(rearranged the order of these comments for narrative purposes)
Tank is roughly 8-9months old.
Was it started with live rock or dead rock? How long before livestock was added? How long until corals were added (assuming they weren't first)?
Ive also notice that my cheato has basically stalled and isn't growing. Its not "melting" just not growing, Should I ditch it for now?
Those two go together.....chaeto does well in high-nutrient situations. Your tank has no nitrates.
Nitrate is a basic, essential nutrient.
Until you get the nutrient situation stabilized, I'd at least pare down the chaeto to a very small quantity.
If it's no problem for you to get more later, then I'd just remove it for now.
I just started gfo 2 days ago and am running it pretty light
Your phosphates are fine – I'd take the GFO offline.
I do regular water changes every 3 weeks unless parameters show need otherwise.
This may be causing nutrients to bottom out even worse, so for now either stop doing them, or dose the correct amount of nitrate fertilizer (like pictured earlier in the thread) into your water change water and keep doing them.
I have the exact same thing in my tank. Nitrate is between 1-5 and phosphate is undetectable. For a while now i have been thinking it is dinoflagellates but my fish and snails have been eating it for 3 months and no deaths... if i find a way to get rid of it i will let you know! I am going to try and bring my PO4 up a bit to see if it makes a difference.
Stop doing anything you might be doing to lower nutrients and check out
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether? (Goes for both of you.
)
There's a ton of info on the first post, including links to some test you can run to narrow down whether you have dino's or not.
Obviously the scope is ideal since you can actually ID
which dino you have.... but it's not usually 100% necessary to go that far. (A scope is only $10-$20 though, so....)
