Is this diatoms

[Defff21]

Just curious is this in the picture diatoms, my tank is established and I do weekly water changes but I have gotten this really bad the last few days ...could it be from my carbon being a little old and what can I do? just keep doing regular water changes..I cant get salt water and new carbon for another 2 days ...I dont run a skimmer ...could my lights be too intense they are just stock lights on the fluval evo

 

[homer1475]

The brown could be diatoms, but I see the tell tale sign of cyano(the red slime), but the brown could also be cyano.

 

[SMSREEF]

Looks like cyano if you are asking about the pinkish brown mat.
Not a huge deal, you can siphon out when you do your next water change.
You could also get some cerith snails because they will help keep the sand clean of the algae/diatoms behind the mat.

 

[Defff21]

Looks like cyano if you are asking about the pinkish brown mat.
Not a huge deal, you can siphon out when you do your next water change.
You could also get some cerith snails because they will help keep the sand clean of the algae/diatoms behind the mat.

Thank you my phosphates are low probably zero

 

[Defff21]

Will it kill my coral and do i just add more cuc and do regular water changes to rid of it ? What about turning lights off for 2 days while siphoning

 

[SMSREEF]

Will it kill my coral and do i just add more cuc and do regular water changes to rid of it ? What about turning lights off for 2 days while siphoning

It’s not gonna kill your corals unless it smothers them, but you can easily blow it off them. You don’t look like it’s a back case. Cerith snails should help a lot.

Some people do lights off. In my experience, whatever you are trying to kill with lights off always comes back when lights come back on. But others have luck with it.

If nitrate or phosphate are true 0 then that could cause issues with corals and give other microbes a chance to spread. If you have green algae, I doubt you are really at 0. Some test kits don’t do the really low numbers accurately. You could take sample to LFS and have them test it just to make sure.

 

[attiland]

Just curious is this in the picture diatoms, my tank is established and I do weekly water changes but I have gotten this really bad the last few days ...could it be from my carbon being a little old and what can I do? just keep doing regular water changes..I cant get salt water and new carbon for another 2 days ...I dont run a skimmer ...could my lights be too intense they are just stock lights on the fluval evo

Diatoms not doing mats. It could well be dinos or cyano too. Check it with microscope

 

[A sea K]

I thought I had a recurrence of diatoms in my 4 year old tank. Did a first time ever 40% w/c (typically 5% weekly) and what I thought were diatoms are evidently dino's and man did they take off. Been battling them ever since and am slowing losing coral. I seem to have the dino's under control yet not fully eliminated but my corals do not seem to be recovering. Just adding more insult to an already crummy 2020.