I’m prepared for war.

[Gabe]

Hello friends. I’ll be as brief as possible. My husbandry over this past fall has been poor. Fish and inverts are doing great. Some coral is doing well. Other coral isn’t dying, but not growing. I have been really lax on water changes (maybe 2 or 3 over the period of SEP-DEC. Tank is about 18 months old. I know I allowed my alk to drop really low down to about 6, which I attribute a lot of my issues to. Ca and Mg are both fine. I’ve struggled with very low nutrients for as long as I’ve had the tank.

Currently raising my alk slowly and monitoring my parameters closely. Dosing nitrate and phosphate (tropic Marin). In the past I have had briopsis, bubble algae, and coraline. Flucozanol did great for the briopsis. A mix of time and vibrant seemed to have addressed the bubble algae. It’s still there but not a problem. The coraline I mentioned because it definitely hasn’t been growing lately. Alk level probably explains that. Which coupled with low nutrients likely brought me to my current situation.

Beginning of DEC I started to notice a new type of “algae”. Red, long and stringy with bubbles and a propensity to grow the most on and around corals. I physically removed any coral that wasn’t encrusted and picked this stringy crap off with tweezers. For stuff I couldn’t remove I did the same in the tank.

Vibrant was my first course of action. I don’t think it had any effect. Although I didn’t think this was cyano, I tried Chemi Clean per instruction to no effect.

Fast forward to late December, I escalated the war with about $400 of UV sterilization plus a microscope for better ID.

So now for the pictures. The UV maybe has had a slight positive effect, but nothing like the “48 hour cure” others have mentioned in the Dino thread.
Attached is the tank as of yesterday. The stringy stuff on the frag rack is my problem. GHA came on with a vengeance over the past few weeks. Honestly not as concerned with it as it’s sticking to the highest light and flow areas (which is where my sps will eventually go). The microscope photos are one very simple hair algae shot. One with a few spheres in the shot that are most likely to be Dino’s? Need help on the ID though. The picture of the red and green mat is a piece of the bad stuff and hair algae that were growing together.
So like the title says. I’m prepared for war and want to beat this thing. What’s my next order of business?

 

[blaxsun]

I'd be curious what your water parameters are, specifically nitrates and phosphates, and what your alkalinity is at present. pH and salinity? Also, what do you have for reef inhabitants, ie: both fish and cleanup crew. Aside from the UV what else do you run for filtration? Filter socks or media basket w/filter floss, protein skimmer, carbon, GFO, etc. Also, what are you running for lighting? If LEDs do you have the red channel on?

 

[Gabe]

I'd be curious what your water parameters are, specifically nitrates and phosphates, and what your alkalinity is at present. pH and salinity? Also, what do you have for reef inhabitants, ie: both fish and cleanup crew. Aside from the UV what else do you run for filtration? Filter socks or media basket w/filter floss, protein skimmer, carbon, GFO, etc. Also, what are you running for lighting? If LEDs do you have the red channel on?

Hey there. This is data as of a couple weeks ago. I will update tonight once home as well. I’ve done one water change since the. Go get the salinity back up to 35ppt after the chemiclean treatment. I read elsewhere that doing water changes during a Dino outbreak might be counter productive. These are all from Salifert or RS tests.

 

[blaxsun]

Yeah, your salinity is really low @33. I'd probably aim for somewhere in the 34-35 range. I try to keep my alkalinity in the 8.0-8.5 range just so I have a bit of a buffer in the event it drops.

Phosphates and nitrates reading zero are definitely a contributing (if not the) factor. If you have GFO I'd temporarily remove or disable it. Are you running a refugium?

I don't know what you have for reef inhabitants?

 

[Gabe]

Yeah, your salinity is really low @33. I'd probably aim for somewhere in the 34-35 range. I try to keep my alkalinity in the 8.0-8.5 range just so I have a bit of a buffer in the event it drops.

Phosphates and nitrates reading zero are definitely a contributing (if not the) factor. If you have GFO I'd temporarily remove or disable it. Are you running a refugium?

I don't know what you have for reef inhabitants?

You can tell I'm at work because I'm neither paying attention to all of your questions or work itself ha.

It is a 50g tank with a 10-15ish gallon sump (Reef Octopus T90 system), Skimmer (RO 150int), filter sock, BRS rox carbon through a 2LF reactor, and a 15 watt aqua UV sterilizer. 5 stage BRS RODI unit that shows 0 tds. Never run GFO since I haven't measured a single phosphate in 18 months. If I test alk tonight, it should be getting close to 7 if my calculator is right, and should raise to 8 in the next week or so (just dusted off my dosing pumps and automated my 3part - Red Sea A, B, and Magnesium). Previously dosed All for Reef through it. I also used to use AcroPower for aminos, but haven't in some time.

Again, tank started 18 months ago. That 33 ppt salinity was a huge wakeup call for me the other week. It has never been anything but 35 from prior tests. I did test it after a water change that day and got it up to 34. Should double check today. Also, I have never had pH "challenges". For the first year it was always at 8.2-8.3. I attribute these recent crap parameters to poor husbandry. Also worth noting I did one ICP test about 8-9 months ago. It didn't really highlight anything out of whack. It's outdated, but I haven't changed anything else major since (salt/filtration/etc).

Live Stock:
-Pair of clowns
-Lyretail anthias
-Blue damsel (that needs to go - he is aggressive and keeping me from adding other fish)
-Strawberry Psuedochromis
-Foxface - he is a recent addition. All the other fish have been in the tank for over a year.

Inverts:
-Cleanup crew hasn't been refreshed too much since I started the tank with a reefcleaners package.
-Emerald crab has been MIA for over a month which almost certainly means he is gone - he was so active and outgoing before.
-Blue tuxedo urchin
-Fighting conch
-One? peppermint shrimp - added two months and wrote them off as DOA. But can confirm at least one of them is still in the tank hiding under some rocks 99.99% of the time.

I run two Kessil a360x tuna blues on the tank. The dongle has crapped out in the past month, but the app was always lacking and painful to use. That means right now its more or less a preset color from them on a timer. Right now, I do 9 hours a day at close to 100%. Previously had been doing less intense light for about 11 hours. Corals have responded well to the increased intensity. I plan to rent/buy a good PAR meter from BRS soon.

 

[Gabe]

For giggles - this is from a few weeks ago on the 12th. It’s not a barren wasteland, but the Dino’s and/or algae are very apparent.

 

[Gabe]

@taricha summoning the gods

 

[taricha]

Pic 2 is a nice shot of cyanobacteria. Most the standard oscillatoria-like variety. But a strand or two of spirulina (spiraling coil)
3rd video shows Coolia dinoflagellates around yet more cyano strands.

 

[Gabe]

Pic 2 is a nice shot of cyanobacteria. Most the standard oscillatoria-like variety. But a strand or two of spirulina (spiraling coil)
3rd video shows Coolia dinoflagellates around yet more cyano strands.

Wow thank you so much (I won’t shoot the messenger). Your id guide motivated me to buy the microscope and I tried to make the ID on my own to no avail.
Surprised the Chemiclean I dosed a week or so ago didn’t kill the cyano.