Algae ID & Vibrant Testing

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The Chemiclean treatment worked like a champ in this tank. No sign of spirulina after one treatment. I did a 35% water change last night and started running some carbon. There is still some brownish film growing on the glass and a touch of sickly looking green bubble algae coming back on the heater. Overall the tank is looking much better though:
P1010493.JPG

You can see my home made surface skimmer on the right side. It's ugly but I'm amazed how much crap it has pulled out since the Chemiclean treatment started. That little filter pad is nasty brown every day. It's got me thinking if there's a way to modify the Aquaclear intake to surface skim instead of pulling water mid way down the tank.

I've dosed KNO3 the last few days and tonight both the 20L and 40B tanks test 2 or 3 ppm. I'll probably hold off dosing more and see if they stabilize.

This Saturday will be 2 weeks since the last Vibrant dose. I may try doing a maintenance Vibrant dose every other week for a while to keep the bubble algae at bay. I may also hold off another week or two and let the nitrates stabilize first though.
 
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I dosed both the 40B and 20L tanks with 0.5ml/gallon of Vibrant after Sunday's water change. This was the first Vibrant dose in 2 week. I had to clean the 40B glass again yesterday and I can see the film coming back already. In addition to that I'm starting to see sign of red stuff in the 40B sand again and there is a touch of red stuff on the glass in one corner of the 20L. The is a scope pic of the glass film in the 40B:
40B Glass Film 3.jpg

I'm not sure what they are but I'd like to ID them and make a plan to take care of it. I also need to take a look at the red stuff in both tanks and see if it's the same spirulina coming back.
 
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I'm still trying to figure out what the stuff in the previous post is. I'm having to clean it off the 40B glass about 3 times a week again.

I noticed a red film starting on the glass in the 20L yesterday. Here's a scope pic of it, I haven't seen anything like this before in any of my tanks. Here's a low power shot:

20L Pink 1.jpg

Here's a close up:

20L Pink 3.jpg

Nothing wet has been added to this tank since 10/2016. It's been through lots of Vibrant and Chemiclean since then. I'm not too worried about it at this point. It seems to be slow growing and hopefully I can keep up with it with regular glass cleaning.

I'm curious what it is if anyone has an ID though.

Thanks!
 
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I'm getting ready to do a bit of cleaning and water changes in both the 40B and 20L. I noticed a string blowing around off the edge of the filter outflow in the 40B and thought the spirulina was back so I took a look at the string under the scope, it's not sprulina. I'm not sure what it is:
40B 1.jpg
40B 2.jpg
Definitely not spirulina or phormidium like I've sampled before. These look like skinny rods clumped together in a long strand. In the tank it looks like a single long red thread, slightly larger in diameter than a hair.

The 40B still has lots of the brownish green algae growing on the glass. I didn't dose potassium nitrate this week and the nitrates were 4 ppm today so it looks like it's starting to stabilize. The phosphates were 0.02 today.

The 20L has a new bright green spot growing, it's not like other stuff I've seen yet either:
20L 1.jpg
20L 3.jpg

It's growing on a small spot of the glass and also on the front of the power head, right in the flow output. It comes off in a thin sheet and looks the same color under the microscope as it does in the tank. At 900X it looks like long segmented strands like cyanobacteria, but it is much smaller than the red phormidium I am battling in the 75 gallon tank.

Well, it's time to try to clean as much out as possible and change some water.
 
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None of the red or green stuff I cleaned out of the 20L came back during the week. Both tanks look pretty clean but I'm still having to do a lot of glass cleaning in the 40B. The 40 B also has a tiny bit of red in the sand and another area of something brown and stringy. There is a bit of similar brown stringy stuff on the frag racks in the 20L. I'll try to get some scope pictures of it tonight or tomorrow.

After this week's water change the nitrates were 4ppm in the 40B and 2ppm in the 20L. Phosphates were 0.002 in both tanks. I decided to try a Vibrant maintenance dose of 3ml in the 40B and 1.5ml in the 20L every 2 weeks. The first dose was today. I will try to check nitrates several times this week and boost them if needed.

I also added an IceCap Gyre 3K in the 40B yesterday. So far I'm very pleased with it.
 

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The Chemiclean treatment worked like a champ in this tank. No sign of spirulina after one treatment. I did a 35% water change last night and started running some carbon. There is still some brownish film growing on the glass and a touch of sickly looking green bubble algae coming back on the heater. Overall the tank is looking much better though:
P1010493.JPG

You can see my home made surface skimmer on the right side. It's ugly but I'm amazed how much crap it has pulled out since the Chemiclean treatment started. That little filter pad is nasty brown every day. It's got me thinking if there's a way to modify the Aquaclear intake to surface skim instead of pulling water mid way down the tank.

I've dosed KNO3 the last few days and tonight both the 20L and 40B tanks test 2 or 3 ppm. I'll probably hold off dosing more and see if they stabilize.

This Saturday will be 2 weeks since the last Vibrant dose. I may try doing a maintenance Vibrant dose every other week for a while to keep the bubble algae at bay. I may also hold off another week or two and let the nitrates stabilize first though.

I've seen such products advertised, but forget who made it. I'll try to find a link.
 
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The 40B is looking worse again, but I think it is different algae this time. I have to clean the glass 2 or 3 times a week and over the last couple weeks there's a lot of brown string stuff growing in the sand that's starting to get on some of the corals. This is what on the sand:
P1010529.JPG

And a shot of the sand and glass:
P1010531.JPG

And a bit stringing from some macro algae:
P1010530.JPG

This is a microscope sample of what is on the sand:
40B Sand.jpg

And this is a shot of the stuff on the glass:
40B Glass.jpg

Both pictures are the same magnification, there are some of the larger brown cells in the glass picture but it's mostly smaller green stuff.

The tank parameters today are:

Salinity 35ppm (calibrated refractometer)
Nitrate 8 ppm (Red Sea)
Phosphate 0.02ppm (Red Sea)
Calcium 400ppm (Salifert)
Alkalinity 7.9 dKH (Salifert)
Magnesium 1360 (Red Sea)
pH 8.2 (cheap meter)

I stopped dosing Vibrant about a month ago because the Nitrates bottomed out and all the corals get very unhappy. I may have lost a cyphastrea, still wait to see if it will come back. I dosed Potassium Nitrate then to bring Nitrates up to about 3 ppm. I have not does it since then and the Nitrates have risen on their own from there. I started dosing 3/4 doses of Vibrant 3 weeks ago, so I've does twice, the last time was on 2/19/2017.

I'm not sure where to go from here. I'm hesitant to pick up Vibrant dosing again but may have the proper knowledge now to keep Nitrates up through the process.

I've tried identifying the algae from online pictures but I never have much luck finding ones that look similar. Maybe @jason2459 , @saltyfilmfolks , @Brew12 or @twilliard can give me a hand with that.

Thanks!
 

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The 40B is looking worse again, but I think it is different algae this time. I have to clean the glass 2 or 3 times a week and over the last couple weeks there's a lot of brown string stuff growing in the sand that's starting to get on some of the corals. This is what on the sand:
P1010529.JPG

And a shot of the sand and glass:
P1010531.JPG

And a bit stringing from some macro algae:
P1010530.JPG

This is a microscope sample of what is on the sand:
40B Sand.jpg

And this is a shot of the stuff on the glass:
40B Glass.jpg

Both pictures are the same magnification, there are some of the larger brown cells in the glass picture but it's mostly smaller green stuff.

The tank parameters today are:

Salinity 35ppm (calibrated refractometer)
Nitrate 8 ppm (Red Sea)
Phosphate 0.02ppm (Red Sea)
Calcium 400ppm (Salifert)
Alkalinity 7.9 dKH (Salifert)
Magnesium 1360 (Red Sea)
pH 8.2 (cheap meter)

I stopped dosing Vibrant about a month ago because the Nitrates bottomed out and all the corals get very unhappy. I may have lost a cyphastrea, still wait to see if it will come back. I dosed Potassium Nitrate then to bring Nitrates up to about 3 ppm. I have not does it since then and the Nitrates have risen on their own from there. I started dosing 3/4 doses of Vibrant 3 weeks ago, so I've does twice, the last time was on 2/19/2017.

I'm not sure where to go from here. I'm hesitant to pick up Vibrant dosing again but may have the proper knowledge now to keep Nitrates up through the process.

I've tried identifying the algae from online pictures but I never have much luck finding ones that look similar. Maybe @jason2459 , @saltyfilmfolks , @Brew12 or @twilliard can give me a hand with that.

Thanks!
what does you cuc consist of? Can I see a full tank shot?
Thinking and looking.
 
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Thanks Salty, this is a current FTS:
P1010533.JPG
The clean up crew is a bit light at the moment. There's a couple of astrea snails, a couple nassarius snails and a few hermit crabs. The only fish load is a pair of ocellaris clowns. The tank has been up for 6 months, the fish in for a bit over 2 months. I've had trouble with the snail populations dwindling in all of my tanks lately.

I set up my first reef (the 75) in October of 2015 and it seemed like the first snail I got were hardy and lasted well. For the past few month it seems like the 2 LFS nearly snail offerings just don't last. Here lately I'm fighting various trouble algae in every tank. This ank and the 20L frag tank have both been through Vibrant and a round of Chemiclean to deal with the resulting spirulina. The 75 has been through a round of H2O2 dosing to deal with phormidium cyanobcteria, which has returned (I'm getting ready to update that thread).

I've been trying to put off adding more CUC until everything settles down a bit but maybe I need to do it sooner.

Thanks!
 
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One more thing I meant to mention about the 40B. It is full of amphipods, some of them close to 1/2 inch long. I don't know if they count as CUC or not but they're everywhere as they have no predators in this tank. Oddly enough I don't ever see any copepods on the glass in either the 40B or the 20L. The 75 gallon tank always has them on the glass and some of the rock in these tanks came from that one.
 

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I would be curious the I'd of the string stuff. I went thru 2 months of vibrant and may go back because I didn't manage nitrates very well and that may of created some of the cyano and rebound of gha
 

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Thanks Salty, this is a current FTS:
P1010533.JPG
The clean up crew is a bit light at the moment. There's a couple of astrea snails, a couple nassarius snails and a few hermit crabs. The only fish load is a pair of ocellaris clowns. The tank has been up for 6 months, the fish in for a bit over 2 months. I've had trouble with the snail populations dwindling in all of my tanks lately.

I set up my first reef (the 75) in October of 2015 and it seemed like the first snail I got were hardy and lasted well. For the past few month it seems like the 2 LFS nearly snail offerings just don't last. Here lately I'm fighting various trouble algae in every tank. This ank and the 20L frag tank have both been through Vibrant and a round of Chemiclean to deal with the resulting spirulina. The 75 has been through a round of H2O2 dosing to deal with phormidium cyanobcteria, which has returned (I'm getting ready to update that thread).

I've been trying to put off adding more CUC until everything settles down a bit but maybe I need to do it sooner.

Thanks!
@DeepBrew, the sesame seed-shaped golden cells are dinos; Ostreo species, if I am correct. There are so many Ostreo varieties, and, though I've looked at a link @twilliard has listed elsewhere, I cannot distinguish one from the other very readily, either. Your variety looks a lot like ours. The smaller, roundish golden cells (also in your first scope pic above) are ones we also have in our tank, and I am not sure what they are; I'll be continuing to follow this thread to see if one of the other brilliant folks you tagged have an idea. We also have Amphidinium species in our sand. We've been dosing Vibrant since beginning of Nov, and have no visible dino strands anywhere in the tank. BUT, we still find individual cells (mostly Ostreo) attached to the foam guard of our mp40. The unknown roundish cells have been found on the foam guard and taken from algae (w/bubbles) growing on snail shells and water returns in tank. While I am thrilled with the way Vibrant has helped rid our tank of visible dinos (and other nuisance algae), I believe dino cells will continue to be in our tank (hopefully not ever in numbers enough to wreak havoc again!). When we had our big dino outbreak, it was just the Ostreo cells that were combining into horrible strands, so it is just that variety that I am really keeping my eye on with our tank.

Thanks for continuing to share your updates! :)
 
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@Scubabeth , I've followed along with your posts in the big Vibrant thread and they have been helpful to me. Thanks for the input!

How often are you dosing Vibrant now?

Also, I'm very new at algae ID so I'd like to make sure I understand. I started search dino ostreo, it looks like dinoflagellate is the family, Ostreopsis is the genus and there are many species. When google dinoflagellate ostreopsis I see a lot of image that look like the ones above. Is that correct?
 
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I would be curious the I'd of the string stuff. I went thru 2 months of vibrant and may go back because I didn't manage nitrates very well and that may of created some of the cyano and rebound of gha

I think managing the nitrates is going to be key. I'm going to try to start testing and recording them and making a log. Maybe before a Vibrant dose, after 24 hours, after 48 hours, etc to see what the pattern looks like. The goal would be to predict when a nitrate dose is needed during Vibrant use before they bottom out. Everyone's experience with Vibrant seems to vary wildy with existing tank conditions, though. I expect that whatever I find works for my tank may not be applicable to others.
 
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Speaking of nitrates, does anyone have a test they like?

I presently have API, Red Sea and Salifert nitrate test and don't really like any of them. I have troubles telling the colors apart n API and it's not good in the 0-5 range.

Salifert says you can look down at the sample for high range and through the side for low but it doesn't seem consistent. For example one test I did today looked like 25ppm from the top for high range. From the side for low range it looked like 100ppm, divide that by 10 per the instructions and it's 10ppm. I did the test twice and it looked the same. The Red Sea test said the same sample water was 8ppm.

It's easiest for me to read the Red Sea colors but they don't really match the card to my eyes, the card is pink and the sample is more purple. Also, if your nitrates are low and you're dosing to raise them to around 5 or so you don't know whether you need to do the low or high range test. I have to test twice way more than I like, especially since the instructions say to wait 9 minutes for it to develop.

I've thought about getting a Hanna checker but I hear mixed reviews of them too.

It felt good to get that rant out. :( I spent a long time testing water for 3 tanks today.
 

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@Scubabeth , I've followed along with your posts in the big Vibrant thread and they have been helpful to me. Thanks for the input!

How often are you dosing Vibrant now?

Also, I'm very new at algae ID so I'd like to make sure I understand. I started search dino ostreo, it looks like dinoflagellate is the family, Ostreopsis is the genus and there are many species. When google dinoflagellate ostreopsis I see a lot of image that look like the ones above. Is that correct?
Hey, @DeepBrew! I, too, have really benefited from all the sharing here on R2R; it's so great! We are still dosing Vibrant weekly to try to rid our red turf algae, and to keep the dinos in check. :) For a few weeks, we had backed off to every other week, but the red turf continued to spread at that dosage, so we went back up to weekly. We don't have many SPS corals (just a few frags), so aren't AS worried by low NO3 as we would be with a tankful of SPS. We use the Sailfert test, and I feel your pain; I usually use the low range "side" test. I started using UWC's Potassium Nitrate to increase to around 5, as we still had SPS growth and encrusting, but colors had paled. Increasing our NO3 lead to a bit of green spirulina algae growth (looks like cyano to the eye, but under the scope looks like, well, moving spirals) in lower flow areas of our tank, but corals are coloring up again.

Yes, Ostreopsis is the genus, under which there are many species, which look so similar to me. That's why I just say we have Ostreo species in our tank and leave it at that. :rolleyes: I don't have enough experience with ID to narrow down more than that. Plus, we have an elcheapo microscope. Hahaha!
 
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