Simple Remedy : Up your CUC

Jizu Puentes · Dec 7, 2015

Hello everyone. I want to share my experience with Chrysophytes and how I could have easily remedied it earlier if I paid attention.
I started my chrysophytes problem by adding a large dry rock without soaking it first. I gave it a good rinse and let itdry out but it apparently wasn't enough. The chrysophytes showed up after a couple of weeks and looked like this

The fuzz not the zoa.

I didn't do much about the chrysophytes for about 4 months because I figured once he rock aged it would go away. The chrysophytes would build into a slime and became unsightly so I tried some dinoflagellate treatments on it. I added kalk to raise the ph, i turned off my skimmer for a week and didn't do a water change for a month but did siphon water through filter socks to remove slime. I noticed that about 4 days after scraping the acrylic backing and overflows that a fuzz would form and that there were trails through the fuzz meaning that my snails did in fact eat it when it is only short strands. Here's where I had to smack myself...
I took a nice look over my tank and only saw that i had let the snail portion of my CUC get down to 2 over the last two years. I decided to do a revamping of my crew and made a nice diverse purchase

Here are the results over a week

I only have a couple fuzzy area left on the walls and the smaller snails are now mowing over my rocks. I plan to closely watch my CUC members more close now and not just must corals and fish haha

brandon429 · Dec 9, 2015

Well done! Nature keeps things in check w grazers nice documentation here

Jizu Puentes · Dec 9, 2015

brandon429 said:
Well done! Nature keeps things in check w grazers nice documentation here

Thanks!

Breakthecycle2 · Dec 23, 2015

It was def. chrysophytes? Im running into a big issue now. I think it might be this. The only real snails I have are nasirious. (sp)

Jizu Puentes · Dec 23, 2015

Breakthecycle2 said:
It was def. chrysophytes? Im running into a big issue now. I think it might be this. The only real snails I have are nasirious. (sp)

I can't be 100% positive because I don't have a microscope or would know what to look for anyway haha. I did do a lot of research though and chrysophytes is the only thing like what I had. Nassarius won't clean it off the rocks or glass so I'd get a more diverse group of snails.

Breakthecycle2 · Dec 23, 2015

Jizu Puentes said:
I can't be 100% positive because I don't have a microscope or would know what to look for anyway haha. I did do a lot of research though and chrysophytes is the only thing like what I had. Nassarius won't clean it off the rocks or glass so I'd get a more diverse group of snails.

But they def took care of it? Could you tell what you felt did the most?

Jizu Puentes · Dec 23, 2015

Breakthecycle2 said:
But they def took care of it? Could you tell what you felt did the most?

Oh yea the snails definitely did the most. I would scrape the stuck off the walls and siphon the rocks and it would come back within a week. With the snails the fuzz hasn't grown enough to be noticeable. Are you positive that you also have chrysophytes?

Breakthecycle2 · Dec 23, 2015

Jizu Puentes said:
Oh yea the snails definitely did the most. I would scrape the stuck off the walls and siphon the rocks and it would come back within a week. With the snails the fuzz hasn't grown enough to be noticeable. Are you positive that you also have chrysophytes?

Positive...no. can you check my thread in the general reef discussion forum and see? I'm ony phone and for some reason can't link it.

Sabellafella · Dec 23, 2015

Breakthecycle2 said:
Positive...no. can you check my thread in the general reef discussion forum and see? I'm ony phone and for some reason can't link it.

This is one of the threads i seen so it acually 4 different threads on this in the past 2 weeks