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Chrysophytes - and now brown algae - JUST PLAIN FUGLY


SeaFurn

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@mcarroll Sorry, i'm a bit late for the party? 😁

 

Good'ol classic case of dry clean rock and chrysophytes! Honestly, there are different methods. The shock treatment with GFO is one route and vibrant being the other. Personally, and don't take this the bad way, but if it were my tank, (and I've beaten chrysos in the past) I would dose nutrients and vibrant. Your tank has a low bioload. It's well kept and clean, but your corals look starved. Also, your rock is bone white under the chrysos and you hardly have any biofilm on the glass. With vibrant, I've heard several people using it and it quickly removing chrysos. I myself have used vibrant with bubble algae and it worked great. 

 

My suggestion, is that you can start feeding more coral foods but take it slow at first, while building up the nutrients naturally. This could take some time but might be more rewarding in the long run. Or you can purchase nitrate and phosphate and start dosing on the regular. By regular, meaning you might have to continue to dose well after chrysophytes are gone. After you have nutrients up, then start dosing vibrant. Just do the weekly single doses. Might also be best to clean the rocks, filter out as much chrysos as possible, and perform a small water change.  Might only take 3 or 4 weeks of vibrant. Also, that vibrant bottle will last forever on that size tank.

 

In the meantime, just know that chrysophytes aren't toxic to coral. At least that I know of. They might compete for nutrients and look bad, but letting the tank mature naturally and for an extended period of time, these will go away. Unless, its something that sprung up on a mature system. So, take your time with this. This will give your coral time to bounce back and regain color. 

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  • SeaFurn changed the title to Chrysophytes - and now slime....

So i got home from a business trip on Friday afternoon and the tank was still white and cloudy and the snot still hanging from the rocks and coral - worse than before.  There was a coral that had been flipped over so I reached into the tank to flip upright (my tongs were no where to be found) and in touching it I noticed the frag plug had thick coating of clear slime on it. So I touched the rocks and they too were coated in clear thick slime.  (I highly doubt any kind of significant biological filtration could be going on.) The glass had a thick coating of clear slime as well. I went to change the filter floss and it was saturated in slime.  So yesterday I scrubbed the rocks again and the glass and gently brushed the corals.  The tank was so filled with thick slime I had to change all of the water.  

All of the dwarf ceriths are dead but the hermit and the other cerirths are fine.  The fish is fine.

 

After the scrubbing and the water change, a few of the zoas were opened up and the euphyillas was open and full and the water was clear.  Today the tank is back to being a white and cloudy but not quite as bad as before. The frogspawn and hammer is still open and so are a couple of the zoas.  It doesn't appear that the slime is back - yet. 

 

Is this some kind of bacterial infestation?   Is there anything I can do about it?

I have the nitrogen and phosphorous now.   

Any advice on how to proceed given this latest situation?

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So this is how the tank looks every morning and every evening when I come home from work. I suck out the white stingy slime. It holds together as I’m sucking so I can get a lot of it. But as soon as the tank is clear of it it starts forming again.

It’s amazing that any of the zoas are even open or that the fish is surviving.  It’s so frustrating. 

I thought it would dissipate a little by now but it hasn’t. Turning the flow up or down doesn’t help. Changing water doesn’t help. 

I bought a small UV sterilizer that should be here today. Will see

if that has any effect. 

Anyone have any advice on what I can do? 

49429382351_f547e9d7cd_b.jpg49428905678_20395370e7_b.jpg49428906363_791422c8ab_b.jpg49429385266_3f918b014b_b.jpg

 

 

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  • SeaFurn changed the title to Chrysophytes - and now white stringy slime - HELP PLEASE!
2 hours ago, jservedio said:

You didn't mention what your N and P levels are, what you are dosing, and how much. What are they and what are you doing about it?

Nitrates are at 2-3 now. Phosphate is still undetectable. I've been dosing Nitrogen and Phosphate daily - small quantities to slowly bring them up.  (Nitrogen 0.5 mL/day   Phosphate 0.1 mL/day).  I'm going to increase the dose of the phosphates so that I get a reading in the next couple of days.  I expect Nitrates will be at 5 in the next few days.

I also moved the corals back to their original tank as i was thinking their was something about the new tank that irritating them or causing this.  

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1 minute ago, SeaFurn said:

Nitrates are at 2-3 now. Phosphate is still undetectable. I've been dosing Nitrogen and Phosphate daily - small quantities to slowly bring them up.  (Nitrogen 0.5 mL/day   Phosphate 0.1 mL/day).  I'm going to increase the dose of the phosphates so that I get a reading in the next couple of days.  I expect Nitrates will be at 5 in the next few days.

I also moved the corals back to their original tank as i was thinking their was something about the new tank that irritating them or causing this.  

That's a good start - definitely keep upping N and P and don't be shy about upping your P dosage. Chrysophytes aren't going to be going away quickly - just do your best to keep up with everything. As long as your corals are alive, it's all good. My experience with my CUC dying (except for hermits) was the same - don't replace them until some other algae starts growing since they will just starve. Even now, with a super mature tank I've only got 2 snails with a much higher bioload, so you don't need a ton of them even after the Chysophytes are gone.

 

I would aim for maintaining an N of 30-40ppm and a P of 0.25-0.5ppm and entirely stop changing water - if I didn't see a breakout of some other form of algae after two weeks or so with those levels, I'd try introducing some algae or cyano from someone else's nasty sand. If that didn't take off, I'd give a deep scrubbing to get as much off and try seeding with more algae. Once other algae starts taking over and you have a nasty outbreak of whatever other algae, I'd start changing water and lowering N and P down to ~10ppm of N and 0.1ppm of P. Best case scenario is you'll have it under control in 3-6 weeks, but that is assuming everything works on your first try.

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3 minutes ago, jservedio said:

That's a good start - definitely keep upping N and P and don't be shy about upping your P dosage. Chrysophytes aren't going to be going away quickly - just do your best to keep up with everything. As long as your corals are alive, it's all good. My experience with my CUC dying (except for hermits) was the same - don't replace them until some other algae starts growing since they will just starve. Even now, with a super mature tank I've only got 2 snails with a much higher bioload, so you don't need a ton of them even after the Chysophytes are gone.

 

I would aim for maintaining an N of 30-40ppm and a P of 0.25-0.5ppm and entirely stop changing water - if I didn't see a breakout of some other form of algae after two weeks or so with those levels, I'd try introducing some algae or cyano from someone else's nasty sand. If that didn't take off, I'd give a deep scrubbing to get as much off and try seeding with more algae. Once other algae starts taking over and you have a nasty outbreak of whatever other algae, I'd start changing water and lowering N and P down to ~10ppm of N and 0.1ppm of P. Best case scenario is you'll have it under control in 3-6 weeks, but that is assuming everything works on your first try.

I feel like with everyone's advice on getting the nutrients up and having a plan and guidance for that I'll be able to deal with the algae.  But the thing that's got me so bothered right now is this slimy white stuff that just keeps coming. Do you think it's just a bacterial bloom of some sort?  

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20 minutes ago, SeaFurn said:

I feel like with everyone's advice on getting the nutrients up and having a plan and guidance for that I'll be able to deal with the algae.  But the thing that's got me so bothered right now is this slimy white stuff that just keeps coming. Do you think it's just a bacterial bloom of some sort?  

Chrysophytes do that, but it's possible you have a bacterial bloom as well. Really, really cranking up the flow helps. When I was dealing with Chrysophytes I had two MP10s running, one at 100% and the other around 70% in my 20g tall tank. It kept the stringy crap to a minimum and you have no sand, so nothing to worry about. I didn't have euphyllia to get damaged, but that can be protected. How much flow do you have in your tank?

 

Edit: I had a "turnover" rate between my return pump and 2 powerheads of around 140x. That kept the stringiness to a minimum since they would just get ripped off and eventually pulled out in a filter sock or just get caught in my overflow and pulled out every day or two.

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UV sterilizer is running. I have to run a fan across the top of the tank to keep the temp from getting too warm. 

There’s definitely less stringy white snot hanging from everything now but it’s hard to tell if that’s just because there’s more flow. Tank is also full of micro bubbles. 

Will be interested to see how the tank looks in the morning. 

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The UV sterilizer seems to have worked! The snot has dissipated and doesn’t appear to reforming. There is some left over remnants on the rocks but I should be able to blow that off with the baster. What a relief. Fingers crossed it doesn’t make a comeback throughout the day. 

The rocks are still clean from the last scrubbing, which may have been the contributing factor in the bacterial bloom. So i’ll now continue on with getting nutrients up to keep the chrysophytes at bay. 

This morning after removing the sterilizer:

49433727388_5fd05fece3_b.jpg

 

 

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20 minutes ago, SeaFurn said:

The UV sterilizer seems to have worked! The snot has dissipated and doesn’t appear to reforming. There is some left over remnants on the rocks but I should be able to blow that off with the baster. What a relief. Fingers crossed it doesn’t make a comeback throughout the day. 

The rocks are still clean from the last scrubbing, which may have been the contributing factor in the bacterial bloom. So i’ll now continue on with getting nutrients up to keep the chrysophytes at bay. 

This morning after removing the sterilizer:

49433727388_5fd05fece3_b.jpg

 

 

Looks so much better, so you ran the UV overnight and removed it this morning?

Fingers crossed that it stays away for you now

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7 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

Looks so much better, so you ran the UV overnight and removed it this morning?

Fingers crossed that it stays away for you now

Yes, I started it around 5pm last night and pulled it out at 8am this morning. Wasn’t really sure how long it needed to run. It looked like things had cleared up so I pulled it.

It may have been safer to go 24 hours but I can always put it back in. 

 

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No new white snot this morning! Tank looks much better. I think the UV sterilizer took care of that problem. 

A lot of biofilm on the glass this morning. 

Nitrates tested at 5-6 yesterday. Phosphates still 0.

49439971261_9817934413_b.jpg

 

Question - should I leave the corals in this 2.5 gallon or move them back to the 6 gallon? I also have a spare 10 gallon I could move them to. My rationale is just to bring more stability to parameters as I increase the nutrients.

 

@mcarroll  I normally use a Tidal 55 filter on medium power. I pulled it out at the height of the slime and snot because it was getting so clogged/backed up that I was having to change the floss every hour just to get adequate flow. What I found more effective was a air pump like I used with my reef bowl. The water was at least churning doing that. 

My plan is to put the HOB back on today.  

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13 minutes ago, SeaFurn said:

No new white snot this morning! Tank looks much better. I think the UV sterilizer took care of that problem. 

A lot of biofilm on the glass this morning. 

Nitrates tested at 5-6 yesterday. Phosphates still 0.

49439971261_9817934413_b.jpg

 

Question - should I leave the corals in this 2.5 gallon or move them back to the 6 gallon? I also have a spare 10 gallon I could move them to. My rationale is just to bring more stability to parameters as I increase the nutrients.

 

@mcarroll  I normally use a Tidal 55 filter on medium power. I pulled it out at the height of the slime and snot because it was getting so clogged/backed up that I was having to change the floss every hour just to get adequate flow. What I found more effective was a air pump like I used with my reef bowl. The water was at least churning doing that. 

My plan is to put the HOB back on today.  

Yay for no new snot! 😊

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  • SeaFurn changed the title to Chrysophytes - and now white stringy slime - LOOKING BETTER

To me that looked like coral mucus in the old photos, which made me wonder if there was any water flow since it appeared to just be drifting off of the corals. Still no idea what would have been making them tweak like that.

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  • SeaFurn changed the title to Chrysophytes - and now brown algae everywhere

So started dosing nitrogen and phosphorus back on Jan 25.  The next day I'd test and see where things were at.   Nitrates grew to around 5 for several day and ultimately got to a high of 10 back on Feb 1.   Phosphates always tested 0 every single day.  BUT - I'm using a Salifert kit, and if you know that kit, you know it's impossible to tell if there's any color evident at all - even comparing the tested water to regular water in the same kind of container sitting right next to each other.   

Then, about a week ago the rocks suddenly turned completely brown...and since that day the dark brown algae has started taking over - complete with bubbles in some locations. 

Someone mentioned that was better problem to deal with but I'm not so sure.  I added about 6-7 more ceriths and a bunch of dwarf ceriths to the tank from my 45 but they aren't even making a dent in it. 

 

So clearly there were phosphates (SALIFERT PHOS KITS ARE TERRIBLE) and so much so that I did end up losing my forest fire digi (front right in the picture above). I'm assuming it was due to high phos because all other parameters tested fine each day.  So bummed about that loss. The other SPS are fine...not to mention all the other coral which are loving their new nutrient filled environement.  I do have one frag of butt kisser zoas that just won't open no matter what and they seem to be getting smaller and smaller day by day.  I asked what I could do about that in another thread but didn't get any feedback.  So if anyone has any ideas let me know.  I dipped them in a peroxide solution the other day as it looked like there was algae coming out of one of the polyps - like it was growing from inside it but that didn't help either.  

 

I'm still dosing a little bit of nitrogen to keep nitrates at 5.  I stopped dosing Phos as soon as the brown rocks appeared.  The other parameters are still testing fine - alk 8-8.3, ca 400, mg 1380. 1.026. 

 

So what's the best plan to deal with the algae.  The CUC is not gonna hack it.  I'd need 15-20 snails in there to make a dent in it. Or maybe I just need some different kinds.  I had good luck with trochus before and Reef Cleaners has them back in stock. Maybe scrub the rocks this weekend?   And I clearly think I'm going to need to get a Hanna UL Phos checker. 

 

 

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I can't tell where you are from on mobile, but if it happens to be NC I'll give you a frag of forest fire digi once everything is back on track. I've got a ULR checker you can borrow or buy super cheap.

 

If you aren't near NC, I'm sure someone else on here would gladly replace it for you. Beating chrysophytes sucks. Glad things are progressing.

 

I wouldn't do anything about the algae until the chrysophytes are gone. Then start reducing dosing and doing water changes again to slowly bring them down to a healthy and manageable level. If you buy a bunch of snails, they'll just starve to death when the algae is gone.

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It could be cyano or dinoflagellates reacting to the presence of nitrate with low phosphate, I just use the seachem phosphate test as a binary "above 0, less than 0.2" check myself.
Sorry this is turning out to be such a slugfest for your system.

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47 minutes ago, jservedio said:

I can't tell where you are from on mobile, but if it happens to be NC I'll give you a frag of forest fire digi once everything is back on track. I've got a ULR checker you can borrow or buy super cheap.

 

If you aren't near NC, I'm sure someone else on here would gladly replace it for you. Beating chrysophytes sucks. Glad things are progressing.

 

I wouldn't do anything about the algae until the chrysophytes are gone. Then start reducing dosing and doing water changes again to slowly bring them down to a healthy and manageable level. If you buy a bunch of snails, they'll just starve to death when the algae is gone.

Thanks. I’m in Atlanta. I appreciate the thought though.

 

How would you ever know if the chrysophytes were gone since they are completely covered in the brown algae! I’ll just let things play out for a bit. I’ll keep the parameters in check - will have to dose nitrogen for sure. A little confused about what to do about the phos until I get a decent test kit or checker. I’ll probably get some more snails. 

 

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42 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

It could be cyano or dinoflagellates reacting to the presence of nitrate with low phosphate, I just use the seachem phosphate test as a binary "above 0, less than 0.2" check myself.
Sorry this is turning out to be such a slugfest for your system.

So are you thinking the phos was and is still actually low and never made it up to a decent level - thus bringing this brown algae whatever type it is? 

 

I’d have to go check my log to see how much I’ve dosed in total but it seems like a lot for such a small volume of water. My thought was that phos got high and didn’t read as such and then with nitrates in the 10 range it brought about this algae very suddenly. 

I’ll have to take a pic of the tank tomorrow (lights are off). I don’t think it’s dinos...maybe cyano but I get that in my 45 on the sand sometimes so know what that is...but this is really more like brown hair algae if that makes sense. 

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Could be the case, I'm not sure to be honest with you. When I had dinos and chrysophytes I had to dose enough into the tank to up the levels to 0.1 P04 multiple times before it actually stayed there. Maybe try to double-check with a LFS? Other algae out competing the chrysophytes is what you want in the short-term at least and you can manually remove-it.

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14 hours ago, SeaFurn said:

Thanks. I’m in Atlanta. I appreciate the thought though.

 

How would you ever know if the chrysophytes were gone since they are completely covered in the brown algae! I’ll just let things play out for a bit. I’ll keep the parameters in check - will have to dose nitrogen for sure. A little confused about what to do about the phos until I get a decent test kit or checker. I’ll probably get some more snails. 

 

They will likely never really be totally gone and will stay in your system indefinitely, you just need to prevent them from having a bloom. Since you know your nitrate test kit is fairly accurate, you can try not dosing nitrates and see if they start to fall. If they don't continue to fall steadily (and you are still feeding - you need a Carbon source, too), you know you've still got really low phosphates. If that's the case, you can cut back dosing N and dose P more heavily until your nitrates start to drop. If that's not the case, you know you've got both N and P. If you have both N and P, you can start slowly lowering both of them and manually removing some of the algae when you do water changes.

 

Don't go overboard with snails and hermits since you don't want them to starve once everything is under control.

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4 hours ago, jservedio said:

They will likely never really be totally gone and will stay in your system indefinitely, you just need to prevent them from having a bloom. Since you know your nitrate test kit is fairly accurate, you can try not dosing nitrates and see if they start to fall. If they don't continue to fall steadily (and you are still feeding - you need a Carbon source, too), you know you've still got really low phosphates. If that's the case, you can cut back dosing N and dose P more heavily until your nitrates start to drop. If that's not the case, you know you've got both N and P. If you have both N and P, you can start slowly lowering both of them and manually removing some of the algae when you do water changes.

 

Don't go overboard with snails and hermits since you don't want them to starve once everything is under control.

I did stop dosing nitrogen when nitrates got to 10 and they did drop daily. When they reached 2 I started dosing again to keep them at 5 - which I think you are saying means I did have phos present through that time. 

I can do a little test and stop dosing nitrogen now and see what happens to nitrates. 

 

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  • SeaFurn changed the title to Chrysophytes - and now brown algae - JUST PLAIN FUGLY

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