ID: Cyano, Dinos, Other?

Crued · Feb 7, 2016

I have several patches of a thick matted "something". I have seen pics of cyano which I said "that's it", so I did a test with chemiclean (see bullet 7 and last pic) but I expected a much different result. Pics are taken hastily with a camera phone, sorry about quality. I will bullet point what I know and don't know and hopefully someone can help me down a path to solution.

Tank is heavily stocked, heavily fed, about 9 months old.
3 separate patches in my tank. All in areas with plenty of flow.
Color on the "outside" is purple, but when you blow it off with a turkey baster, it seems white underneath.
There are many fine stringy spots.
Bubbles form on/in it.
Do not appear to be having any livestock deaths. As shown in one picture, it grows up the frag plugs to the coral but seems to stop there.
I have not taken any measurements on chemistry yet. I don't want to chase numbers till I actually have a number to chase.
I have a microscope coming in 3 days.
The ziplock bag was a sample of material taken, and a cup of water or so, and a scoop of Chemiclean. I shook the crap out of the bag for a minute and let it sit under household lamp. The picture is what it looked like in the morning.
Mystery wrasse is a suspect as this *is* a mystery.

You can see stringy stuff in this pic, behind the wrasse. The rock to the right with the Leptoseris is where this started

Better pic of the rock with the Leptoseris and you can see how it grows up the plugs and stops.

Completely opposite side of the tank. Problem spot is the rock with the blank plug.

Chemiclean test.

Diesel · Feb 7, 2016

I don't think this is Dino's.
Lets go get the [HASHTAG]#reefsquad[/HASHTAG] an pair of eyes on this.
Btw, guys this is the person who donated $1750 for the "Toys for Kids" as he won with that my pack.
It's still in my frag tank as he's worried that this might be a bad thing to have such a awesome pack in this tank with this issue.

Crued · Feb 7, 2016

Diesel said:
I don't think this is Dino's.
Lets go get the [HASHTAG]#reefsquad[/HASHTAG] an pair of eyes on this.
Btw, guys this is the person who donated $1750 for the "Toys for Kids" as he won with that my pack.
It's still in my frag tank as he's worried that this might be a bad thing to have such a awesome pack in this tank with this issue.

The re-coagulation of it in my chemiclean test is what has me worried. I *will not* put the frag pack in my tank unless I get community clearance. I would rather re-donate it than sacrifice the livestock.

FL_Reefer · Feb 7, 2016

Can you take any more ''white'' pics that arnt so blue? Have any of your snails died?

kschweer · Feb 7, 2016

Are you dosing anything in the tank like a bacteria additive or carbon dosing? Looks as if it could be a bacterial bloom. I have seen quite a few posts lately about things similar to this and most have come back to carbon dosing.

kschweer · Feb 7, 2016

Also are the bubble just on the surface of the rocks or do they kind of Float with a string attached?

Pete polyp · Feb 7, 2016

Does it trap air bubbles?

Looking at the pictures closer I can see that it does. It looks like Dino to me.

Wiz · Feb 7, 2016

The bubbles do look suspect. But as there is no stringyness to it and it looks thick and glossy, I would lean toward cyano. The consistency and lack of balloons on strings tells me its not dinos. Imo

Pete polyp · Feb 7, 2016

Wiz said:
The bubbles do look suspect. But as there is no stringyness to it and it looks thick and glossy, I would lean toward cyano. The consistency and lack of balloons on strings tells me its not dinos. Imo

If you look at the first picture closely its stringy

Crued · Feb 7, 2016

FL_Reefer said:
Can you take any more ''white'' pics that arnt so blue? Have any of your snails died?

Yes, in my next post, I took some with Radion set to 7k

kschweer said:
Are you dosing anything in the tank like a bacteria additive or carbon dosing? Looks as if it could be a bacterial bloom. I have seen quite a few posts lately about things similar to this and most have come back to carbon dosing.

I dose 2-part with Fauna Marin's Balling Light products. I do not dose carbon *HOWEVER*, I do use Chemi-Pure in my filter socks and one of the bags was being crashed heavily and ground up the carbon. This happened weeks ago, and I cannot associate or dis-associate it with the problem.

kschweer said:
Also are the bubble just on the surface of the rocks or do they kind of Float with a string attached?

Pete polyp said:
Does it trap air bubbles?

Wiz said:
The bubbles do look suspect. But as there is no stringyness to it and it looks thick and glossy, I would lean toward cyano. The consistency and lack of balloons on strings tells me its not dinos. Imo

There are a few instances where the bubbles are trapped int he stringy material, but it is not rampant like many dino pics you see. I am having a hard time capturing this with camera. There are definately bubbles on the surface of the mat like you see in many cyano pics showing red cyano.

Crued · Feb 7, 2016

I've attached several large pictures under 7k lighting and various lighting with my phone. Hopefully something useful here.

PICS ARE LARGE

Just to the left of the Leptoseris you can see some bubbles in the mat. To the right you can see the patch I blew off last night for my chemiclean test.

Wiz · Feb 7, 2016

Pete polyp said:
If you look at the first picture closely its stringy

I see what you mean on top left. But still looks nothing like the dinos I had. Not stringy enough and all my strings were topped by balloons or bubbles. And the thickness that Is covering the rock is way thicker than mine ever got. If it wasn't for the bubbles caught in the slime I would be completly against dino. But maybe

Wiz · Feb 7, 2016

I would put my money on cyano.

CHEWAL · Feb 7, 2016

Kool no I see the pics its redslime algea or dinos what ever you want to call it and the joke is I did the same test you did and had the same results they clumed up overnight and chemclean will take about 48 hrs to clear it up I had it about 2 years ago and chemclean worked

Crued · Feb 7, 2016

Wiz said:
I see what you mean on top left. But still looks nothing like the dinos I had. Not stringy enough and all my strings were topped by balloons or bubbles. And the thickness that Is covering the rock is way thicker than mine ever got. If it wasn't for the bubbles caught in the slime I would be completly against dino. But maybe

It is *VERY* thick in parts.

I did a water change yesterday and I believe 2 things seemed to change. 1) Less bubbles in the material. 2) More stringyness.

Pete polyp · Feb 7, 2016

Please post a picture at the end of the light cycle

Pete polyp · Feb 7, 2016

What I'm seeing is both cyano and dinoflagellates. The thick red mat is cyano and the strings seem to be dino. It's not uncommon to have both of them at the same time.

Wiz · Feb 7, 2016

Have you removed it at all manually and does it come back in 20 minutes or a couple days?

reefwiser · Feb 7, 2016

Cut back on the feeding of the tank. I don't know what equipment you have. Skimmer ,Algae scrubber. What water movement in the tank do you have. Tank is still new and I can see the corals are not happy. Algae needs food to grown and the proper environment.

Wiz · Feb 7, 2016

I'm not convinced on the dinos. I've seen stringy cyano. An easy test is to put a piece of tubing or a stick or something through a string. In my experience dino will stick to it. Cyano will break and float off.