Diatom / Dino ID

[lrosenberg5]

Hi All - New to reefing so need some advice.

I had initially had what looked like a diatom bloom starting week 3 and faded around week 7. I now have both brown and green algae on the sand bed & brown stringy algae on the back wall (re-appears 12 hours after I scrape it). The green algae on the right looks patchy in the picture but only because I was pulling some pieces out yesterday, otherwise it would have been more carpet-like. See the pictures I attached, hopefully this gives a good idea for what I am dealing with. Any idea what this is and what I should do about it?

See below for my parameters, stocking and filter setup. Thank you in advance


Aquarium Parameters:
Aquarium type: Reef, been set up for 80 days.
Stock: 2 clownfish, 1 cleaner shrimp, 3 trochus snails, 2 nassarius snails, 2 bumble bee snails, ~8 largely soft & LPS pieces
Aquarium water volume: 20 gallon cube (~17 gallons net)
Water: RODI with Red Sea Salt
Filtration type: Filter floss, 2 chemi-pure blue nano packs, ceramic media
Lighting: AI Prime

Water quality
Temperature: 77 F
pH: 8.0
Salinity: 1.026
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: <5ppm (API test so tough to tell)
Phosphorus: 0ppm (API test so tough to tell)
DKH: 7.7
Calcium: 420ppm

 

[Bo.]

Normal ugly algae stage, most likely not diatoms (you probably went through this already) or dino (unless the chemi pure really strips nutrients, I've never used it).

Just keep up with manual removal and healthy feeding of your fish. Don't jump into chemicals as they can cause more issues down the road, and invest in a low range phosphate, and better nitrate test. Slow and steady without major changes wins the race .

 

[attiland]

Just adding to above if you want to be sure get a microscope.

 

[lrosenberg5]

Situation is definitely getting worse. I haven't been doing anything differently, feeding as normal and did a 20% water change yesterday.

A lot of coral have the stringy brown algae on it and when I lightly blew it off the xenia today some of the coral bits flew off. My GSP has also been fully retracted for over a week.

Attached a few photos, it looks filmy / stringy on the surface of the sand and the back wall but the rocks look fine. Any advice as to what I should do?