brown stringy algae particulary during day time

[laurens2012]

Hi Reefers,

 

End August I traded in my fresh water tank for a reef tank, a red sea nano. I graduatly added some leathers and GSP after a month.

 

Now I have a bit of a algae issue which is starting to increase, this algae was always present but now it starts to grow more and more.

In the mornings it's not quite present, but during day time the amount increases.

 

I did research this on the web, but none of the algae looked liked the one I have.

As it is a fairly new tank I think its diatoms, but I hope some one can ID this one. It grows especially hard on some chaeto, but the Sinularia also catches alot of it.

 

My params (can add more but these I test every other day):

SAL: 1.025

NO3: 2 to 5 (I dose it very rare so it don't drop to 0)

ALK: 6.5 (dosing 2ml a day all-for-reef, still fine tuning it to move to a target of 😎

 

Adding AF Energy, Build, Amino once a week.

 

Added Carib Sea live sand 2 weeks after star-up ~10th Sept.

There is some on the sand, but you have to search for it.

 

GSP really grows by the day, sinuaria is really beautiful and opens up good, Xenia has a more difficult time now since the the stringy algae strains it hands.

[Humblefish]

Could be cyano. Do the strings have little bubbles attached? This would mean dinos.

[laurens2012]

1 hour ago, Humblefish said:

Could be cyano. Do the strings have little bubbles attached? This would mean dinos.

No, these strings never have any bubbles attached. During my start-up cycle another type of algae did have bubbles attached but those have dissapeared as expected.

[Clown79]

Dino can be present without bubbles.

 

So it could be dino, it could be cyano.

 

What are your nutrient levels?

[laurens2012]

I did a test this morning.

 

NO3 = 2 (red sea marine test)

PO4 = 0 (JBL, it directly turned yellow, while all values above zero are in blue).

 

I also siphoned some algae and filtered it through a coffee filter bag, within a hour it clustered back, so my guess is now also on dino's. I stirred the filtered water again and see if it clusters back again. 

 

maybe get some PO4 and live copepods?

 

I do not have my skimmer on, and I'm running Carbon from day 0, and changed it ~14 days ago.

[laurens2012]

So after a second stir (of the siphoned algae) the algae did not cluster again but rather sink to the bottom of the cup.

 

I walked by the LFS as it's really close and we step-by-step checked what happened.

 

From the moment when I added the soft coral my NO3 start dropping, as I had some NO3 lying around from my fresh water tank I kept levels around 2 to 5. I never added any PO4, so from there the imbalance might be created. I also told him that I filtered through carbon (RS reef-spec), and he said that that also might absorb some PO4, checking the canister again when I came home it was written that it has low phosphate output! iso absorption. Then again carbon does absorb organic pollutants (thus NO3 and PO4 in the end?)

 

So I now changed the following:

 

-Removed carbon

-Added 0.1ml DSR PO4 (0.1ml per 100L = 0.01ppm PO4, my tank is 75L=20Gal)

-Added 2 ml NO3 (as i did already to get levels between 2 - 5)

-Added copepods

 

I will monitor closely the nutrients, and see if anything will change next week.

[Clown79]

The proper jar test for dino's is not adding the algae to the water.

 

You need a clean jar, run tank water filtered through paper towel into the jar.

 

You only want tank water in there. No algae, no particles.

 

Place lid on and shake.

Put in ambient light for 4 to 24hrs.

 

If any algae forms in the clear water- its dino. Only dino rebuilds its chain.

 

 

You wanna stop waterchanges, change floss frequently, add activated carbon in smaller amounts and change weekly.

 

Add pods but they need phyto dosing which allows them to get food and reproduce(otherwise its not productive just adding pods)

 

The phyto will aid in phos increasing as well.

 

Remove any phos reducing media's and nitrate reducing media.

[I'm Batman]

Algae Barn Ocean magik

[laurens2012]

Update:

 

So the algae is getting worse, The nutrients are still the same so that makes sense then.

I am adding 0.2ml PO4 every day but the readings still are 0. I'm confident that the test is OK as the LFS also red 0 on Friday.

The DSR PO4 also states that the PO4 might be absorbed by the rock at first, and don't overdose if you still read 0 after a while.

 

As I see that the algae keeps getting worse during lights on period. I'm thinking about reducing the lighting times a bit?

 

NO3 = 2 (red sea marine test)

PO4 = 0 (JBL, it directly turned yellow, while all values above zero are in blue).

[I'm Batman]

Did you the procedure mentioned above by@Clown79 to confirm algae or Dino’s?

[laurens2012]

I did run two procedures,

 

1) I scoped and filtered water and put it in ambient light, no strings formed.

 

2) I scoped up some brown slush and did the h2o2 method as described here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/brown-sand-cyano-diatoms-dino.340241/  (second reply)

    So in total 100ml water including some algae and particles then add 5ml 3% h2o2, and after 5-10 minutes there were numerous little bubbles on the brown slush, but not     very confident / large bubbles.

 

However I did see some bubbles forming on the rocks this afternoon, I'll see if I can make a picture tomorrow.

 

I would say rather cyano than dino's.

[Clown79]

1 minute ago, laurens2012 said:

I did run two procedures,

 

1) I scoped and filtered water and put it in ambient light, no strings formed.

 

2) I scoped up some brown slush and did the h2o2 method as described here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/brown-sand-cyano-diatoms-dino.340241/  (second reply)

    So in total 100ml water including some algae and particles then add 5ml 3% h2o2, and after 5-10 minutes there were numerous little bubbles on the brown slush, but not     very confident / large bubbles.

 

However I did see some bubbles forming on the rocks this afternoon, I'll see if I can make a picture tomorrow.

 

I would say rather cyano than dino's.

Bubbles is not a definitive  symtom.

 

 bubbles can appear simply from micro bubbles attaching to algae.

 

The jar test i specified is a method highly recommended to determine dino when a microscope is unavailable.

 

[laurens2012]

photo 1: Morning before lights on

 

 

Photo 2, after 2 hours lights on (turned off during photo moment)

 

[Garf]

Your tank is pretty young, are you still dosing All for Reef? What Alk are you targeting? What does your salt mix at? Why the chaeto?  All for Reef is tougher to monitor, as it can take over a day after dosing for the alk to measure. Chaeto will of course pull out nutrients, and you are chasing NO3 and PO4 numbers in a tank that hasn't been up for two months yet (going by the day you added sand).  Try and give a complete picture of your tank, and people can give better advice. What is the volume? Salt you are using, what kind of flow do you have in the tank, is the tank exposed to direct sunlight, what kind filtration are you using. Are you using the RedSea skimmer/

 

Instead of dosing stuff to try and get to the parameters you want, select a salt mix that you can get good results with, and stick with that.  Keep up with weekly water changes, and you should be set with all the things a tank with softies need. 

 

Good that you tested for dinos, that would be the main concern. In the pics presented, the algae doesn't look all that bad, it isn't taking over the rocks. You may simply need better flow and regular maintenance.