Dinos? Identification and Treatment

[Yahtzee170]

I have a 10 gallon that I neglected and let the nutrients fall to zero. Been dealing with this for the past 2-3 months. Inhabitants including corals are doing great.

I'm suspecting dinos given the history. Is a picture enough to suggest a species and treatment? At night it goes away entirely. During the day it's confined to the sand, and water changes seem to make it worse (been doing 10% weekly, while making sure not to drop NO3/PO4 too much). I'd prefer not to spend money on a microscope or UV unless absolutely necessary.

 

[BanjoBandito]

Without a microscope it's hard to say for sure, and you can pick up a pocket 200x on amazon for like 15 bucks. They are handy to have.

With that said, if it's confined to the sand and only the sand it could be small or large amph. Typically they do not enter the water column at night though.

UV will work with species that enter the water column at night or due to lack of light.

Regardless of what species it is, it's all about the light. They are highly photosynthetic. A blackout period of 4-5 days will reduce/remove them (they may come back however without follow up). I've seen threads on here where people have success using hard black plastic pieces (UHMW?) to cover them up on the sand bed, basically blacking them out from the light. I would suck as much of it out as you can right before your lights start to dim when they are in high photosynthesizing mode then try a black out period if you wanted a decent place to start.

Good luck!

PS: I finally got rid of mine on the sandbed after almost nothing worked by totally removing the sand, rinsing it until clear and then putting it back and dosing silicates to trigger a diatom bloom - it was part of a larger RIP CLEAN on a small nano tank. I won't start a tank from dry rock again after that battle. What a pain.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hard to if with no microscope images but it appears to Diatoms as the rocks and other structures appear to be clear
Give the ssndbed a good siphoning and reduce white intensity
If you recently added sand or rock that will trigger it as well as if resin expired and in need of change