Brown Algae (videos)

[shawnriv]

I’ve been dealing with this brown growth/film in my reef tank for about three months and I’m hoping someone can help identify it.

A few months ago I had a marine velvet outbreak and removed all of my fish for ~3 months. During that time, my nitrate and phosphate completely bottomed out. Since adding the fish back, this brown stuff has persisted.

It appears when the lights come on and almost disappears overnight. It’s also very easy to blow off with a turkey baster, but comes back fairly quickly.

I bought a microscope thinking it might be dinos, but quickly realized I have no idea what I’m looking at. I attached a multiple videos taken about an hour after blowing the rocks off. One was taken with an orange lens.

Current parameters:

• Alk: ~8.5 dKH
• NO3: ~9–10 ppm
• PO4: ~0.05–0.06 ppm

The tank is predominantly Acropora, and I’m also trying to get SPS growth going again after the period of very low nutrients.

 

[EnterName]

Sounds like a severe dinoflagellate outbreak to me

 

[Baldyreef]

seems kind of hair algae-ish to me

 

[Baldyreef]

Sounds like a severe dinoflagellate outbreak to me

I was thinking hair algae but your definitely right I think

 

[shawnriv]

seems kind of hair algae-ish to me

Doesn’t seem like hair algae since it’s easy to blow off. I have two tangs and they don’t touch it at all.

 

[EnterName]

I was thinking hair algae but your definitely right I think

both is possible. There even is a cyanobacterium that looks like hair algae (Lyngbya) which would look similar to the stuff on your flow pump, but the rest doesn't look too much like Lyngbya.

 

[shawnriv]

Sounds like a severe dinoflagellate outbreak to me

Is there any way I can fix this? It’s been going on for a good two to three months now?

 

[shawnriv]

both is possible. There even is a cyanobacterium that looks like hair algae (Lyngbya) which would look similar to the stuff on your flow pump, but the rest doesn't look too much like Lyngbya.

I did try a cyano remover about a month ago and it didn’t touch it.

 

[Baldyreef]

y

Doesn’t seem like hair algae since it’s easy to blow off. I have two tangs and they don’t touch it at all.

yeah only a few kinds of fish and inverts touch hair algae

 

[Evil1]

I’ve been dealing with this brown growth/film in my reef tank for about three months and I’m hoping someone can help identify it.

A few months ago I had a marine velvet outbreak and removed all of my fish for ~3 months. During that time, my nitrate and phosphate completely bottomed out. Since adding the fish back, this brown stuff has persisted.

It appears when the lights come on and almost disappears overnight. It’s also very easy to blow off with a turkey baster, but comes back fairly quickly.

I bought a microscope thinking it might be dinos, but quickly realized I have no idea what I’m looking at. I attached a multiple videos taken about an hour after blowing the rocks off. One was taken with an orange lens.

Current parameters:

• Alk: ~8.5 dKH
• NO3: ~9–10 ppm
• PO4: ~0.05–0.06 ppm

The tank is predominantly Acropora, and I’m also trying to get SPS growth going again after the period of very low nutrients.

How old is your tank? Your nutrients look good to me.

 

[Evil1]

Honestly my method has always been let my tanks do their thing. Not into rushing mother natures process. What I would do is add brightwell microbactor 7 & purple m as directed to build up all your good bacteria. It’s possible that adding all the fish back into the system threw your system off kilter. Hence the algae/dino bloom. I would stay away from any chemicals that claim to remove these. That’s my cents!

 

[EnterName]

Is there any way I can fix this? It’s been going on for a good two to three months now?

Dinoflagellates are one of the more difficult nuisances to get rid of. They often appear when nutrient levels reach the detection limit of home test kits, but they can also occur in tanks with detectable nutrient levels, so it's not always as simple as increasing nitrate and phosphate. Considering you already have detectable nitrate and phosphate and the amount of growth in your tank, I don't think increasing those levels further would help. It might actually just feed the dinos.

Depending on the species, the cells will behave differently at night when the lights turn off. Some go from their benthic (substrate/rock dwelling) phase to a planktonic phase where they freely swim around. This makes them susceptible to UV sterilization, while other dinoflagellates prefer to go deeper into the substrate, which makes removal more difficult.

I would siphon out as much as you can manually, combine that with water changes, and then...
(I can't believe I'm saying this)
... add some bottled bacteria. I'm very skeptical about these products, but some people report great success, so why not give it a try. The person behind 3dreefing has done a few tests and I think is currently recommending "Tropic Marin Nitribiotic." It's one of the products you can be relatively sure contains bacteria that form spores (Bacillus sp.), cysts (some purple bacteria), or go dormant (e.g. Nitrobacter sp.) in order to actually survive being bottled. There are certainly other products with fitting bacteria too, but I'm too lazy right now to go through the various DNA reports available. Remember to turn off the UV sterilizer according to the product's instructions.

Another option is silicate dosing to encourage diatom growth. Diatoms also create brown stains on glass, substrate, and rocks, but they're much easier to get rid of and don't harm corals by overgrowing them to the point where they can't get enough light. Sodium silicate ("Wasserglas" / "water glass") is commonly used for this, and many people have had success with the method. Again, it's possible the dinos will prey on the diatoms too, so you really need a lot of diatoms to choke them out.

Even more experimental approaches are ORP boosting with hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) or bleach (NaOCl) dosing, but I'd avoid those for now, as they're mostly based on reports from a very few individuals.

 

[shawnriv]

How old is your tank? Your nutrients look good to me.

It’s about seven months. I used seeded live rock and filled a chamber of my sump with existing live rock from an old build I did. My only thought is it reset after the nutrients bottomed out?

 

[shawnriv]

This was from my microscope. Not sure if it makes any difference

 

[EnterName]

This was from my microscope. Not sure if it makes any difference

I would say that looks similar to Coolia sp. (admittedly the differentiation of Coolia from many other benthic marine dinoflagellates would require far more detail than the video can provide, but the community refers to pretty much all spherical dinoflagellates as "Coolia").

Coolia is one of "the big four" dinoflagellate genera that seem to occur frequently in reef tanks: Amphidinium, Coolia, Ostreopsis, and Prorocentrum.

You will find a quite simple guide with some explanations here: https://www.reef2reef.com/attachments/dinoflagellateid12_12_2019-pdf.1324729/

I don't have managed to find Coolia sp. cells for my microscopy thread, so I can't offer high quality imagery, but if the cells neither match the Ostreopsis and Prorocentrum images (post #1, image 8 & 9) nor Amphidinium (post #3) it is very likely you are dealing with what the community refers to as Coolia.

The video doesn't show much of the cells and it's hard to follow the movement as you zoom in on imotile cells, but I believe to have seen enough to be reasonably sure about it being a spherical dinoflagellate that moves like Coolia.

 

[shawnriv]

I would say that looks similar to Coolia sp. (admittedly the differentiation of Coolia from many other benthic marine dinoflagellates would require far more detail than the video can provide, but the community refers to pretty much all spherical dinoflagellates as "Coolia").

Coolia is one of "the big four" dinoflagellate genera that seem to occur frequently in reef tanks: Amphidinium, Coolia, Ostreopsis, and Prorocentrum.

You will find a quite simple guide with some explanations here: https://www.reef2reef.com/attachments/dinoflagellateid12_12_2019-pdf.1324729/

I don't have managed to find Coolia sp. cells for my microscopy thread, so I can't offer high quality imagery, but if the cells neither match the Ostreopsis and Prorocentrum images (post #1, image 8 & 9) nor Amphidinium (post #3) it is very likely you are dealing with what the community refers to as Coolia.

The video doesn't show much of the cells and it's hard to follow the movement as you zoom in on imotile cells, but I believe to have seen enough to be reasonably sure about it being a spherical dinoflagellate that moves like Coolia.

Here is another video I took. Good call on the Coolia. But maybe also Ostreopsis? I quite literally cannot tell the difference. Either way, any info on how to rid these?