Need Help tackling an algae outbreak

[jerseynano]

My tank is a 20 gallon long a little over a year old and after thriving for a while the past 2 months i have been battling annoying algae. It started with bubble algae which is finally reproducing slower than i can remove it. but now my tank has become over run with what i think dinoflagellates. Ive tested the water many times and no signs of any ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates are very minimal about 2ppm. The specific gravity is 1.024 and temp is 78F. Ph is 7.8. I have a koralia 425 powerhead and a smaller Hydor Pico Evo-Mag 180 that somehow provides almost better flow than the 425. I am also running a HOB filter for extra flow with just filter floss (change daily). Ran Chemi-pure elite and purigen for the past year but decided to stop recently since it didnt help with the algae. I have an led fixture. I have a pair of clowns and a royal gramma have been in the tank the practically the whole time. The weird part is during this outbreak my banded trochus snails managed to reproduce and I now have 4 new small trochus snails, which i thought required pristine water parameters. I have 25-30lb of nice live rock in the tank with lots of sponges and coraline but you cant see it through the algae. The algae started on the sand and made its way onto the rocks now it is starting to cover some of my zoos and prevent them from opening as well as my clove polyps.

I always do weekly water changes about 15-20% and keep up on maintenance. Use a turkey baster to remove unwanted stuff. Lately I have done more aggressive water changes to try and fix the problem(20-30%, even 40% on one occasion). Sometimes it appears as if it is going away but nothing seems to last comes right back in a day or 2. Please help my identify what is wrong as well provide solutions for how to fix it. Open to both natural fixes as well as chemical products at this point as long as they don't harm the corals. I am fairly new to the hobby and appreciate all the help i can get.

 

The algae itself is brown and slimey and has a similar texture to red cyano yet slighty different. I have also noticed air bubbles trapped in the strings of the algae which made it kinda seem like dino. All it takes is a turkey baster to get the algae in the water column isnt rooted or anything just covers the rocks and glass like a film. Attached are some pictures sorry they arent the best quality.

 

 

 

[jeffmr4]

Do you vacuum your sand?

[ninjamyst]

Where's your water coming from when you do water change? Are you using RODI?

[tsinc]

Maybe try an algae scrubber or some macro to suck up all the nitrates. Never had a bad algae problem but I've heard these 2 solutions really help bring down nitrates

[Tamberav]

Water changes don't seem to help with dino and some say it actually helps dino grow.

 

I was able to beat dino with very aggressive lights out treatment (multiple 5-7 days complete blackout with tons of blankets/towels over the tank to make sure not even a little light leaks in as they seem to survive on even tiny amounts of light) and using manual removal before and after lights out. I also had a sock/floss running and changed it aggressively.

 

for the manual removal, I took rocks out and did a quick light scrub/dip in freshwater as freshwater seems to kill dino (just a couple seconds in freshwater to shake the dino or wipe it off, it should come off easily, don't dip too long or it will kill things you don't want). For rocks that had sensitive coral t hat couldn't handle a freshwater dip, I siphoned them off and filtered them through a sock and replaced the water I took out.

 

I also did no water changes for awhile until it was under control. This caused the nutrients to rise but that was the idea since some report it doesn't like nitrate.

 

Some types of dino also don't like high pH.

[Bcb577]

I'm at the tail end of a dino battle in my ten gallon I've been running lights out with towels draped around the tank and dosed 1ml of peroxide and Monday will be a week and I'm finally getting control of it,I didn't do a water change as I've read it can feed the dino,

[jerseynano]

Thanks everyone and i use rodi from like LFS. Think Im going to try the lights out treatment. Will this bother the fish at all

[Clown79]

Test the water from your lfs. Sometimes they don't change their ro/di filters.