Green branching psammacora tissue liss

[mstockmaster]

I've had this green psammacora frag in my tank for a couple of months now. It has always been relatively healthy but shown little growth. It's high up on one of my rocks receiving high light and strong flow. Parameters are good and stable (alk 8.6 cal 440 mag 1340 n 5ppm p 0-.03). I've been having some issues with some sort of algae. I'm not sure what exactly it is though. Shows up on lots of surfaces, rocks, sand, corals. Not heavy but it clings to some of my sps in stringy bits. Most of the coral isn't bothered but I noticed it on the psammacora yesterday and saw that it looked like it was losing tissue. Any suggestions on what to do will be appreciated.

 

[mstockmaster]

I did bump my lighting up this past week, on reef breeders photon v2. Was previously maxing at 40% blues and went up to 50%. Other channels were increased by same percentage. I turned light back down to previous settings last night

 

[kate14]

sounds like it might be dinoflagellates. It can happen after a change in lighting. One of our tanks at my shop got it after switching to new LEDs. We're using Vibrant Aquarium cleaner and it seems to be doing the trick. I have some watermelon and green psammacora in my 65 gal and they are near the top with moderate flow. The lighting increase may have caused the tissue loss but so could the dinoflagellates if they are getting on it. I would do a more slow gradual increase in light, maybe direct your flow so dino can't settle on it.

 

[DSC reef]

Can you post a pic of the algae your mentioning so an ID can be established. Dinos are nasty.

 

[mstockmaster]

Confirmed it's dinos. Was at zero po4, have dosed some phosphate, still waiting for results. No change in the coral so far positive or negative.

 

[DSC reef]

Sorry to hear. There are some good threads on here about battling them.

 

[mstockmaster]

Yeah, I've been reading them. This tank has been nothing but problems.

 

[DSC reef]

Hang in there, its worth it in the end. Having a tank is always a learning experience. The reward is worth the headaches they give sometimes.

 

[mstockmaster]

I'm aware, this isn't my first tank. But I was one of those that started with dry rock for this build and a minimal amount of live rock and cycled with pure ammonia. Therefore I ended up with a very imbalanced amount of nitrates and phosphates. (super high nitrate super low phosphates). I used water changes and carbon dosing to bring the nutrients down and ended up with a starving tank. Stopped the carbon dosing but the nutrients never really came back. I then dosed some nitrates but eventually being phosphate limited I got dinos. Good news is that after trying to maintain measurable nutrients for the past few days it looks like the dinos have reduced a bit. Hopefully the trend continues.