Dinoflagellates or Something Else. . . My battle.

[AppleJack]

Fair point, but the skimmer and bubbler should be enough. It's not like a bacteria bloom that more or less only consumes oxygen without providing much.

Correct me if im wrong. But when I do start winning the battle and bacteria starts to consume these boogers wont they absorb a lot of oxygen?

 

[EnterName]

Fair point, but the skimmer and bubbler should be enough. It's not like a bacteria bloom that more or less only consumes oxygen without providing much.

Correct me if im wrong. But when I do start winning the battle and bacteria starts to consume these boogers wont they absorb a lot of oxygen?

Sure, but skimmers are very effective. If the whole water turns cloudy due to bacteria growth, that's usually when oxygen demand can become a problem, but usually even then the skimmer will be able to keep up.

 

[martin.a]

I may be a biologist, actually even a marine one, but definitely not an expert here. If it was me, I would keep the water params as you have them now - they look good. I would check that alkalinity is above 8 dKH, and I would introduce coraline algae. I would dim the lights a bit and shorten the lights-on time to 6h. If the algae (the bad, green ones) created loose mats I would siphon them out. And I would absolutely not use any chemical or UV intervention here. Possibly I would consider mild carbon dosing to boost bacteria, but... that's tricky at this stage.
Said all that. If it was my rocks soaked in copper, I would smile, take them out of the tank, and use in my garden as ornaments. Then, I would drive to my LFS and bring some clean replacements rocks. They would go through an ugly stage too, but at least I would know I am not poisoning my tank.

 

[AppleJack]

I may be a biologist, actually even a marine one, but definitely not an expert here. If it was me, I would keep the water params as you have them now - they look good. I would check that alkalinity is above 8 dKH, and I would introduce coraline algae. I would dim the lights a bit and shorten the lights-on time to 6h. If the algae (the bad, green ones) created loose mats I would siphon them out. And I would absolutely not use any chemical or UV intervention here. Possibly I would consider mild carbon dosing to boost bacteria, but... that's tricky at this stage.
Said all that. If it was my rocks soaked in copper, I would smile, take them out of the tank, and use in my garden as ornaments. Then, I would drive to my LFS and bring some clean replacements rocks. They would go through an ugly stage too, but at least I would know I am not poisoning my tank.

Can you expand on why you wouldn't use UV to kill a single cell algae that enters the water column at night? I'm no biologist by any means. I just genuinely dont see the harm with running UV.

But I agree on the chemicals to be avoided at all costs.

About the rocks. . . I was hoping no one would mention them. But I did have the thought the rocks being in copper before could be leaching trace copper to not allow the good stuff to grow, but somehow Euglenoids are able to survive with this amount of copper??? But I thought that might not be the case because all corals and inverts are doing just fine with no losses or closed corals.
Thats unfortunate as they are some of the best looking aquascape rocks ive seen.

But hey I got everything for free from a buddy. I had to pay the universe back somehow for this tank.

 

[AppleJack]

I may be a biologist, actually even a marine one, but definitely not an expert here. If it was me, I would keep the water params as you have them now - they look good. I would check that alkalinity is above 8 dKH, and I would introduce coraline algae. I would dim the lights a bit and shorten the lights-on time to 6h. If the algae (the bad, green ones) created loose mats I would siphon them out. And I would absolutely not use any chemical or UV intervention here. Possibly I would consider mild carbon dosing to boost bacteria, but... that's tricky at this stage.
Said all that. If it was my rocks soaked in copper, I would smile, take them out of the tank, and use in my garden as ornaments. Then, I would drive to my LFS and bring some clean replacements rocks. They would go through an ugly stage too, but at least I would know I am not poisoning my tank.

Can you expand on why you wouldn't use UV to kill a single cell algae that enters the water column at night? I'm no biologist by any means. I just genuinely dont see the harm with running UV.

But I agree on the chemicals to be avoided at all costs.

About the rocks. . . I was hoping no one would mention them. But I did have the thought the rocks being in copper before could be leaching trace copper to not allow the good stuff to grow, but somehow Euglenoids are able to survive with this amount of copper??? But I thought that might not be the case because all corals and inverts are doing just fine with no losses or closed corals.
Thats unfortunate as they are some of the best looking aquascape rocks ive seen.

But hey I got everything for free from a buddy. I had to pay the universe back somehow for this tank.

And Martin please dont take that as an argumenative reply on the UV. I appreciate any insight that you may have.

Chemicals will be avoided for now as its just adding extra variables in.

Lights have been drastically reduced, blowing off rocks, syphoning, etc.

Also my Algologist professor friend mentioned these arent the toxic type. Do you have insight on if these might be the Toxic type? Fish behavior (stress) is telling me they are.

Ill check Alkalinity tonight.

 

[martin.a]

And Martin please dont take that as an argumenative reply on the UV. I appreciate any insight that you may have.

Chemicals will be avoided for now as its just adding extra variables in.

Lights have been drastically reduced, blowing off rocks, syphoning, etc.

Also my Algologist professor friend mentioned these arent the toxic type. Do you have insight on if these might be the Toxic type? Fish behavior (stress) is telling me they are.

Ill check Alkalinity tonight.

C'mon, no offense taken! It seems aquarists are very divided on UV. UV is an indiscriminate killer. It kills the bad and the good the same. (Generally speaking.) But, you can not keep ecological niche 'empty'. Something will settle and take it over. I am worried that those green algae already had head start and will not yield unless outcompeted. To outcompete them you need to enter a new player, e.g. coralline algae, and make the environment more favourable to them than to the green ones.
Those green algae are most likely totally benign. They are not even that ugly ;-). You do not need to take any drastic actions. UV will be negatively affecting spread of beneficial bacteria, cells and spores of coralline algae, pods.
I would not hesitate using UV if the situation was dare, here I just do not think it is. Still, I would just take that rock out and be done with the trouble. The engineer in me outcompets the researcher ;-)

 

[sixty_reefer]

You could try introducing a few small pieces of established live rock. One thing I’ve noticed from your microscope samples is how little diversity there seems to be. There don’t appear to be any natural grazers or predators associated with the algae. If copper has leached, it’s also possible that it has reduced populations of many of these microorganisms, making it harder for a more diverse microbial community to establish.

In my experimental tank I have what appears to be a very similar species of microalgae. The main difference is that my tank is absolutely exploding with life. There are so many microorganisms feeding on the algae and biofilm that I’m actually struggling to keep enough algae alive to meet the demand.

Vid of a small sample in my experimental aquarium.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Hi, I hope you don’t mind me asking. I’m currently writing an article on microbial biodiversity in reef aquariums and was wondering if you’d be happy for me to use a few of your microscope images, with full credit to you of course.

I think they do a really good job of showing how a tank can have a significant amount of algae while appearing to support relatively low microbial diversity. They fit one of the points I’m trying to make in the article perfectly.

 

[AppleJack]

You could try introducing a few small pieces of established live rock. One thing I’ve noticed from your microscope samples is how little diversity there seems to be. There don’t appear to be any natural grazers or predators associated with the algae. If copper has leached, it’s also possible that it has reduced populations of many of these microorganisms, making it harder for a more diverse microbial community to establish.

In my experimental tank I have what appears to be a very similar species of microalgae. The main difference is that my tank is absolutely exploding with life. There are so many microorganisms feeding on the algae and biofilm that I’m actually struggling to keep enough algae alive to meet the demand.

Vid of a small sample in my experimental aquarium.

To be fair i only purposely grabbed algae from one of the strings it produced. Nothing near the rock or sand to avoid any variables. I wanted to know exactly what i was looking at.

I did grab other samples and did find biodiversity but i did not post pics or take pics of those slides.

I do seem to have a healthy pod population compared to my other healthy tanks.

With that being said adding these pics to an article to show a lack of biodiversity in a reef tank is not accurate.

The tank was seeded with 20-30 lbs of liverock. Adding more definitely wouldnt hurt.

Have confidence a UV sterilizer mixed woth black outs and adding even more biodiversity (microbacter7, even more pods, and light doses of phytopheast) can help out compete these Euglenoids in a weakened state.

If all else fails, copper rock will be removed, add new rock and re-cycle the tank all while zapping them with UV.

 

[helmsreef]

This is honestly just a "let it ride" situation. Would not make any more adjustments or you will end up upside down with more issues.

 

[sixty_reefer]

To be fair i only purposely grabbed algae from one of the strings it produced. Nothing near the rock or sand to avoid any variables. I wanted to know exactly what i was looking at.

I did grab other samples and did find biodiversity but i did not post pics or take pics of those slides.

I do seem to have a healthy pod population compared to my other healthy tanks.

With that being said adding these pics to an article to show a lack of biodiversity in a reef tank is not accurate.

The tank was seeded with 20-30 lbs of liverock. Adding more definitely wouldnt hurt.

Have confidence a UV sterilizer mixed woth black outs and adding even more biodiversity (microbacter7, even more pods, and light doses of phytopheast) can help out compete these Euglenoids in a weakened state.

If all else fails, copper rock will be removed, add new rock and re-cycle the tank all while zapping them with UV.

That’s fair enough, thanks for clarifying. I didn’t realise those images were deliberately taken from just the algal strings. I’d actually be really interested in seeing the other slides if you have any photos. Comparing the microorganisms directly associated with the algae to those from the surrounding rock and biofilm is something I’m looking at in my own experiment, so it would be really interesting to see what you found.

 

[slingfox]

I dealt with something that looks very similar / identical. I had green growth mostly on the sand but a little bit would appear on the rocks as well. The growth would disappear at night then slowly reappear as the lights ramped up the next day, reaching plague proportions on the sand by the afternoon. Every night I would spend a few minutes brushing off the bubbly growth on the rocks. Once a week I would siphon out the top layer of sand and rinse it. Within a few days the growth would be at plague proportions again.

I dosed silicate but not as consistently as I should have other than towards the end. At week 3 I ordered some live sand from Tampa Bay Saltwater and Aquaforest Bio Life. By the end week 5 the regrowth slowed down materially and I believe the tank would rebalance if I kept up with the weekly sand siphon +nperudiic silicates + UV + nightly brushing off of rocks. That is when the TBS sand arrived. I siphoned off the top layer is sand (anywhere with the growth and which could be reached). Then top dressed the sand bed with thr TBS sand.

It has been two days now and the green algae has not been able to spread—the TBS live sand has kept it in check so far. In areas where I missed siphoning, I saw some growth the first day. I stored in those areas to get more contact with the TBS sand. On day 2 those area look good / no crazy regrowth yet.

Here are some picture of the sand bed yesterday at Day 1:

I also got Aquaforest Bio Life delivered yesterday and did a half dose at night. So far so good but I am still in early stages of the TBS live sand + Aquaforest Bio Life mud dosing (to be done once a week at half dosage).

 

[mrjohnreed]

I seem to be dealing with the same type of algae issue as I am having the same type of algae breakout. The tank is 5 years old and this is the first time I have ever had this issue. My parameters are as follows:
Nitrate: 5ppm
phosphate: .25ppm
Salinity: 1.026
PH: 8

 

[mrjohnreed]

I dealt with something that looks very similar / identical. I had green growth mostly on the sand but a little bit would appear on the rocks as well. The growth would disappear at night then slowly reappear as the lights ramped up the next day, reaching plague proportions on the sand by the afternoon. Every night I would spend a few minutes brushing off the bubbly growth on the rocks. Once a week I would siphon out the top layer of sand and rinse it. Within a few days the growth would be at plague proportions again.

I dosed silicate but not as consistently as I should have other than towards the end. At week 3 I ordered some live sand from Tampa Bay Saltwater and Aquaforest Bio Life. By the end week 5 the regrowth slowed down materially and I believe the tank would rebalance if I kept up with the weekly sand siphon +nperudiic silicates + UV + nightly brushing off of rocks. That is when the TBS sand arrived. I siphoned off the top layer is sand (anywhere with the growth and which could be reached). Then top dressed the sand bed with thr TBS sand.

It has been two days now and the green algae has not been able to spread—the TBS live sand has kept it in check so far. In areas where I missed siphoning, I saw some growth the first day. I stored in those areas to get more contact with the TBS sand. On day 2 those area look good / no crazy regrowth yet.

Here are some picture of the sand bed yesterday at Day 1:

I also got Aquaforest Bio Life delivered yesterday and did a half dose at night. So far so good but I am still in early stages of the TBS live sand + Aquaforest Bio Life mud dosing (to be done once a week at half dosage).

I am wondering how the AquaForeest Bio Life is making a difference in your tank? I have seen people talking about it but I have never used this product. Thank you.

 

[allof fish]

I seem to be dealing with the same type of algae issue as I am having the same type of algae breakout. The tank is 5 years old and this is the first time I have ever had this issue. My parameters are as follows:
Nitrate: 5ppm
phosphate: .25ppm
Salinity: 1.026
PH: 8

I would definitely tackle for phosphate, that can definitely contribute to those algae issues

 

[slingfox]

I am wondering how the AquaForeest Bio Life is making a difference in your tank? I have seen people talking about it but I have never used this product. Thank you.

I learned of it since it was in one of the BRS videos comparing different setups for a new tank and the AQ Bio Life tank did amongst the best (most resilient to uglies) alongside the tank with live sand. Very surprising result.

I have dosed the AQ Bio Life once a week for the last two weeks right after I do a water change. The corals look pretty nice afterwards. No adverse affects at least. I don’t have any notable uglies right now so can’t comment on whether the AQ Bio Life helps combat uglies or not. I only do a fraction of the recommended dose.