Help with diagnosis

Klyph · Aug 13, 2022

So is this diatoms, cyano, or Dino’s? It’s interesting that it’s primarily focused on my frags and not the rock. It doesn’t seem to go away when lights are off.

It’s a recently setup and cycled Biocube, setup about 2-3 months ago. I set it up to be my quarantine tank, but my drags are struggling with all this crud on them. All parameters are reasonable.
.01 phos
3 nitrates
1.025 salt
7.9 ph
7.1 dkh
400 calc
1200 mg

Any thoughts on what it is, and best way to handle it.

vetteguy53081 · Aug 14, 2022

Klyph said:
So is this diatoms, cyano, or Dino’s? It’s interesting that it’s primarily focused on my frags and not the rock. It doesn’t seem to go away when lights are off.

It’s a recently setup and cycled Biocube, setup about 2-3 months ago. I set it up to be my quarantine tank, but my drags are struggling with all this crud on them. All parameters are reasonable.
.01 phos
3 nitrates
1.025 salt
7.9 ph
7.1 dkh
400 calc
1200 mg

Any thoughts on what it is, and best way to handle it.

Looks like hair algae and cyano
Pull what you can by hand, blow surfaces loose with a turkey baster and then siphon tank and reduce or better yet turn off white lighting 3-5 days and add 1.5ml of liquid bacteria such as micro bacter 7 per 10 gallons for 7 days then add snails such as:
Nassarius
Astrea
Nerite
Margarita

Klyph · Aug 14, 2022

It’s definitely not hair algae (very familiar with that from my past) but I can see why you might think that from the pic. It’s more slimy than it looks in the pic. The timing is consistent with diatoms (new live sand and dry rock).

I was thinking of putting in chemo clean to try to get it off my frags quickly. Thoughts?

vetteguy53081 said:
Looks like hair algae and cyano
Pull what you can by hand, blow surfaces loose with a turkey baster and then siphon tank and reduce or better yet turn off white lighting 3-5 days and add 1.5ml of liquid bacteria such as micro bacter 7 per 10 gallons for 7 days then add snails such as:
Nassarius
Astrea
Nerite
Margarita