Dinos and GHA together?

[Edgecrusher28]

After years of breeding Cichlids I have finally come back to reef keeping for a second attempt. As the tank matures, I ran into what seems to be a normal green hair algae outbreak, but also dinos, odd seeing as I thought these two algae's thrived in completely opposite environments. The green hair algae kind of made sense, the nitrates ran around 20 PPM for a good month with very low phosphates around .003, slowly rising to .1 as I dosed NeoPhos. I am primarily keeping ZOA's so I intended to run the tank with higher nitrates than average. One day it appeared my skimmer broke in finally as the skim mate turned very dark overnight and my nitrates fell to 2ppm within a day or two and that's when I started to see dinos. Present day, I have a mild case of dinos and a thriving patches of GHA with the below parameters. I have since turned off the skimmer and am trying to raise nitrates while dosing Microbacter clean. Am I doing anything crazy wrong here to have two types of algae's growing in my tank that seem to be polar opposites?

60 Gallon
RODI water/ 0 TDS total.
Red sea pro salt 1.026 mix
0- Ammonia
0-Nitrite
2ppm-Nitrate
.06ppm-phospate
450-calcium
1420-Magnesium
8.8dkh
1.026- Salinity
77.4- degrees F
8.2-PH
.003ppm-Iodine
AI Primes running standard 8 hour schedule, 167UV,167V, 100B, 80RB, 4G,4DR,0ML and a max of 20CW at midday with a small ramp up and down.

 

[Drummingbaker2010]

After years of breeding Cichlids I have finally come back to reef keeping for a second attempt. As the tank matures, I ran into what seems to be a normal green hair algae outbreak, but also dinos, odd seeing as I thought these two algae's thrived in completely opposite environments. The green hair algae kind of made sense, the nitrates ran around 20 PPM for a good month with very low phosphates around .003, slowly rising to .1 as I dosed NeoPhos. I am primarily keeping ZOA's so I intended to run the tank with higher nitrates than average. One day it appeared my skimmer broke in finally as the skim mate turned very dark overnight and my nitrates fell to 2ppm within a day or two and that's when I started to see dinos. Present day, I have a mild case of dinos and a thriving patches of GHA with the below parameters. I have since turned off the skimmer and am trying to raise nitrates while dosing Microbacter clean. Am I doing anything crazy wrong here to have two types of algae's growing in my tank that seem to be polar opposites?

60 Gallon
RODI water/ 0 TDS total.
Red sea pro salt 1.026 mix
0- Ammonia
0-Nitrite
2ppm-Nitrate
.06ppm-phospate
450-calcium
1420-Magnesium
8.8dkh
1.026- Salinity
77.4- degrees F
8.2-PH
.003ppm-Iodine
AI Primes running standard 8 hour schedule, 167UV,167V, 100B, 80RB, 4G,4DR,0ML and a max of 20CW at midday with a small ramp up and down.

I think I have heard about both types of algae being present together, but it's been a while. I am still trying to check my alk levels to make sure that my reef tank stays in good shape.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

bump, any other thoughts to share out there?

Thanks!

 

[Lavey29]

bump, any other thoughts to share out there?

Thanks!

Did you ID dinos with microscope? Microbacter clean does reduce nitrates so you may be competing against yourself. Diverse clean up crew can help with a variety of snails and an urchin. Modify your lights can help by going 6 hours with blues and UV and no whites. Dosing phytoplankton to help biodiversity. I also recommend PNS probio bacteria supplement but it can reduce nitrate to. Manual removal during water changes and correct stabil parameters will be a main objective too.

 

[Lavey29]

Also my tank size and parameters are very similar to yours. I'm almost a year old now and still have patches of GHA. Most healthy tanks will probably have a little algae here and there. I found keeping magnesium elevated to 1500 slowly kills off the GHA but also some affect on my chaeto. Urchins are my best too now. I avoid chemicals unless a last resort. I like the natural approach and letting the tank sort things out on the rocks. Coraline seems to be over taking the GHA now too.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Also my tank size and parameters are very similar to yours. I'm almost a year old now and still have patches of GHA. Most healthy tanks will probably have a little algae here and there. I found keeping magnesium elevated to 1500 slowly kills off the GHA but also some affect on my chaeto. Urchins are my best too now. I avoid chemicals unless a last resort. I like the natural approach and letting the tank sort things out on the rocks. Coraline seems to be over taking the GHA now too.

Thanks for the reply, as far as identifying the dinos I have not done so yet. However, they seem to be on the decline so hopefully things continue to improve. The tanks has what I believe to be a relatively strong clean up crew consisting of 12 astrea snails, half dozen blue legs, some dwarf cerith, and some other mics snails for rock and glass cleaning. I have a pincushion urchin and a yellow tang. Oddly enough my magnesium was abnormally elevated during the first few months of the tank being setup, even though i used the same salt. As the tank matures I'm starting to see a steady consumption of MG and as the levels have lowered it seems the snails are more active than before. I think I will just continue doing what I'm doing for now.