Hairy Algae Growth Stage ?

[steeldust]

I’m on month 4 of a new 15g nano tank - I had seemed to have avoided the ugly stage for the most part up until a week ago when I saw the brown diatom growth in the sand bed had started to put out hairy strings. In the same time frame of the last 1-2 weeks, I have begun to see a trend of the tank consuming more Nitrate than it generates, with two fish and a few dozen Zoanthids, two hammer coral, two Acans, two mushrooms, and a plug of GSP I was seeing a five point creep in no3 over 4-5 days. In the last two weeks I’ve seen the no3 trend from a high of 15ppm down to 8.1ppm today with only two 2g water changes while before I was changing 5g per week to keep the no3 below 20 - I also see lots of air bubbles (O2?) on the hairy algae.

Looking at these photos, is this something I should just let run its course? Everything still seems happy, but the GSP in recent days has only been displaying an 1/8” of tendrils vs the full inch that were out and flowy before.

I don’t test phosphate, seen that mentioned but I’d prefer to not chase numbers if leaving it be is the best course regardless of how it looks.

I have a 3 nassarius snails, 1 turbo snail and a single trochus snail, the handful of other trochus and astrea snails died a month ago from what I assume was starvation, the last 5 snails have been fine on their own over the last month but don’t seem to eat anything on the sand, just trails on the glass and moving over the zoanthids annoying them.

Thanks

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

It looks like cyanobacteria. Its unknown exactly what causes it, but its thought to be an imbalance of nutrients and dissolved organics. I've gotten cyano after tank crashes for example, something has changed in your tank to create an imbalance of some kind allowing it to grow,

to me this is another story of dosing nutrients into the tank followed by algae growth. My first thought in this case is always stop dosing. There was nothing wrong with 8 nitrates and your corals look fine.

To me, it doesn't look bad at all, it could get a lot worse, I would just revert back to your previous habits and suck it up during water changes, hopefully it goes away on its own. If not, chemiclean is the cure for cyano, but IMO take some time to try to beat it first.

As FYI, algae's consume carbon dioxide during the day and produce oxygen so the bubbles are the oxygen that algae produces.

 

[Subsea]

I’m on month 4 of a new 15g nano tank - I had seemed to have avoided the ugly stage for the most part up until a week ago when I saw the brown diatom growth in the sand bed had started to put out hairy strings. In the same time frame of the last 1-2 weeks, I have begun to see a trend of the tank consuming more Nitrate than it generates, with two fish and a few dozen Zoanthids, two hammer coral, two Acans, two mushrooms, and a plug of GSP I was seeing a five point creep in no3 over 4-5 days. In the last two weeks I’ve seen the no3 trend from a high of 15ppm down to 8.1ppm today with only two 2g water changes while before I was changing 5g per week to keep the no3 below 20 - I also see lots of air bubbles (O2?) on the hairy algae.

Looking at these photos, is this something I should just let run its course? Everything still seems happy, but the GSP in recent days has only been displaying an 1/8” of tendrils vs the full inch that were out and flowy before.

I don’t test phosphate, seen that mentioned but I’d prefer to not chase numbers if leaving it be is the best course regardless of how it looks.

I have a 3 nassarius snails, 1 turbo snail and a single trochus snail, the handful of other trochus and astrea snails died a month ago from what I assume was starvation, the last 5 snails have been fine on their own over the last month but don’t seem to eat anything on the sand, just trails on the glass and moving over the zoanthids annoying them.

Thanks

“I don’t test phosphate, seen that mentioned but I’d prefer to not chase numbers if leaving it be is the best course regardless of how it looks.“

Steel,
Leaving it be would be OK if you knew what it was, but you don’t.

My display is 25 years mature and I don’t chase numbers either, yet, when bioindicators talk, I want to know what my parameters are: especially phosphate. Because zero phosphate invites Dinoflagellets.