Chrysophytes?! Help me cure it?

[reeferfoxx]

Just reading this thread after being deep on the dino thread. This to me from the tank pics I have seen you all post seems to be what I'm dealing with as well ( in addition to the couple Ostreopsis you will see on the pics). After 20 some years in the hobby, first time I"ve been introduced to this fun "jelly" of a pest and its really thrown me for a loop. It is only showing up in an 8'x3'x14" grow out system too, not the 3 other tanks and 100 gallon fuge that is connected which had me looking for what specific conditions exist in this grow out that it is thriving on. Thanks for having a look. Appreciate the feedback.
Today parameters are:
8.4 dkh
Ca-450
Mg-1425
NO3-.25
PO4-.05
I plan on adding a UV to the return on this system this week (40W with a flow of about 800gph (ecotech L1)) to see what that does. I know it will get the Ostreopsis out, but these little dots below when isolated are what is forming the golden brown jelly coating my egg crate/plugs, and some tiles.
)) to see what it does.

This and dinos isnt a good mix. Sorry to hear that. I saw this before with another r2r member. Not sure how that turned out.

It's kind of a tough one really. Because, you can cure chrysophytes but it would possibly increase dinos.

Actually the procedure could cure dinos too? Lol the member did a chemiclean treatment after getting rid of chrysos and THEN the dinos flourished.

You willing to beat chrysos and see what happens to dinos? You'll get a lot of cyano but if you let it grow(to an extent), eventually it will go away.

 

[reeferfoxx]

@AcroJack Obviously getting rid of both is a priority. I think removing chrysos first is the correct way. Plus, you'll get cyano and Im not sure if you understand the process of beating dinos but you're gonna get cyano post dinos also lol. So when you're ready here is the procedure. Needs to be done in order with timers and alarms. Also you're going to use GFO for 24 hours only.

The most effective route and sure fire way to getting rid of chrysos is to have GFO, toothbrush, and a canister filter(is best option). If you don't have a canister filter, switching filter socks or floss, can work too.
Also keep in mind that after adding GFO and midway through 24 hours, you need to check alkalinity. You'll be adding full amount of GFO for recommended tank size and alkalinity will drop a little more than normal. Remember and record times to test dkh before and during GFO.

Day 1

• First thing, scrub rocks with a toothbrush while filtering with canister or floss. Remember to check floss or sock for clogging. Make sure you get as much out as possible. Wait till tank clears.
• Perform black out. (ie: cardboard, trashbags, no light, etc)
• Add recommended amount of GFO for tank size to overflow or reactor. Start 24 hour timer.

Day 2

• First thing, check alkalinity if you haven't.
• Prepare to turn GFO off.

Day 3

• Or 72 hours later, remove black out procedures.
• Slowly acclimate the lighting back to normal to reduce stress.
• Your snails should start eatingwhat's left.

 

[AcroJack]

@AcroJack Obviously getting rid of both is a priority. I think removing chrysos first is the correct way. Plus, you'll get cyano and Im not sure if you understand the process of beating dinos but you're gonna get cyano post dinos also lol. So when you're ready here is the procedure. Needs to be done in order with timers and alarms. Also you're going to use GFO for 24 hours only.

The most effective route and sure fire way to getting rid of chrysos is to have GFO, toothbrush, and a canister filter(is best option). If you don't have a canister filter, switching filter socks or floss, can work too.
Also keep in mind that after adding GFO and midway through 24 hours, you need to check alkalinity. You'll be adding full amount of GFO for recommended tank size and alkalinity will drop a little more than normal. Remember and record times to test dkh before and during GFO.

Day 1

• First thing, scrub rocks with a toothbrush while filtering with canister or floss. Remember to check floss or sock for clogging. Make sure you get as much out as possible. Wait till tank clears.
• Perform black out. (ie: cardboard, trashbags, no light, etc)
• Add recommended amount of GFO for tank size to overflow or reactor. Start 24 hour timer.

Day 2

• First thing, check alkalinity if you haven't.
• Prepare to turn GFO off.

Day 3

• Or 72 hours later, remove black out procedures.
• Slowly acclimate the lighting back to normal to reduce stress.
• Your snails should start eatingwhat's left.

Thx for the procedure. I will work on that starting tomorrow and report back.

 

[mrvn]

After reading this thread and just based on the pictures posted it seems to me that this is what my tank has. I believe it all started when zeovit lowered my phosphates and nitrates to zero. I started noticing some brown slime on some rocks but I assumed it was part of the first months of my tank however this didnt go away like the first diatoms I had, this stuff kept growing first on the rocks and then it moved to the sand.

So far the steps I've taken to eliminate this are:
-Removed zeolite reactor and slowly stopped carbon dosing
- Tried to blow this stuff with turkey baster off the rocks
- Change filter socks every 3/4 days
- Started feeding more to increase nutrients

After two weeks the algae started to disappear from the rocks but it started to increase its growth on the sand. At this point phosphate was at 0.03 and nitrates were at 25. I believe this promoted the growth of some green film algae on the rocks which was able to outcompete the chrysos on that area. During this week I decided to add some chaeto to keep my level of nutrients stable and under control, since I dont have enough space in my sump for a refugium I got a skimz algae reactor.

After the addition of the reactor I started noticing how the chrysos started to disappear from the rocks and the sand and after 2 more weeks the chaeto seemed ready for a trim. After taking out all the chaeto and rising it on ro water I saw a lot of brown stuff coming out of it, and that's when I realized that it was chrysos! It has moved from my display to my reactor, the chaeto doesnt seem to stop its growth because of it but it is still present.

Something else that happened during the move of the chrysos was the presence of cyano on the sand. I havent done anything about it I was just planning on letting it run its curse and during this last week it has been slowly disappearing. At this point I'm not sure what to do about the chrysos, its presence has been reduced on 95% of the main display, corals seem happy (LPS - my few SPS frags died covered by this stuff) but I know the reactor is the only thing keeping it from coming back on the display.

 

[reeferfoxx]

After reading this thread and just based on the pictures posted it seems to me that this is what my tank has. I believe it all started when zeovit lowered my phosphates and nitrates to zero. I started noticing some brown slime on some rocks but I assumed it was part of the first months of my tank however this didnt go away like the first diatoms I had, this stuff kept growing first on the rocks and then it moved to the sand.

So far the steps I've taken to eliminate this are:
-Removed zeolite reactor and slowly stopped carbon dosing
- Tried to blow this stuff with turkey baster off the rocks
- Change filter socks every 3/4 days
- Started feeding more to increase nutrients

After two weeks the algae started to disappear from the rocks but it started to increase its growth on the sand. At this point phosphate was at 0.03 and nitrates were at 25. I believe this promoted the growth of some green film algae on the rocks which was able to outcompete the chrysos on that area. During this week I decided to add some chaeto to keep my level of nutrients stable and under control, since I dont have enough space in my sump for a refugium I got a skimz algae reactor.

After the addition of the reactor I started noticing how the chrysos started to disappear from the rocks and the sand and after 2 more weeks the chaeto seemed ready for a trim. After taking out all the chaeto and rising it on ro water I saw a lot of brown stuff coming out of it, and that's when I realized that it was chrysos! It has moved from my display to my reactor, the chaeto doesnt seem to stop its growth because of it but it is still present.

Something else that happened during the move of the chrysos was the presence of cyano on the sand. I havent done anything about it I was just planning on letting it run its curse and during this last week it has been slowly disappearing. At this point I'm not sure what to do about the chrysos, its presence has been reduced on 95% of the main display, corals seem happy (LPS - my few SPS frags died covered by this stuff) but I know the reactor is the only thing keeping it from coming back on the display.

Chrysos are more mulm-ish in appearance. Generally something you would get with new tanks that have high nutrients and high silicates. Without a picture we can't assume you had chrysos. In fact your route of eradication is something I would do for dinoflagellates.

 

[mrvn]

@reeferfoxx here are some pictures. My pictures haven’t been updated on my computer so I couldn’t do it before. I hope this help for an ID. I took these when the algae was only present on the rocks as result the sand looks pretty clean and there was no cyano at that moment.

 

[reeferfoxx]

@reeferfoxx here are some pictures. My pictures haven’t been updated on my computer so I couldn’t do it before. I hope this help for an ID. I took these when the algae was only present on the rocks as result the sand looks pretty clean and there was no cyano at that moment.

Yes, this does look like chrysos. It's interesting that it's shifted the way it did. Though, the green algae on the rocks is the right direction. When I had chrysos I never experienced the normal cycles of hair algae and cyano until chrysos were gone. So anything green or red post chrysos is the right direction.

Do you have any clean up crew?

 

[mrvn]

Yes, this does look like chrysos. It's interesting that it's shifted the way it did. Though, the green algae on the rocks is the right direction. When I had chrysos I never experienced the normal cycles of hair algae and cyano until chrysos were gone. So anything green or red post chrysos is the right direction.

Do you have any clean up crew?

Yes, I have around 10 trochus snails but only the big ones seem to ate the chrysos. The smaller ones used to go after the the green algae that started to appear on the rocks.

Since yesterday I noticed that cyano is starting to disappear from the sand bed, the few patches left still have some chrysos mix on them not sure why.

 

[Volcmreefer]

Following this thread. I had these but with some toothbrush action and two big water changes, GFO, as well as implementing UV and turning down flow through the reactor to increase contact time, they have subsided. Crossing my fingers and hoping they stay gone. I did get some cyano on my sand when it started to get better. Siphoned it out and hoping for the best.

 

[Jose Mayo]

Chrysophytes are microalgae rich in ergosterol, which makes Fluconazole a potential remediation agent if they ever get out of control.

Best Regards

 

[mcarroll]

Chrysophytes are microalgae rich in ergosterol, which makes Fluconazole a potential remediation agent if they ever get out of control.

Are you sure about making this recommendation for an algae that is so easy to handle?

 

[Jose Mayo]

Are you sure about making this recommendation for an algae that is so easy to handle?

I put a conditioning: "a potential remediation agent if they ever get out of control".

Regards

 

[mcarroll]

@reeferfoxx how do you like this:

Abnormal blooms of marine benthic chrysophytes have never been recorded in the literature and these algae are usually modest contributors in the different biotopes where they have been found (Gayral and Billard, 1986).

From "Benthic mucilaginous aggregates in the Mediterranean Sea: Origin, chemical composition and polysaccharide characterization"
(google scholar has a pdf from academia.edu)

"Never"???

Still reading, but that seemed surprising. Is this a differing use of the terminology?

Also this (a ref from the above article): "A benthic mucilage event in North-Western Mediterranean Sea and its possible relationships with the summer 2003 European heatwave: short term effects on littoral rocky assemblages" (GoogSch again)

The scleractinian damage they describe seems like the same as what I saw in my tank when I had them.


BTW, it's gonna take me a while to pull the info back out of the other article we were discussing:
"Mass Development of Marine Benthic Sarcinochrysidales (Chrysophyceae s.l.) in Corsica"

...but I havn't forgotten. Hopefully later when the house is quiet again.

 

[mcarroll]

Alright. We'll see if this is worth writing twice. (Also some of the comments I think I had quoted earlier (elsewhere) apply to different species altogether, so leaving those out.)

Photo #4 from page 225 as well as photos #5 and #6 from page 227 of "Mass Development of Marine Benthic Sarcinochrysidales (Chrysophyceae s.l.) in Corsica" (see Google Scholar for PDF) show a chrysophyte that is called Chrysoreinhardia giraudii (basionym: Tetraspora giraudii) and appears to be the chrysophyte I had....and the one in at least in several of the photos I've seen on R2R.

Here's the main section for that genus:

Chrysoreinhardia giraudii (Derbe`s et Solier) Billard

(Figs 3 6)

Basionym:
Suppl. C. R. Acad. Sci., I: 8, pl. I, figs. 1 6, 1856.

Synonyms: Phaeocystis giraudii (Derbe`s et Solier) Lagerheim, Pulvinaria giraudii (Derbe` s et Solier) Bourrelly (invalid combination: incomplete refer- ence).

Description: The mucilaginous light brownish colonies are up to 15 mm in diameter (Fig. 6). Cells are hemispherical to spherical, 7 10 mm in diameter and are embedded in a homogeneous non-stratified mucilage (palmelloid stage) or in a stratified mucilage (gloeocystoid stage) (Fig. 5). Numerous granules are present at the periphery of the cell. Cells contain two yellow-brown chloroplasts with pyrenoids and one or several lipidic granules. Reproduction is by vegetative cell division and by zoospore formation.

Habitat and ecology: Chrysoreinhardia giraudii was first collected at Alga (not Algajola as erroneously reported) in Revellata Bay in June 1979 from the rhi- zomes of Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile, at a depth of 3 m by one of the authors (VD)(Coppejans and Boudouresque 1983), but was inconspicuous until 1989. The development of C. giraudii is maximal at the end of spring and in summer (Table I). It generally appears in macroscopically visible aggregates in May and disappears in September. In 1997 and 1998, the colonies remained in large numbers until November. From our collection data, C. giraudii extends to a depth of at least 38 meters, but is often more sparse below 20 m. The maximum development is usually at shallow depths in relatively calm and well lit situations in agreement with Verlaque’s (1987) classification in the ‘groupe photophile infralittoral thermophile’. There it can form a layer several mm thick (Figs 3, 4) that replaces the macroalgae. In more exposed situations it may, however, start deeper and have its maximum at depths of 15 20 m. Competition with Nematochrysopsis marina, which is even more wave limited, seems to be a major factor in usually limiting this latter species to the first 10 meters. Dry weight: up to 400 mg cm 2; organic matter: up to 110 mg cm 2, chlorophyll a: up to 0.25 mg cm 2.

Geographic distribution: Corsica [Bay of Revellata (Coppejans and Boudouresque 1983, this study), Pte Caldano, Punta Bianca, Bravone, Gulf of Porto, Porto-Vecchio (this study), Galeria (Verlaque 1987)]; Mediterranean coast of France (Castagne 1851, Derbe`s and Solier 1856, Hamel 1930); Adriatic Sea (Feldmann in Magne 1959); Red Sea (Nasr 1941).

Comments: This benthic species, first described in the genus Tetraspora, and later transferred to the genus Phaeocystis Lagerheim (Haptophyceae), belongs in fact to the genus Pulvinaria Reinhard ( Chrysoreinhardia Billard) as suggested by Bourrelly (1957). Bourrelly’s combination (1957: 373) was, however, invalid according to article 33 of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (Greuter et al. 1994), as no complete reference to the basionym was given.

The type species of Chrysoreinhardia, C. algicola, also forms mucilaginous colonies (1 2 mm in dia- meter) epiphytic on macroalgae such as species of Ceramium and Striaria and is closely related to C. giraudii, if not conspecific. Chrysoreinhardia algicola is known so far from a single collection from the shores of the Black Sea (Reinhard 1885). If C. gi- raudii and C. algicola proved to be identical, the specific epithet ‘giraudii’ would nevertheless have priority over ‘algicola’.

The third species of the genus is C. feldmannii (Bourrelly et Magne) Billard et Fresnel comb. nov. (basionym: Chrysobotrys feldmannii Bourrelly et Magne, Rev. ge ́n. Bot. 60: 684, 1953). Synonym: Pulvinaria feldmannii (Bourrelly et Magne) Billard et Fresnel (Cryptogamie: Algologie 1: 281, 1980). It forms almost monospecific stands on the mud at the base of halophytes or on porous limestone rocks in the supralittoral zone of the French Atlantic coast (Billard and Fresnel 1980, Billard 1988).

 

[mcarroll]

Release and bioavailabilityof C, N, P, Se, and Fe following viral lysis of a marine chrysophyte

Maybe interesting in that it describes, among other things, Se (selenium) as a potentially limiting element.

 

[acabgd]

Just wanted to add to the thread now that I found it - this was a mystery to me and to everyone at another big reef forum I was following at the time. No one knew what this was except that Dinos were involved, to which I agree, but the main culprit I now think were Chrysophytes.

I was battling this for almost 6 months and this photo was taken just before the tank was broken down. I took everything out, cleaned the tank and all equipment, bought new powerheads and added all new live rock. Corals that survived were carefully cleaned and left in vats for a couple of days, then acclimated to 50% new and 50% old water from another established tank. It was a nightmare and I really hope I will never have this again!

 

[mcarroll]

That's an un-pretty conglomoration of algae....probably at least hair algae, dino's and cyanobacteria. At least.

It would have been interesting to look at a few samples under a microscope!

 

[reeferfoxx]

+1

Looks like everything else other than chrysophytes.

 

[taricha]

I wanted to post about these, and some of the things that persuade me it's not Dinos, and indeed is chrysophytes.

The best matches in phycokey I've seen are 3 chrysophytes in the group non-flagellate colonies.
*Chysocapsa
*Tetrasporopsis
*Chysosaccus

These are very good visual matches (size, shape, color, cell structure, organization) for the best microscope shots I've seen from a couple of different users.
additionally, the descriptions are spot on for what reefers have described.
"Amorphous colonies with unpigmented gelatinous extracellular matrix." "Colony with cells embedded in mucilage, in groups of four." "Gelatinous colonies of non-flagellated globose cells."

The thing troubling me was that ALL of these are freshwater.

Running across that paper @mcarroll talked about with the benthic chrysophyte growths in Corsica made me feel much better that there are indeed relatives of these guys that match the traits and show up in marine habitats. And benthic too. Fits very well.

Furthermore: there's another fantastic paper (brand new) that tries to disentangle the classification issues within these related groups of marine chrysophytes.
A Re-investigation of Sarcinochrysis marina (Sarcinochrysidales, Pelagophyceae) from its Type Locality and the Descriptions of Arachnochrysis, Pelagospilus, Sargassococcus and Sungminbooa genera nov.

(I'll be honest, I don't care much about classification within sub-orders of chrysophyte - I read it for the pictures)

One thing I'd like to see done - just as a demonstration:
Get a sample of these golden chrysophyte guys under the scope, and add a drop of zooxanthellae harvested from a coral (softies are easy). Try to get cells of each in the same microscope shot. What I expect we'll see is that the colors are definitively different - the symbiotic dino from the corals should look a good bit more brown, and these chrysophytes more golden.

 

[Amy Yates]

I had this issue, increased grazing power with 10 dwarf red hermits I also added a sea hare which helped I then as Volcmreefer said gave it toothbrush action with a few big water changes and installed a uv filter to my 100 litre nano system and thankfully it never returned.

I made the mistake in adding a frag that had hair algae on it - thinking my tank of 4 months old at the time could handle it.... it got out of hand very quickly !

Try the above I hope you get it sorted but don't give up !!!