Dino's or Diatoms

Empress · May 2, 2017

I have something growing on. It's either dinoflagellates or diatoms. How can I tell the two apart? It would be nice to see a picture of the two side-by-side.

saltyfilmfolks · May 2, 2017

The only way to truly ID them is a microscope. but it seems most often our diatoms are a dusty looking covering, and dinos a a sticky mass. Now many "dinos" can be or are slime algaes and other closely related organisms.

Empress · May 2, 2017

By your description it sounds like I have Dino's. ugh. Thanks, Salty.

I got a microscope. And I just bought Julian Sprungs book [emoji432] on Problematic Algae.

Can Dino's have snot bubbles too or just the diatoms? I see only a few bubbles but not a lot. I cut my lights back by 3 hours this morning. So we'll see how it looks when I get home from work.

And I just bought a new set RODI cartridges. I suspect that's what my problem is.