Algae ID If Possible

bevo5 · Mar 13, 2017

I know this is difficult with crappy photos but any help would be appreciated. Over the past few days I've got more and more of this stuff coming up on the sand. I feel like it's dinos...but it's reddish. Dark maroon. Dusty. Gone at night.

Little history - if you're following my other thread on going fallow then you know this all. BUT - it's a 200g and I went fallow about two weeks ago. Until then I was running NoPox and all levels were pretty low. I stoped Nopox and turned off skimmer the other day.

Then I tested the other day (two weeks since fallow) and i'm at 0 nitrate. uh oh. SO I started feeding more to the tank and ordered some stump remover which hasn't come in yet. Today i'm at .25 nitrate but .16 phosphates...which I assume is partly to blame for this algae taking over.

Should I hook up a phosban reactor, do a water change or what? If I need higher nitrate to use up phosphate then it will be a couple days at least until stump remover comes in.

I'm thinking about doing a 3 day blackout, but any tips would be helpful.

http://imgur.com/a/jmjAv

http://imgur.com/a/keXaw

johntdaballa · Mar 13, 2017

Could be the beginning of Dino or cyano. Can't really tell with the pictures. Water change and try to suck most of it out.

I have seen great results with dosing vibrant and so has others

bevo5 · Mar 14, 2017

Well, each time I do a water change I suck out a bunch and it returns with a vengeance. Even more than before.

badd · Mar 14, 2017

bevo5 said:
Well, each time I do a water change I suck out a bunch and it returns with a vengeance. Even more than before.

Hard to tell from the pic.. but going away at lights off..and doing water change is like throwing gas on fire.. is a good indication of dinos.. but only way to tell is with microscope..

bevo5 · Mar 14, 2017

Yeah....I think Dinos.

Question for experts - is it true that corals need Nitrate to process Phosphates? I read that in another thread but I just can't find more information. My nitrates are at .25...phosphates up at .16 (normally much, much lower). So I'm guessing the low nitrates are the problem but I don't want to start correcting for the wrong issue.

My thinking is that these uptick in phosphates = dinos. So I need to get Nitrates up to help get Phosphate down. I'll also turn on a Phosban reactor.

Then my next step will be a three-day blackout, followed by a trial run of the bleach method. It's just limited to the sand and is a kind of pretty maroon - but I hate knowing it's there.