Algae ID

[wunderlong88]

My 180 has been running about 2 months. I started with Gulf live rock and sand and Australian live rock. I had some rock cycling for several months from the local lfs. I started with all of this and had basically an instant cycle. I have a few soft corals and four fish. My nitrate=0 and my phosphate=.38. I do 10% water change every week and run a protein skimmer and have quite a bit of macro algae in the sump. The phosphates have dropped from .9 a few weeks ago.

I really haven't had too much algae considering new tank and all but I'm having some now and I was curious what kind it was. Putting up some long stringy tentacles. I have a lot of bubbles in the tank as one of my AI neroes has been putting a lot of bubbles in the water and I'm not sure why. Or they're coming from somewhere and it's just moving them around not sure which.

I do have some neon green star polyps and some zoas that have not seemed very happy and been closed a lot. All the rest have been open and happy so I'm not sure what's going on. I thought maybe they were getting blasted too much and I finally turned the power heads down a little bit because I can't find any way not to blow everything every which way. But that didn't seem to help and so I've turned them back up today to where I had them. Just in case that was causing the algae.

Would love to know what kind of algae and if there's anything I should be doing that I'm not doing otherwise hopefully this will burn itself out and it's just part of a new tank.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

It looks like the beginning of dino's, some dino's can be toxic, which might be what's bothering your corals. The zero nitrate is a problem, and seems to be a common denominator of dino's, so try to get that increased.

The red is cyano, often caused by low flow, and imbalance in nutrients and elevated organics. I see it isolated to certain area's, those must be low flow area's I guess.

I also see some regular micro algae which is normal, but the dino's are the concern, they can kill corals and even inverts and fish in some cases, it can take months to eradicate. Do a bit of reading on it, try to increase your nitrate, and hopefully someone can identify the dino's for you, there are different types, I did not get what you have so I can't advise. Good luck.

 

[wunderlong88]

How do I raise my nitrate? Remove some of my macro algae from the refugium? I was concerned because my phosphates were so high so I haven't tried to get my nitrate up or remove any.