Diatoms or Dinos.... please help. Driving me kinda crazy

[Aaron_Soliz]

Hello all,

i am having trouble with algae on my sand bed for the past 3 months. I purchased a media reactor and added GFO in it... all was good for 3 days and then came back. At the time my phosphates were high which I thought were maybe it but now that they are at 0 along with my nitrates... things don’t make sense.

salinity: 1.025
Temp: between fluctuates between 78-79.5
Nitrates: 0
Phos: 0
Alk: 9
Calcium: 420

Now, i did find out that when I do water changes weekly... I would siphon into the sand bed which I heard was a no no. I haven’t done a water change in a week in half along with removing the media reactor as I heard it’s better to have some phosphates than none.

My AI Prime HD is at highest at 35% on whites. Red and green are on 0. Blues are no higher then 75%. It’s odd because all my corals are thriving and no snails have died nor fish wise. My clownfish eat once a day but I know for a fact I don’t over feed.

The algae comes out when lights are on and goes away when lights are off. I am not sure what to do at this point. I took pictures for reference. Please help me out with suggestions to get rid of it. Thank you!

 

[dwest]

I can’t tell. I think you need to put under a microscope to know for sure. To be honest, if your snails and corals are ok, I would let it ride. I would allow nitrates and phosphates to rise to measurable levels or you likely will have dinos.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

ID under 400x magnification or higher is needed. Could be amphidinium dinoflagellates, nasty stuff, can be toxic IME and hard to erraticate. Get a $20 microscope and take a pic, we can go from there.

 

[Aaron_Soliz]

ID under 400x magnification or higher is needed. Could be amphidinium dinoflagellates, nasty stuff, can be toxic IME and hard to erraticate. Get a $20 microscope and take a pic, we can go from there.

Thank you for your comment! Once I get the microscope... how do i get some of the algae on? Just scoop with a spoon and add to the scope?

 

[dwest]

My $12 scope came with a pipet. Just suck a little stuff up and squirt it on the slide.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

My $12 scope came with a pipet. Just suck a little stuff up and squirt it on the slide.

Yep, exactly.

 

[Lizbeli]

Honestly looks like standard diatoms to me, but I could be wrong. I agree with the others. Try to get nitrates and phos up to a readable number. What are you using to measure phos? A hanna checker?