Algae or Dinos?

[mp2022]

Hi all - I came home from a vacation thinking I only had a Ulva +/- GHA problem but found my tank covered in this stuff now - posted in the pictures.

My initial thought is that it is Dinos given its brown stringy snot appearance with bubbles (which I have read Dinos can look like) but in most cases its base is green and then turns brown distally, so maybe its just algae? That being said, it could be algae over it as much of the lettuce algae that's in my tank now has brown along the edges, so I guess it could be a combo of both.

My nitrates are 0 and I have started dosing nitrate as of yesterday. Phosphates 0.03-0.04. Refugium full of chaeto that I probably need to prune. I just purchased a 15w Aqua Ultraviolet sterilizer that will hopefully do something...any insight on what this actually is would be helpful. Haven't pulled the trigger on the microscope yet but if it doesn't improve with the sterilizer and nitrate dosing may have to to get a better sense.

Thanks.

 

[20gallonreefer000]

Hi all - I came home from a vacation thinking I only had a Ulva +/- GHA problem but found my tank covered in this stuff now - posted in the pictures.

My initial thought is that it is Dinos given its brown stringy snot appearance with bubbles (which I have read Dinos can look like) but in most cases its base is green and then turns brown distally, so maybe its just algae? That being said, it could be algae over it as much of the lettuce algae that's in my tank now has brown along the edges, so I guess it could be a combo of both.

My nitrates are 0 and I have started dosing nitrate as of yesterday. Phosphates 0.03-0.04. Refugium full of chaeto that I probably need to prune. I just purchased a 15w Aqua Ultraviolet sterilizer that will hopefully do something...any insight on what this actually is would be helpful. Haven't pulled the trigger on the microscope yet but if it doesn't improve with the sterilizer and nitrate dosing may have to to get a better sense.

Thanks.

Looks like dino growing on the tips of GHA to me. This stuff will grow on anything.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Agree it looks like both green algae and dino's, I think I even see some bubble algae in there. Its going to take some elbow grease to get that sorted.

 

[mp2022]

Agree it looks like both green algae and dino's, I think I even see some bubble algae in there. Its going to take some elbow grease to get that sorted.

Thanks - yup I have my work cut out. The bubble algae has been there for a while and my Pitho crabs have slowly but successfully chipping away at it.

I threw in a bunch of turbo snails last yesterday, did some manual removal, hooked up a UV sterilizer, and started dosing nitrates so hopefully can emerge victorious…

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Good luck to getting rid of the dinos!

 

[rtparty]

Ostreopsis Dinos. The UV should do wonders

 

[mp2022]

Ostreopsis Dinos. The UV should do wonders

Thanks hopefully...I have the UV plumbed to and from the sump and not sure my flow rate is adequate but probably 6x-8x tank turnover if I were to guess. I am starting to see a slow reduction the Dino-ish looking stuff covering the hair algae and rocks but my guess is it will take weeks.

I have been heavily using Neo nitrate to get my nitrate up but it didn't budge so just made my own batch of sodium nitrate solution using the calculator on James' Planted Tank to have a little more control over it so fingers crossed!

Good luck to getting rid of the dinos!

Thanks!

 

[rtparty]

Thanks hopefully...I have the UV plumbed to and from the sump and not sure my flow rate is adequate but probably 6x-8x tank turnover if I were to guess. I am starting to see a slow reduction the Dino-ish looking stuff covering the hair algae and rocks but my guess is it will take weeks.

I have been heavily using Neo nitrate to get my nitrate up but it didn't budge so just made my own batch of sodium nitrate solution using the calculator on James' Planted Tank to have a little more control over it so fingers crossed!


Thanks!

I believe you’d see better results getting your phosphates up slightly

 

[christwendt]

Thanks hopefully...I have the UV plumbed to and from the sump and not sure my flow rate is adequate but probably 6x-8x tank turnover if I were to guess. I am starting to see a slow reduction the Dino-ish looking stuff covering the hair algae and rocks but my guess is it will take weeks.

I have been heavily using Neo nitrate to get my nitrate up but it didn't budge so just made my own batch of sodium nitrate solution using the calculator on James' Planted Tank to have a little more control over it so fingers crossed!


Thanks!

I’m having same problem. I bought a large UV and it’s tuff to plumb from display and return to display. Did it end up wiping them out with the plumbing from sump and to sump?

 

[mp2022]

Thanks hopefully...I have the UV plumbed to and from the sump and not sure my flow rate is adequate but probably 6x-8x tank turnover if I were to guess. I am starting to see a slow reduction the Dino-ish looking stuff covering the hair algae and rocks but my guess is it will take weeks.

I have been heavily using Neo nitrate to get my nitrate up but it didn't budge so just made my own batch of sodium nitrate solution using the calculator on James' Planted Tank to have a little more control over it so fingers crossed!


Thanks!

I’m having same problem. I bought a large UV and it’s tuff to plumb from display and return to display. Did it end up wiping them out with the plumbing from sump and to sump?

So I started dosing nitrate the same time I hooked up the sump to sump UV filter and together this significantly helped the issue. My phosphates then bottomed out and saw a minor recurrence of Dino on the tips of gha I am also battling so I started dosing phosphates to get them in the 0.05 range and that also seems to help - so as rtparty suggested making sure phosphates are in a reasonable range is important. Also did a lot of manual removal of the algae that the Dinos were covering. I think multipronged approach is probably needed if it’s a bad outbreak but I’m a newbie so I am not exactly the authority on this…to answer your question though yes I think the sump to sump UV did something, but when I return from an upcoming trip I will probably plumb the UV into the return from my sump.