Is this just brown algae?

[SWTanker]

Hey guys, I’ve had this stuff in my tank for about a month. I beat it back every water change (which I do weekly) but it always seems to just sort of rebound and come back to how it was. Is this normal and just part of the “ugly” stage of starting a tank?

 

I have a 13 gallon Fluval AIO, it’s been set up for 4 months now with a single ocellaris, wheelers goby and a cleaner shrimp. I have a few zoas that I’m worried about this stuff taking out. I bought a reef cleaner pack but all the snails seem to have passed/Ive only got a few Ceriths and Nerites left who don’t seem to do much. I regret buying the cleaner pack to be honest. I thought they would help but no such luck. 
 

pH 8.0

Ammonia 0

nitrite 0

Nitrate 5

 

thats all ive been testing for. 

 

[Clown79]

That looks like dino's.

 

What are your phosphate levels?

 

What media are you using in the filter?

 

Dino's are from lack of biodiversity and lack of nutrients. They love sterile tanks.

 

Snails often die from consuming certain dino's because they have palytoxin in them. 

 

If you don't have a microscope you can do a jar test.

 

Get a clean jar

Pour some tank water in it through a papertowel to ensure only water gets in the jar.

Put lid on and shake jar

Place in ambient light

If you see clumps/stringy algae develop in the water within 4-24hrs, its definitely dino.

 

You can check out all the steps i took to get rid of dino in my lagoon thread. Page 7 i believe it starts.

 

Its very detailed or else i would rewrite it all

 

[SWTanker]

I have two iNtank media holders. The one in chamber two has filter floss, then chemipure blue, phosgaurd, purigen, and a bunch of bio media. The second chamber is full of marine bio balls. 
 

I haven’t ever checked my phosphates. I can get a test for it and see though. After looking at pictures I’m sure those are dinos...joy

[SWTanker]

@Clown79 So I'm thinking, probably pull out the phosgaurd. Get a phosphate test kit and probably introduce some copepods/rotifers/phytoplankton and see if I can work on beating this stuff back. Probably should have been more careful cleaning/disposing of it considering it has palytoxins...toothbrushing and siphoning was probably a "risky" move on my part. 

[Clown79]

9 minutes ago, SWTanker said:

I have two iNtank media holders. The one in chamber two has filter floss, then chemipure blue, phosgaurd, purigen, and a bunch of bio media. The second chamber is full of marine bio balls. 
 

I haven’t ever checked my phosphates. I can get a test for it and see though. After looking at pictures I’m sure those are dinos...joy

Thats a lot of media which can lead to stripping a tank.

 

Phosphate is definitely an important test, corals need it. 

 

You want a good phos kit, not Api.

 

Dino's are difficult but not impossible if you have an attack plan.

Took about a month of research and manual work but once i seeded my tank heavily with pods and got my nutrients up it started going away and i didn't need to do all the manual work anymore(which was great)

In total 2 months the were gone.

 

Some ppl suffer with dino longer but some cases are really bad, misdiagnosed therefore wrong methods of treatment used causing more dino's, or the hobbyists tried methods like chemical treatments, black outs, etc which often many find unsuccessful or only successful with certain strains.

 

 

 

 

[j.falk]

Definitely dinos.

[Clown79]

2 minutes ago, SWTanker said:

@Clown79 So I'm thinking, probably pull out the phosgaurd. Get a phosphate test kit and probably introduce some copepods/rotifers/phytoplankton and see if I can work on beating this stuff back. Probably should have been more careful cleaning/disposing of it considering it has palytoxins...toothbrushing and siphoning was probably a "risky" move on my part. 

Ya, first thing, i would stop phosguard. It should be used when its needed but not regularly. Frequent testing should be done while in use as well.

 

Then test phosphates

[SWTanker]

5 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

Ya, first thing, i would stop phosguard. It should be used when its needed but not regularly. Frequent testing should be done while in use as well.

 

Then test phosphates

Thanks for the help/advice. Gonna start making adjustments now so that hopefully this junk goes away! 

[Pod Your Reef]

We've had a lot of people order copepods, from us to combat Dino. The feedback that I've received seem to indicate that the results were positive.