Dino’s?

[piranhaman00]

Hello,

Do these images look like dinoflagellates? It looks like algae to me, I do see the air bubbles but I am running a power head that is blowing in air from outside the tank, it looks like the bubbles might just be sticking to the sand? My nitrates are also very near 0 recently which I didn’t realize you don’t actually want. Any opinions? Thanks!

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

Hard to tell from the pictures. Could be diatoms but too soon to tell. Raise nitrate to 1-10 ppm and phosphates to no more than 0.1 ppm. Dinos usually bloom in strong light with long photo periods, and no phosphates or nitrates. They usually grow on other algae first and get a stringy snot like appearance. It will be worst at the end of the photo period and lessen over night. So if it doesn't look a little better in the morning, then congrats, you have diatoms.