like bacteria at all, more like Dinos. Have pics ?

I have seen pics of dinos and I really don't believe it to be dinos. The corals don't seem to effected in any way, and it isn't matting over them like dinos do.

I will try and grab some pics today when I get home.

 

[Chlorinated]

Seems like a pretty clear case of biofilms to me. If you haven't changed feeding and water chages since you started Vibrant my guess is you traded this biofilm (whatever species make it up) for the algae. You already mentioned stuff I would try first to correct it. I would be very patient when trying solutions and do make just one change first then see for a couple weeks how that affects the growth of this stuff.

A side note on corals growth, Fast growth has been shown to have a negative effect on coral immune systems so don't put too much weight on fast growth correlating to a corals health. And the same goes with coral coloration, they make fluorescing pigments to deal with less than optimal environmental conditions and corals can be hurt by tryong to force them to be too colorful. The flips side of this coin is melanin, which make corals brown, is an important part of corals immune system so you might be seeing subdude colors due to melanin production to deal with a heavy bacterial load from the clear gelatinous stuff you're seeing. To reiterate I would just make one change then see how things change over a couple weeks

The growth doesn't bother me too much as I have a small tank and space is limited haha. But at the same time I want my corals to thrive and not just survive.

Feeding has changed. Shortly after stopping Vibrant I added a second clown to pair with the one I had. Long story short, the small one had velvet and both fish died. I went fallow for about 3 months and got 2 new clowns, then the watchman and dottyback are relatively new additions in the last month or so.

You suggest small and slow changes which I agree with. But I am really unsure where to go.

I could up feeding to try and raise nutrients but this may be futile as the abundance of bacteria may consume them as fast as I add them.

I could reduce feeding and try and starve them out but I don't want my fish to suffer.

Could try adding something else like MB7? Maybe outcompete it?

Open to suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[Nano sapiens]

I had a similar situation in my small 12g/12 year old nano recently. The short version is I was sent too many nano fish from a vendor (5) and I tried to keep them all content in the system along with my permanent residents. After a few months NO3 had skyrocketed despite my best maintenance attempts. I then rehomed most of the fish and jumped on the carbon dosing bandwagon for a bit (but no skimmer, just more frequent water changes/detritus removal). NO3 eventually came down to ~4 ppm, but I noticed that my small pump was loosing output within just a few short days and a clear snotty bacteria was clogging up the insides (I actually replaced the pump with a slightly larger/more powerful one that has bigger inlet slots that don't clog as easily) Also, I had mucus strings forming in the display itself as well as on my Hydor rotating flow nozzle and a white film every 2-3 days on the glass instead of the usual green algae dusting. Other higher alga greatly diminished or disappeared. In short, the system became a predominately bacterial driven one which seems to be what you are experiencing.

IMO/IME, a primarily bacterial driven system is not 'bad' per se, unless there is too much of it. Besides the obvious physical problems, bacteria need a lot of oxygen so an excess can cause issues (especially at night when there is no photosynthesis taking place). As you mentioned, coral growth can slow due to competition with the excess bacteria for nutrients and this is what I found, too (Kalk usage dropped by ~80% compared to 'normal').

What I did was to reduce my fish load to a single 2-1/2" fish in this 12g (Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny), fed just enough to keep it full and healthy daily (excess food, if any, removed) and kept up regular water changes and substrate vacuuming to remove waste products from the system. Although it took a while, and the system is still bacterial driven (I still see evidence of excess bacterial strings in/on the Hydor nozzle), it now has a bit of higher algae growth and better coral growth (Kalk usage has quadrupled compared to it's lowest level).

Hope that helps.

 

[Chlorinated]

I had a similar situation in my small 12g/12 year old nano recently. The short version is I was sent too many nano fish from a vendor (5) and I tried to keep them all content in the system along with my permanent residents. After a few months NO3 had skyrocketed despite my best maintenance attempts. I then rehomed most of the fish and jumped on the carbon dosing bandwagon for a bit (but no skimmer, just more frequent water changes/detritus removal). NO3 eventually came down to ~4 ppm, but I noticed that my small pump was loosing output within just a few short days and a clear snotty bacteria was clogging up the insides (I actually replaced the pump with a slightly larger/more powerful one that has bigger inlet slots that don't clog as easily) Also, I had mucus strings forming in the display itself as well as on my Hydor rotating flow nozzle and a white film every 2-3 days on the glass instead of the usual green algae dusting. Other higher alga greatly diminished or disappeared. In short, the system became a predominately bacterial driven one which seems to be what you are experiencing.

IMO/IME, a primarily bacterial driven system is not 'bad' per se, unless there is too much of it. Besides the obvious physical problems, bacteria need a lot of oxygen so an excess can cause issues (especially at night when there is no photosynthesis taking place). As you mentioned, coral growth can slow due to competition with the excess bacteria for nutrients and this is what I found, too (Kalk usage dropped by ~80% compared to 'normal').

What I did was to reduce my fish load to a single 2-1/2" fish in this 12g (Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny), fed just enough to keep it full and healthy daily (excess food, if any, removed) and kept up regular water changes and substrate vacuuming to remove waste products from the system. Although it took a while, and the system is still bacterial driven (I still see evidence of excess bacterial strings in/on the Hydor nozzle), it now has a bit of higher algae growth and better coral growth (Kalk usage has quadrupled compared to it's lowest level).

Hope that helps.

So your situation never fully resolved?

Basically you are suggesting reduce fish and food load and it should subside. I have 4 small fish in a 20...I dont feel like this is the issue. Plus this problem started before I added my watchman and I dont think its gotten worse, not better either.

Wonder if Chemiclean would help. People use it all the time for cyano which is bacteria. So may be worth a try. Thoughts?

 

[Nano sapiens]

So your situation never fully resolved?

Basically you are suggesting reduce fish and food load and it should subside. I have 4 small fish in a 20...I dont feel like this is the issue. Plus this problem started before I added my watchman and I dont think its gotten worse, not better either.

Wonder if Chemiclean would help. People use it all the time for cyano which is bacteria. So may be worth a try. Thoughts?

95% resolved.

Actually, I'm not suggesting anything for your system. Just pointed out that a reduced fish load and feeding, along with time for stabilization, was helpful in my particular system. You can draw your own conclusions if any of it is applicable to your situation, or not.

If you search the web, you'll also find similar posts to yours where bacteria blooms were positively linked to air fresheners and other commercial aerosols. Something to consider...

If you go the commercial product route, all I can say is that in 35 years of reef keeping I haven't used any of them, so I have no direct experience. However, if you are asking my opinion, since it has been my experience that the vast majority of reef related issues can be resolved without resorting to them, I'd only guardedly recommend a commercial product after all other non-chemical means have been thoroughly tried.

 

[Chlorinated]

95% resolved.

Actually, I'm not suggesting anything for your system. Just pointed out that a reduced fish load and feeding, along with time for stabilization, was helpful in my particular system. You can draw your own conclusions if any of it is applicable to your situation, or not.

If you search the web, you'll also find similar posts to yours where bacteria blooms were positively linked to air fresheners and other commercial aerosols. Something to consider...

If you go the commercial product route, all I can say is that in 35 years of reef keeping I haven't used any of them, so I have no direct experience. However, if you are asking my opinion, since it has been my experience that the vast majority of reef related issues can be resolved without resorting to them, I'd only guardedly recommend a commercial product after all other non-chemical means have been thoroughly tried.

I appreciate your advice, I hope you dont feel I was dismissive.

I have read about the aerosols, but we don't use anything like that in our home. I am still trying to see if there could be other sources that are causing it.

I have had 50/50 success with non natural methods. I would prefer a natural way which is why I was asking about feeding.

Just trying to explore all options and I appreciate your input!

 

[00W]

Same problem here. Very wierd. Nothing suffering but visually hated the tank. Just wierd.
I've been running carbon, Phosgaurd, purigen you name it for over 30 years straight-something.
Took it all out. Filter pads only. Skimmer. Bought 30 snails. Same lighting, same feeding, same salt. Made sure calcium was good for the snails and checked my potassium.
Boom. Totally low. Upped it to 400 and everything started to clear up. Snails started mowing and the white stuff started to disappear.
Hour upon hour of research I put into potassium levels and NSW composition. I won't bore anyone with it here but getting phos, nitrate and potassium at the right levels gave this bacteria competition from algaes which had long since been a distant memory.
Long story made too long and I'm sorry for that, I had this wierd bacteria for it seemed like ever and it's pretty much gone.
Every system is different this just worked for me.
Hope this helps.
Joel

 

[Timfish]

The growth doesn't bother me too much as I have a small tank and space is limited haha. But at the same time I want my corals to thrive and not just survive.

Feeding has changed. Shortly after stopping Vibrant I added a second clown to pair with the one I had. Long story short, the small one had velvet and both fish died. I went fallow for about 3 months and got 2 new clowns, then the watchman and dottyback are relatively new additions in the last month or so.

You suggest small and slow changes which I agree with. But I am really unsure where to go.

I could up feeding to try and raise nutrients but this may be futile as the abundance of bacteria may consume them as fast as I add them.

I could reduce feeding and try and starve them out but I don't want my fish to suffer.

Could try adding something else like MB7? Maybe outcompete it?

Open to suggestions.

Thanks!

After reading the research done by Rohwer ("Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas") and others and newer research the proper microbial prcesses are critical for a successful reef and outweigh nutrients. As pointed out by ROhwer though keep in mind we can only culture a fraction of the microbes that are found on reefs. Maybe getting a profile done by AquaBiomics would be a good benchmark to use as a refference as you make changes to shift the microbial processes will help. But I'd say doing any of what you've thought of or one of the above suggestions would be a place to start and to reiterate be patient.