Need help ID’ing. Dino? Cyno?

Reulv3 · Feb 8, 2018

I’ve been trying to fight this for about a little over a month now. I’ve tried 72 hour a 72 hour black out, manual removal. The only think that seemed to show is was a combination of a 30% water change, manual removal and then a 72 hour black out. When I came back slowley the stuff on the sand was very red making me think it’s cyno. It just keeps coming back.

It’s a 75 gallon tank with a 20 gallon sump. I have a reef octopus 150 skimmer, running GFO and BRS rox .8 carbon in a BRS duel reactor. I have 2 Jaebo pp-8’s that are set at 50-60%.

I usually do a 20% water change every two weeks with RODI water and Red Sea Coral Pro salt. All of my corals seem happy and growing same with my fish.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrate: <10
Phosphates: <.01 (according to the Red Sea tests)
PH: 8.2
Temp: stays around 77
Salinity: 1.026

sfin52 · Feb 8, 2018

Welcome to reef2reef
Sand looks like cyno. Look at the sticky at the top of the forum algea/ nuisance algea. @mcarroll has a great sticky there dino sick of battling altogether. That has loads of info

sfin52 · Feb 8, 2018

How old is the tank?

You need to get nitrates to 5-10ppm and phosphates up .05. Stop the gfo and all the nitrate reducing agents. I know, I was told the same thing nitrates and phosphates are bad remove them all. To high and they are bad but at the right numbers they are good.

Beardo · Feb 9, 2018

I believe the stuff all over the rocks is crysophytes.

Reulv3 · Feb 9, 2018

sfin52 said:
How old is the tank?

You need to get nitrates to 5-10ppm and phosphates up .05. Stop the gfo and all the nitrate reducing agents. I know, I was told the same thing nitrates and phosphates are bad remove them all. To high and they are bad but at the right numbers they are good.

The tank is about a year old. My nitrates are somewhere between 5-10 now. Seems so wrong to increase the phosphates haha.

sfin52 · Feb 9, 2018

Ya it does but trust me your corals and inverts will be fine

mtraylor · Feb 9, 2018

Yep you have it all.

I think you need to do the following to try and combat what you are seeing.
1. Check your RO/DI water. I think you may find that its not as clean as you think and feeding the problem. Just a guess here. You will have to test to find out.
2. Increase flow in the tank
3. Get a serious clean up crew with Mexican turbos to clean up the rock.

The clean up crew will clean the rock work within a week or 2 if you get the proper size. Get some nassarius snails for the sand. A bunch of them. This is just basic husbandry that will help in the long run once you get everything in line. The best thing about the clean up crew, is that it will keep things at bay and make things look a bit better as you id and get rid of the source of the issue. Once you fix it, they will also help keep problem algae down.

mtraylor · Feb 9, 2018

Couple Questions.
1. What kind of light do you have over the aquarium?
2. What type of powerheads/etc. do you have inside the aquarium for water movement.

For an aquarium that is one year old, typically you would see some coralline algae growth in there. I don't see any on the rocks. Do you have an coralline growth in there?

3. What is your calcium?
4. What is your magnesium?
5. What is your Alk?

Volcmreefer · Feb 9, 2018

Following... I had the same issue. Not as bad now. Scraped rock with a toothbrush before weekly 30% water changes. Crossing my fingers it doesn’t come back.

I have Pukani rock and a DSB, FWIW.

Jon

Salty Irishman · Feb 10, 2018

sfin52 said:
How old is the tank?

You need to get nitrates to 5-10ppm and phosphates up .05. Stop the gfo and all the nitrate reducing agents. I know, I was told the same thing nitrates and phosphates are bad remove them all. To high and they are bad but at the right numbers they are good.

I have the same (at least from your pics) and tried what seemed to be everything. I’m still in the battle but finally winning. At the onset all water parameters were what was considered acceptable and for purposes of this thread, nitrate & phosphate at zero. I’m now dosing sodium nitrate and currently nitrates are measuring 1.0 and phosphate followed coming in at .01. The brown nasties are slowing disappearing and have some interesting green algae’s showing up. The real winner so far is the corals. I have polyp extension and color like I haven’t seen since this started like a year ago. Hope this helps as I was on the verge of giving up a 30 year Hobby!

Salty Irishman · Feb 10, 2018

Wanted to add that the sodium nitrate isn't the only silver bullet to getting ahead of this for me. I've taken my skimmer off-line (in an effort to raise N03 & P04, stopped doing water changes, manual removal of the nastie's (filter bags are your best friend here) and started running carbon in a reactor. The combined effort seems to be what's helping me get ahead of this and I certainly hope the same for you.