It has a little bit of a reddish hue, but is mostly brown. The algae also gives off little clear bubbles (see additional pics). It doesn't look slimy. It blows off with a turkey baster, depending on where you blow (see photo).
Whats you n03/p04 @?It has a little bit of a reddish hue, but is mostly brown. The algae also gives off little clear bubbles (see additional pics). It doesn't look slimy. It blows off with a turkey baster, depending on where you blow (see photo).
Blown-off spot.
Bubbles coming off the algae everywhere.
Some of the algae on the sand and glass.
We recently reduced nitrate and phosphate and are still working on lowering them. Nitrate is currently about 40ppm, perhaps a tad more. Phosphate is currently like 1.5mg/L.
Yep, your photomicrograph confirms diatoms.
We bought a microscope and looked at a sample of our brown algae we've been seeing recently and we think it looks like diatoms. Any thoughts? (See photos) It is on the rocks, sand and glass. Not on any coral. All coral, anemones etc are happy.
Looks like dinos now that there is physical pics. Do this and you win :
If you look up dinos under a microscope, the photos look different than our microscope photo though. They are circular. We did microbacter soaked into a large biofilter media block, added a carbon reactor with both carbon and GFO, we did a big water change, vacuumed, used phosguard and added a clam. We cannot reduce our lights as we have a fair amount of coral including sps. Our coral and inverts are also doing well and it's our understanding that dinos would harm them. We vacuumed the sand bed for the first time in a year because we suspected that was the issue with our high nitrate/phosphate levels after being told not to vacuum our sand bed because it would have a negative effect on the tank, which we now know not to be true lol. The nitrate and phosphate levels have dropped but need to go down much more, which is why we thought this algae, whatever it may be, was a reaction to a sudden, large drop in nitrate/phosphate levels. We also dosed Dr Tim's Waste-Away with the UV filter etc off.
I agree and OP is insisting dino which are round or egg shaped. I believe cyano but the recipe I gave will work with cyano-dino-diatom, however the presence of bubbles and indicated as brown point to dino. I believe cyaon which is a bacteria and can mimic dino in some cases.
Your microscope picture does look like diatoms. Similar to this ?
That's exactly what we're seeing, your microscope is much better. Thanks for the idea of taking additional samples and checking for the round dino shape.Your microscope picture does look like diatoms. Similar to this ?
Perhaps you can try and sample a few different areas of your aquarium. If you can't see any dino cells, It is unlikely to be dino.
Lol- I was confused
