Rust- orange algae or diatoms taking over tank.

[Beezwax404]

I have a 29 gal biocube with a 20 gallon sump. I was suffering from GHA for a few months and decided to take a short cut in removing it. I took have of my live rock out and soaked it in fresh water. This did kill the GHA that was on those rocks but about a week later I noticed the water had a orange color to it and then the orange just started covering every surface. It is flat and feel slippery and slimy but is hard to get off. I really have to put some elbow grease in with the toothbrush to get it off. It is covering my corals and they have begun not to open. It completely clogs up my skimmer pump within just 3 or 4 days. I bought a uv light and ran that. It seemed to clear the water a little but no effect on the orange covering everything. I lowered my lights down and just today am barely using just a little blue led at 10%.
My water specs are
Ammonia 0
Nitrate undetectable
Nitrite 0
Phosphate undetectable
Calcium 440
All 9.5dkh
Any ideas? I'm at a loss. Its also a show tank at my business and its very embarrassing

 

[Teemingtank]

Looks like diatoms to me. Probably killed a ton of bacteria and locked a bunch of nutrients in the rocks if it wasn’t RO water

 

[Beezwax404]

I do use RO water 0 tds. I really don't know what to do. Should I go get a bunch of hermits or snails?

 

[brandon429]

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

Beez

that has the thorough cleaning you are wanting, see the two work examples.

but its your whole reef. all the plumbing cleaned out, reset back up, new water, the reason the work above is important is it shows skip cycle reassembly biology.


and two darn. clean. tanks.

your invaders is likely chrysophytes, a requisite hitchhiker that is rare not common

but ID doesn't matter, those guys had other invasions. its the fact you have a nano,

therefore you have an accessible tank for rip cleaning which is simply putting the tank literally into surgery, removing a bunch of scrapings we don't want lining the internals, and we already know none of this renders high surface area rock harmed of its filtration bacteria.

we are showing how to run surgery on any nano reef tank and reset it, free. it'll cost you all new gallons of water/

notice we didn't dose anything

or wait

or hesitate, just bam. eutrophic reefs changed to oligotrophic reefs because we found someone that resolved.

I have another set of links that has about 500 of these on file for pattern inspection, but these two were the most thorough, ideal flowcharts among them. top two rip cleans I know of there.

prog:

some invader might come back, but as the 1% mass condition, which is more favorable to your various grazers. we aren't selling one off magic

we are selling those guaranteed after pics, a biological skip cycle that isn't supposed to be possible in reefing but it is. I have done them hundreds of times on my 15 year old nano, they're the prime reason it got that old.

 

[brandon429]

even if you could add something and instantly zap all that mass, which dosed peroxide might do, you're left with tons of half degrading waste mess

export is the right way, totally invasive export.

 

[Teemingtank]

Time is your friend. If you’re doing what you’re supposed to as far as cleaning and feeding it should resolve itself in time.

There are things you could do to make it disappear temporarily if it’s diatoms.
Blackout for a couple days might reduce it, but like I said, that’s temporary. Do your best on husbandry and feedings. I wouldn’t dose anything besides bacteria (if you want) and I definitely wouldn’t add livestock or coral until it’s under control

 

[Teemingtank]

I do use RO water 0 tds. I really don't know what to do. Should I go get a bunch of hermits or snails?

What’s your clean up crew like right now? And do you feed frozen or pellets?

 

[klimfish]

0 Nitrates and Phosphates? Dinos. For sure. Check out this thread.

Dinoflagellate Identification Guide

I've had this laying around for a while. Had some recent interest, so I tweaked it a bit and am posting it. Not really about cures just ID pictures, videos, and a few short facts. Hope it can be helpful.

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

Deep cleaning a nano tank

Okay so I’ve been having a bad battle with weird parametersino’s and now cyano and have been looking at doing a deep clean on the tank. But I have a few questions. Tank is nuvo20 with 2 ai primes and 2 jebao sow4. 1yr old didn’t have issues until about the 8month mark and can’t get it under...

www.reef2reef.com

sick rip clean there, with updates