Finally got a good picture, please help ID!

Edgecrusher28 · Jan 29, 2023

Finally got a better microscope to help take a photo of the bane of my existence. This algae has been a persistent pain in the rear and nothing in the tank seems to go after it, including: tangs, turbo's, trochus's, hermits, or my urchin. It appears to come in looking like normal green hair algae, but quickly turns a dark brown to the naked eye. I have done multiple 4 day blackouts with no improvement, two separate reflux (Now finished a third dose of reef flux, this is not species of Bryopsis) and chemiclean treatments with no improvement, removed all whites from lighting with no improvement. The algae has a reasonably strong foothold and takes a bit of effort to remove and does not seem to respond to lower nutrients either. I got a little big for my britches and tried to setup an auto dose on trace elements including IRON and the algae absolutely blew up. Just wondering if anyone can help ID this thing and give me some general advice; thanks.

Phosphate is holding around.07ppm (ICP verified)
Nitrates have been at 6-9ppm for 6 months (ICP verified)
Silicates/Silicon 0-RODI and 127.8 µg/l in the tank.
Turf Scrubber running 12 hours a day growing the same nasty algae that's in the tank but hasn't made a dent in the crap in the tank.

taricha · Jan 29, 2023

GHA / derbesia.

vetteguy53081 · Jan 29, 2023

Agree, its an algae called derbesia which is confused with bryopsis and needs to be pulled by hand but most important is to remove the roots. If the roots remain, it will keep coming back. A dental pick or small crochet needle will pull them well
Then reduce white lighting intensity or number of hours white light is on and add some large astrea snails, chiton snails and pitho crabs for control

Edgecrusher28 · Jan 30, 2023

vetteguy53081 said:
Agree, its an algae called derbesia which is confused with bryopsis and needs to be pulled by hand but most important is to remove the roots. If the roots remain, it will keep coming back. A dental pick or small crochet needle will pull them well
Then reduce white lighting intensity or number of hours white light is on and add some large astrea snails, chiton snails and pitho crabs for control

Thank you for the reply. What is odd is I have done several 4-5 day blackouts on this crap and it just does not seem to phase it one bit. I had a pincushion urchin that I rehomed and am getting a Tuxedo urchin and some lettuce slugs. I will look into the snails you mentioned as well; thanks again!

Edgecrusher28 · Jan 31, 2023

vetteguy53081 said:
Agree, its an algae called derbesia which is confused with bryopsis and needs to be pulled by hand but most important is to remove the roots. If the roots remain, it will keep coming back. A dental pick or small crochet needle will pull them well
Then reduce white lighting intensity or number of hours white light is on and add some large astrea snails, chiton snails and pitho crabs for control

Follow up question, would it make sense to shut down my ATS until I was able to get this under control or would it make no difference at this point? I pulled a sample of the algae growing in my scrubber and as you can imagine it was all the same stuff as what is in my tank.

vetteguy53081 · Jan 31, 2023

Edgecrusher28 said:
Follow up question, would it make sense to shut down my ATS until I was able to get this under control or would it make no difference at this point? I pulled a sample of the algae growing in my scrubber and as you can imagine it was all the same stuff as what is in my tank.

YES, very similar to what is in scrubber as a good example. Dont believe shutting down the ATS would change things but you can try. Which reminds me, better check my scrubber as its been 2 weeks since I pulled out another mass of algae

Edgecrusher28 · Jan 31, 2023

vetteguy53081 said:
YES, very similar to what is in scrubber as a good example. Dont believe shutting down the ATS would change things but you can try. Which reminds me, better check my scrubber as its been 2 weeks since I pulled out another mass of algae

The reason I was inquiring was because I shut down the ATS when I realized this was more of a nuisance algae. I was not sure if keeping the ATS running was going to keep this miserable algae seeded so to speak. For now, I cleaned that bad boy out and put it back in; thanks again.

vetteguy53081 · Jan 31, 2023

Edgecrusher28 said:
The reason I was inquiring was because I shut down the ATS when I realized this was more of a nuisance algae. I was not sure if keeping the ATS running was going to keep this miserable algae seeded so to speak. For now, I cleaned that bad boy out and put it back in; thanks again.

That should help greatly and im taking a break and go clean mine right now before its again forgotten