Inverts dying ICP attached

[epicfatigue]

Hey guys, so I have been battling a algae for about 4 months to which my local fish store says is a Silica driven algae. So I have been purchasing trochus and turbo snails to deal with it. They seem to be very sluggish and slowly die over the space of 2-3 weeks. I'm trying to beat this stuff but my cuc just dies. (video atached)

I have tried snails, turbo and trochus they just die. My Nas snails are perfectly fine. I tried a sea hair dead in a week. So I thought I would try a ICP test hoping for a smoking gun but nothing.

I was wondering is it possible they are starving ?

At the moment I manually remove every week and scrub what remains and I am actually seeing progress but man is this the only way? Why do these buggers not make it!

FISH
I have two melenarus wrasse, ribbon eel, two spot tang, clown fish, dragonet and a rabbit fish.


This algae appeared when i was trying to fight dinos, the LFS just told me to feed and feed and no matter how much i did my nitrate and phosphate were always zero, so i tried this for weeks no avail started to get this algae and dinos were thriving.

I decommissioned my refugium and success i hate a small amount of nitrate and phosphate so i started to dose it and after a month the dinos are gone THANK GOD!. (Installed a 50W UV as well tank volume 450L)

Now forward 4 months i have been trying to kill this crap! my treatment plan has been manual removal once a week and scrubbing the rock and running aluminium oxide to remove the silica, and i started my refugium again to out compete whats on the rocks.

I am dosing enough nitrate to keep it between 2-5ppm and phospate to keep it between 0.03 - 0.08 so i can run the aluminium oxide to remove the silica.
As the second my phospate drops boom i get a dino outbreak and i am not going back there again haha.

I am sorry for the muddled post i am battling 4 children and this tank i love with all my heart however its just not working out for me of late and my direction from LFS has been well not very helpful/

 

[HankstankXXL750 Verified Sponsor]

How often do you feed your melanurus wrasses? They are cruisers and need fuel often. They will also eat snails and shrimp. I thought they were reef safe, they don’t eat corals but do eat inverts. I learned the hard way losing 6 peppermint shrimp and a fire shrimp when I put one in my reef. I can’t get your video to play, so can’t really see your Algea.
I know you state that you have been fighting the Algea for 4 months. How old is your tank?

 

[epicfatigue]

How often do you feed your melanurus wrasses? They are cruisers and need fuel often. They will also eat snails and shrimp. I thought they were reef safe, they don’t eat corals but do eat inverts. I learned the hard way losing 6 peppermint shrimp and a fire shrimp when I put one in my reef. I can’t get your video to play, so can’t really see your Algea.
I know you state that you have been fighting the Algea for 4 months. How old is your tank?

Hey mate my tank is 14 months old.
My wrasse's leaves them alone, they start out moving around the tank after about 3-4 days they fall off the glass then they stop moving and eventually are filled with bristle worms as they are slowly being eaten (they are dead by this point as their trap door has already fallen off) ill fix the videos

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[HankstankXXL750 Verified Sponsor]

Sorry says video is private. At 14 months we can assume it isn’t a cycle/ammonia issue. So if they are not being preyed upon I have no idea why the would be dying and your other snails are not.
From the picture either the algae is out of focus or it looks kinda like slime or snot? Is that an accurate description?

 

[epicfatigue]

Sorry says video is private. At 14 months we can assume it isn’t a cycle/ammonia issue. So if they are not being preyed upon I have no idea why the would be dying and your other snails are not.
From the picture either the algae is out of focus or it looks kinda like slime or snot? Is that an accurate description?

I dislike how I cannot edit posts lol, both videos have been fixed in my last post however one doesn't display you just click.
The below one is what the snails do this is day 18.

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[HankstankXXL750 Verified Sponsor]

Really cool that I’m up late and chatting with a fellow reefer from down under. Have you been there when the fall off? Or finding them later? Do you have hermit crabs?
Asking because hermits will kill to get their shells, but from video that doesn’t look like the cause. I know turbos doesn’t if left upside down too long, so if getting knocked off the rock by another critter could be the cause.

 

[HankstankXXL750 Verified Sponsor]

Really hard to see the algae. Is it possible that it is actually still Dino? Here is a site I found. Could be that your nutrients are still low enough that they haven’t completely gone away?

 

[HankstankXXL750 Verified Sponsor]

Sorry forgot link.

How to get rid of Dinoflagellates in a Saltwater Tank - The Salty Side

Dinoflagellates, the one algae that a reef keeper does not want to find in their saltwater tank. But how do you get rid of it?

www.thesaltyside.com

 

[epicfatigue]

Really cool that I’m up late and chatting with a fellow reefer from down under. Have you been there when the fall off? Or finding them later? Do you have hermit crabs?
Asking because hermits will kill to get their shells, but from video that doesn’t look like the cause. I know turbos doesn’t if left upside down too long, so if getting knocked off the rock by another critter could be the cause.

Haha yea its pretty kool hey? really appreciate the help sorry its been chaos here right up until just now as the kids are in bed. Yes i have been there for it they just fall and they dont even go back inside their shell i can pick them up and put them back on the glass with some convincing. I have no hermits and i do not believe i have any hitch hikers i do alot of checking of my tank at night i am a little obsessed my wife thinks i am leaving her for fish.

I do have alot of bristle worms... i have a hell of alot of sphaeromatid. I started with dry rock and the only thing thats been added was cheato from another reef tank and lets no go there i got red flatworms and that was a whole other heck of a story.

Really hard to see the algae. Is it possible that it is actually still Dino? Here is a site I found. Could be that your nutrients are still low enough that they haven’t completely gone away?

I didn't go into to much detail on this but they are gone, i spent a lot of time on Macks channel beating these pesky buggers i had 3 types all identified by microscope. I have also checked this algae under a microscope and it definitely is an algae the type im not sure i was going to buy a book to ID but anything in Australia is super hard at the moment.
I have been thinking is it possible my LFS just has crap snails? or could it be an acclimation issue?

 

[taricha]

So you have a bloom of some toxic or noxious algae. Hard to say without microscope. Could be chrysophytes. But I would bet it's not silica-driven (diatoms).
and your snails are either being done in by the toxins of the algae or starvation from there being no other good food options in the system.

 

[epicfatigue]

So you have a bloom of some toxic or noxious algae. Hard to say without microscope. Could be chrysophytes. But I would bet it's not silica-driven (diatoms).
and your snails are either being done in by the toxins of the algae or starvation from there being no other good food options in the system.

Gosh that's a bugger, I had this exact same conversation with the fish store and they.juat say not possible, I said I felt since this stuff arrived I do not even get film alage anymore and I wonder if they are starving and they said not a chance.... Here is a photo of my tank sorry it's a little blurry. You can see at the very top I run a very large UV.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Silicate is not likely any part of your issue. The only significant pest that uses it are diatoms, and that does not look like diatoms.

 

[epicfatigue]

Silicate is not likely any part of your issue. The only significant pest that uses it are diatoms, and that does not look like diatoms.

Hey Randy!

Hrm any idea what it might be ?
I have been racking my brain trying to get to the bottom of this. Do you think it might be starvation? Or something else ?
Snails used to thrive in this system. The only thing that has changed is Dino's then this alage. At the point I have had no luck, I was tempted to dose silica and inspire a bloom of diatoms and see inverts survive living of those ? Just as a way of seeing if it's starvation?
Im just clutching at straws and not sure what's the correct approach anymore, I am using aluminium oxide which I dislike but only to suck out the silica as I am told that's my source but I'm more and more thinking it's BS.
And tips on this alage or a good source to identify it ? I have been hoping the scrubbing would kill it I was going to give it another month then start hitting it with H202 which I do not want to but I am just at a loss.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Hey Randy!

Hrm any idea what it might be ?
I have been racking my brain trying to get to the bottom of this. Do you think it might be starvation? Or something else ?
Snails used to thrive in this system. The only thing that has changed is Dino's then this alage. At the point I have had no luck, I was tempted to dose silica and inspire a bloom of diatoms and see inverts survive living of those ? Just as a way of seeing if it's starvation?
Im just clutching at straws and not sure what's the correct approach anymore, I am using aluminium oxide which I dislike but only to suck out the silica as I am told that's my source but I'm more and more thinking it's BS.
And tips on this alage or a good source to identify it ? I have been hoping the scrubbing would kill it I was going to give it another month then start hitting it with H202 which I do not want to but I am just at a loss.

I'm not much of an expert on algae types. I'd suggest posting those pictures in the main forum, ask for id help, and see what folks come up with. The algae may produce toxins, or it may be unrelated.

Starvation does not seem likely at those N and P levels.