Bryopsis beaten, now this?

JoshKReef · Dec 7, 2018

Long story short, I had bryopsis, I tried vibrant first, which caused a cyano outbreak, then used reef flux. After the flux was finished, I decided to use some chemiclean to get rid of the cyano, and things looked great, for about a week.

Something started coming back, so I ran my tests, and phosphates (according to hanna ultra low) came back at .1 and nitrates between 2-5. Figuring my phosphates were the issue, I got them down to .03, and it has been about a week. I am seeing no signs of whatever this is clearing up. I'll post some pics in the next post, since I'm typing this on the pc.

Is this cyano? Should I do another round of chemiclean? What other approaches does anyone recommend?

JoshKReef · Dec 7, 2018

Images attached

Scottybgood · Dec 7, 2018

From the pictures that appears to be Dinoflagellates :-( I went through the SAME thing you did. Had Dinos first and was able to knock them back with nutrients and UV, then the Bryopsis was getting out of hand, so hit it with reef flux which did a decent job (at first) then came the green cyano, which I hit with Chemiclean and now a mixed bag of Dino species are covering my sand and rocks. Am back to adding nutrients to get some algae and other bio-competition but the bryopsis is coming back in bunches. Not sure which is worse. :-(

Coastie Reefer · Dec 7, 2018

+1 on looking like dino....

Richgoose · Dec 7, 2018

New powerhead for increased flow, turkey baster to blast the slime that's there, and some Siporax in your sump to help control nutrients passively.

JoshKReef · Dec 8, 2018

With stable nutrients, this should right itself?

Scottybgood · Dec 9, 2018

The basic key (as I understand it) is to bring up your nutrients (specifically NO3 ~10 and PO4 ~.1) to allow OTHER good stuff to thrive and out compete the dinos. Depending on what "kind" you have a UV plumbed from display to tank into display tank temporarily could help as well.

I would recommend reading through the sticky thread here. It's a HUGE thread, but the first page has really decent info on what might be happening and good plans of attack.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates-–-are-you-tired-of-battling-altogether.293318/