Dinos, Diatoms or Cyano?

[chasingcorals17]

Been dealing with this stuff for weeks. Green mat on sand and film on glass. I siphon the sand, and it's back by morning. When I scrape the glass is comes off in strands. Nitrates and phosphates hit 0 when it happened and I've been working on getting it back up. 

 

Sadly no microscope to ID 😞 but hopefully more experienced members can help. Tank has been up for 5 months. 

 

Any ideas on how to squash this stuff once and for all?

 

 

[brandon429]

you can see from prior posts on the issue that 99% of aquarists are going to advise you to do things to your nitrate and phosphate, as if your tests for those levels will be accurate...they won't be. common nitrate and phosphate tests we use range wildly when compared to other name brand kits on the same water sample, so if you select that route its largely luck based and a waiting game to see if it gets better or worse. I would not advise that way, I'd advise you becoming the grazers that are missing in your reef and kill the algae directly while leaving all params in place as they may be. 

 

Your light above is very white, do you run it like that always (grows green algae stronger than all blues) or did you make the change to white only for pics> asking because if you run 1% white levels you're currently running, and mostly blue, that grows less algae over time but it wont fix your current issue. My recommend will be to rip clean your tank so that it is totally free of the invader, then do things afterwards (like light spectrum alteration and others) to resist growback. 

 

99% of advisors will have you leave the tank as is, and try things to see if it goes away.

 

my way will be for you to clean your tank, make it 100% algae free within 3 hours work, have a totally new-looking tank, and do all methods to prevent growback. Your way of cleaning isn't the right way, its a tenth as powerful as a rip clean, so its not helping you any. A rip cleaned tank is 100% clean and perfect so you're starting from a different place there than following what the masses will advise, that hasn't worked for you so far, requiring more posts on your tank issue. 

 

The ID of your algae makes no difference, rip cleans don't need an ID they need only for you to be willing to follow the rules and produce a 100% cleaned tank by taking your entire reef apart and cleaning it. Before asking if thats harmful, or causes cycles, take 10 mins and read a rip clean just done here, simply page 27-30  it'll take ten minutes to read and you'll do this to your tank. 

 

 

 

thats just for reading prep. if you are ready to get your tank fixed we will make a customer plan unique to your tank and what's on the rocks. he didnt have a rock algae issue, his was just sand which you'll still rip clean too but we'd do something different to your rocks as the tank is disassembled so they go back in clean. the rip clean is the right thing to do because your tank will not have algae nor waste in it, after we're done, and its easier to keep a clean tank free of algae than it is to keep a dirty tank free of algae. 

 

 

Identifying your algae type literally has no bearing on the matter, that's a form of hesitation and a rip clean is the opposite of hesitation. 

 

[brandon429]

the right way to model the way to get algae off your rocks is we would work on one rock solely outside the tank to make it algae free, without doing the full cleaning part, and set the rock back totally fixed and watch it over a couple days to see how the algae stays clean or comes back, we'd use a mini model of just one rock to gauge cleaning effectiveness before you do the entire rip clean job above and do all the rocks on the known modeled method. Step one is decide if you are ready to win, we plan rip clean. step 2 is removing one rock with corals attached for external cleaning detailing outside the tank, set the rock back clean, watch it for a few days to see if it stays clean. step 3 is run the whole rip clean, step 4 is initiate changes to hopefully reduce growback, and none of this involves parameter testing on kits that don't read correctly anyway/ 

 

most people ask: why do the rip clean if handling the rocks only works…we can answer this question easily. Because your sand is totally cloudy when disturbed, and most of that cloud is algae feed. Sand after a rip clean cannot cloud no matter how much it’s disturbed, there’s no more algae fuel left.

 

if in doubt: start up a cell phone video and aim it at the reef, reach in with hand and grab and handful of sand and drop it down from the top, the entire reef will go cloudy and then settle and new algae feed has just been cast all about. There isn’t a doser or additive you can buy to fix this, cleaning it fixes it.

 

why am I not recommending phosphate adsorption media? Because you’ll get dinos for half a year most likely. Rip cleans have no tradeoff invasions. Avoiding work is bad, agreeing to do work has all good outcomes logged.

 

Having an invaded nano reef is a matter of pure choice, not biology. We select to be invaded and for that to remain for months, or we select to be uninvaded in three hours, its psychology not biology. Refusing to do hands on work in favor of hands off dosing and waiting is still a choice, as you have the ability to have a clean reef by 7 pm tonite if you want it that way. Large tankers are not so lucky, their jobs take hours and days to do what you can do in three hours. 
 

knowing how to rip clean during a simple invasion like this one is better than refusing, having no practice, and waiting until a grand in corals is completely taken over by an invasion to hesitantly start a cleaning. Running one now with confidence changes the lifespan of your nano positively