Algae help (with microscope pictures)

Chris Kunz

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I have been trying to get rid of this algae? for a few months now. I have a 200 gallon tank that has had a 40 watt Pentair UV on it since November. At first I thought it was cyano because it looks very similar to some cyano I have had before in a different tank. Two rounds of chemiclean did nothing. I next tried vibrant ~1m later per the recommendation of my LFS. It did nothing as well. I then thought it might be dinos because my nitrates were never over 2 and my phosphates were always at zero. I fed heavy and got my nitrates at 2 still, but phosphates at 0.03. I have also been dosing dino X for about a week now. Still no affect at all. I got a microscope today and got the following pictures. I was wondering if anyone would have any advice for me? Any help is appreciated.
a.jpg

Tank info:

200 gal IM EXT

Icecap 48 XXL sump

40 watt Pentair UV

Current parameters

Alk 8.36

Ca 452

Mg 1251

Nitrate 2

Phosphate 0.03 (just up from 0.00 a week ago)

Sal 35

Ph 7.99-8.32 (7 day high and low)

Temp 78-79.4 (7 day high and low)
 
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Chris Kunz

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Here is a picture of it in the tank. This is 4 days worth of growth. It is very hard to remove because it takes all the sand with it.
 

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Chris Kunz

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Any advice on how to get rid of it? Keep overfeeding and using dino x?
 

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I fed heavy and got my nitrates at 2 still, but phosphates at 0.03. I have also been dosing dino X for about a week now. Still no affect at all. I got a microscope today and got the following pictures. I was wondering if anyone would have any advice for me?
A few points, and my opinions on what I'd do.
These are amphidinium dinoflagellates. I don't like overfeeding because of what you see. It adds a lot of organics that feed the nuisance, when all I really want is to remove the PO4 and NO3 limitation. I want to elevate inorganic PO4, (and after that) NO3 to a modest level. Try seachem flourish phosphorus or similar.

DinoX is a general algacide, there is nothing dino specific about it. Sometimes it works. I'm ambivalent about it. maybe it kills less livestock than dinos. I'm not sure. For likely non-toxic sand-only dinos like these, I'm much more a fan of manual export than algicides.

Here is a picture of it in the tank. This is 4 days worth of growth. It is very hard to remove because it takes all the sand with it.

No, this is good. I'd want to suck all that out. If we just kill all the stuff inside the tank, it'll release more organics and feed the next round of nuisance over and over.
 
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