Dinoflagellates Help

[NickB73]

Hi fellow reefers,

I’m still pretty new in my reef keeping journey, my tank (326 litres) is now three months old, all has been going really well, until recently I keep getting brown algae everywhere, at first I thought it was another Dino outbreak, but this stuff doesn’t brush off.

At the same time I noticed my Nitrates where up to 12 and Phospates 0.08, I thought that the algae outbreak was as a result of my levels and started dosing NOPOX, that doesn’t appear to have made a dent in anything, other than making the water cloudy, so I reduced the dosage and have now got to the point of stopping it altogether.

In my desire to try get rid of this stuff, I gave Vibrant a go, I dosed 6ml in the first week as it says, ready to dose another 6mil this week, although so far I don’t think its made a difference.

After a lot more research, I think I’ve narrowed down my algae to Dinofalgelates. But I’m confused as to how to deal with this, lots of things I have read have said to get Nitrates and Phosphate up, I think mine are and I was trying to get them down. Today I’ve adjusted my lighting schedule to run no more than 6hrs and switched of any white light.

Will the reduced lighting schedule affect my corals? I have the following frags:

- Hammerhead
- Galaxia
- Candy Cane
- Blasto
- Cabbage Leather
- GSP
-Duncan

Should I stop feeding them? I just started with Salifert Coral food and Salifert Trace Hard?

I’ve put in tons of copepods and have plenty of clean up crew.

Or have I totally misdiagnosed what’s going on? Really welcome any and all advice.

Photos taken under white light - https://share.icloud.com/photos/066oZhhUdHCawBOytpl76AOfg

 

[Idoc]

Your tank is still in it's infancy for maturing at only 3 months old. The tank is going to go through several really ugly algae stages during the first 1-2 years. 3 months is pretty early for dinos to be popping up, especially since your nutrients aren't bottoming out...but, you can introduce dinos on frag plugs from other tanks, though. If you can get a microscopic picture of the algae, it would be easier to help you determine if it is dinos vs another type of algae.

I personally wouldn't use Vibrant on such a young tank.

After looking at your pics...those don't look like dinos to me. They look more like expected diatoms which make sense for the age of the tank. I also recall early on when my tank's rocks had that coloration as well...it eventually went away. I think I would just ride this one out for awhile.