ID help: green cyano or algae?

[Steve089]

need your help to ID please. I can usually blow this stuff off with a baster, plan on siphoning most of it out tomorrow when I do my WC. in the first picture, that’s the back left of the tank where flow is the worst and that’s where I see it the most.

cuc: 3 trochus, 3 cerith, 2 mexican turbo, 5 blue leg hermits

 

[ichthyogeek]

Oooh microscope pictures! My money's on it being cyano, since it looks film-y, has bubbles, is green, and has a rod shape under a microscope. Can you zoom in any further on the scope?

 

[Steve089]

Oooh microscope pictures! My money's on it being cyano, since it looks film-y, has bubbles, is green, and has a rod shape under a microscope. Can you zoom in any further on the scope?

thats the highest my cheap scope goes :/

 

[taricha]

Cyano for sure. Benthic bubbly (green or red) mat, tiny unbranched filaments under the scope. (Cell cross-walls visible in filaments if you zoom in on pic)

 

[Steve089]

Cyano for sure. Benthic bubbly (green or red) mat, tiny unbranched filaments under the scope. (Cell cross-walls visible in filaments if you zoom in on pic)

thank you! now that I have an ID I can take a course of action!

 

[taricha]

thank you! now that I have an ID I can take a course of action!

I agree with your initial plan of sucking it out.

 

[Steve089]

I agree with your initial plan of sucking it out.

just scrapped as much as I could off the rock work with a thin brush brush, some is floating in the column right now and getting sucked into the overflow and being caught in filter pad/filter floss. in a couple hrs I’ll do some vacuuming and a W/C

besdies low flown in the back, I think I may know the source, possible hunk of new dead, dry reef rock I added to make an island, could be relasing silicates that are fuling growth? wonder if I should keep that rock in (been in about 10 days) or remove it. id like to keep and just manage the cyano actively

 

[vetteguy53081]

Cyano
Check phosphates and reduce white light intensity a little and blow this loose with a turkey baster and siphon up

 

[Steve089]

Cyano
Check phosphates and reduce white light intensity a little and blow this loose with a turkey baster and siphon up

ive been struggling with zero phosphates (0 on hannah checker as of yesterday) but will lower my photo period!

 

[Steve089]

just wanted to provide an update:

did a W/C and vaccumed sand this past weekend, blew as much as I could off rocks and let the free cyano pass through the overflows to get stuck in the filter floss and pass through a 9w desktop UV!

Most of all, I added a Nero 3 that’s operating in random mode (up to 25%) in addition to putting my gyre on continuously (10%) pointed at the return to help random flow (gyre on left wall, nero on right wall). Part of the gyre is pointed down in the back left corner to decrease dead spots.

so far so good, am still feeding every other day, still trying to get phosphates up