Can someone ID this algae

[Justin Thain]

Hello all and Happy Thanksgiving,
Was curious if someone could ID this algae. Its a weird one for me as its very fuzzy and small. I have attached pictures, but not sure if they are in focus enough to help with ID'ing the algae. For reference I currently have 0 phos and nitrate. I am also running an algae scrubber. The CUC (hermits, snails) don't really touch this stuff.

 

[Palyzoa]

@saltyfilmfolks Any idea?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

It looks like either a bacterial mulm, or a chrystophyties.

How old is the the tank? How much cuc snails do you have?
Are you Using and aminos , coral foods , nopox , vibrant, carbon dosing ? gfo?

Honestly, it could be a diatom or a dino too, but the cure treatment will be the same.

 

[Justin Thain]

It looks like either a bacterial mulm, or a chrystophyties.

How old is the the tank? How much cuc snails do you have?
Are you Using and aminos , coral foods , nopox , vibrant, carbon dosing ? gfo?

Honestly, it could be a diatom or a dino too, but the cure treatment will be the same.

Ok, so the age of the tank which is a 210 gallon tank is not necessarily a straight answer. Its been wet since Nov 2016 with cycle rock and lights on it, but no creatures dwelling within the tank. I added frozen mysis every once and in a while to keep the beneficial bacteria alive. I added fish 6 cardinals back in July of 2017, and then 2 clown fish a few months later. A few months prior to the fish being added, I introduced some CUC. My current stock of CUC is 5 Mexican turbo snails, some Nerite Snails, some Trochus, 7-8 Nassarius Snails, some Cerith Snails, 1-2 margarita snails, 2 peppermint shrimp, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 fighting conch, and 5-8 hermit crabs.

I am not using any of the following, amino's, coral food, no pox, vibrant, carbon dosing or gfo. I'm trying to go with the simplicist approach. I have the 210 gallon tank, with a turf algae scrubber, and a protein skimmer. I only have 8 small fish total and 3 corals (2 green digi and 1 monti). I have been trying to go extremely slow with my build. I feed the fish frozen mysis, and other frozen food (calanus and LRS Fish Frenzy).

Here are some better pictures.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

You need a bunch more snails imo. And a good scrub.

Quite often , we see the appearance en mass, of some of the odder oraganisms due to some nutint limitation. Ie near zero no3 for example. So look to your test kit.

Manual removal will be key scrubbing , UV , ozone , peroxide Diatom filter , gac in a reactor or canister filter.
Addition of benificial Bactria is also a good idea. You want more of those competing the snot stuff.

Some folks like to dose no3 and Po4 supliment up to the average reccomended levels, you can also just over feed.

You can also shorten the time in the fuge ats so it's not pulling to many of the nutrients out as well.


Sounds counter intuitive , but oddly true. But manual removal will be key till the systems other organisms rebound.

 

[Justin Thain]

You need a bunch more snails imo. And a good scrub.

Quite often , we see the appearance en mass, of some of the odder oraganisms due to some nutint limitation. Ie near zero no3 for example. So look to your test kit.

Manual removal will be key scrubbing , UV , ozone , peroxide Diatom filter , gac in a reactor or canister filter.
Addition of benificial Bactria is also a good idea. You want more of those competing the snot stuff.

Some folks like to dose no3 and Po4 supliment up to the average reccomended levels, you can also just over feed.

You can also shorten the time in the fuge ats so it's not pulling to many of the nutrients out as well.


Sounds counter intuitive , but oddly true. But manual removal will be key till the systems other organisms rebound.

It has now turned into this

Thoughts? Could this be Bryopsis? My snails don’t really seem to have a taste for it.

 

[hyprc]

I've had the hairy clearish stuff you have in your display for about a year but it never turned dark. I have had zero nitrate since month 3 of the tank and it's almost 2 years old now. Phosphates will rise gradually and I'll run GFO when they creep over .25 to .5ish. About a year ago I decided to try dosing nitrate but only succeeded in allowing what little cyano I had to proliferate (some corals did color up and show better PE and growth though), which took months to get to die back; also caused a couple small patches of green hair and one patch of bryopsis. Long story short, one juvenile one spot foxface has the tank looking spotless now (except for a little lingering cyano and the lobophora variegata he won't touch)