Help with 1 year old ugly tank w/ dinos maybe

ExoS

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Hi, My tank is just over 1 year old. I am battling some branching algae that seems like bryopsis and fluffy brown mats of what I think might be dinos on my sand. There is also some amount of red cyano. I am looking for some help on how to deal with it.

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One weird thing is that I think I may be low on nitrate. I tested it with both a Hanna meter (low level nitrate that I diluted 9:1) and then with a Red Sea kit where it had a slight pink hue but was also basically 0 ppm. The rest of my parameters are below:

pH: 8.6
Salinity: 1.025
Ca: 450
Alk: 8.8
PO4: 0.17
NO3: 0

I feed alternating Mysis shrimp soaked in Selcon, Hikari algae pellets, and TDO pellets. My tank is 40 gallons and my filtration is an Aquamaxx hang-on back filter with built in skimmer and I also run carbon some times but not always. I have 4 nassarius snails, a bunch of trochuis snails, and an emerald crab. I also have a few small fish (two clowns, tail-spot blenny, firefish) and a cleaner shrimp. My corals seem to be healthy although the LPS ones aren't really growing. The soft corals are all thriving.

Sorry if this is too much info. I just want to make sure I don't leave out anything important. So the questions are:

Am I right that this looks like dinos?
Should I try to feed more food to get the nitrate up?
Is there a way to deal with this besides expensive UV?

Overall things are going really well with my tank. The livestock seems to be doing well. My snails have even bred several times and I have plenty of copepods but its just ugly with all this growth. Any suggestions would be appreciated although hopefully they are cheap ones :). Thanks for the help.
 

blaxsun

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It looks like dinos, but you might also have 1-2 other algae types going on in the mix as well. Your pH is a tad high (if accurate), but that's not necessarily an issue (not sure what you're using for a test kit).

I would ensure you run carbon more consistently, possibly some GFO (ChemiPure Elite) for phosphates, stick with 10% water changes every 1-2 weeks - but most importantly, suck up all the algae you can off the rocks, sand bed (without disturbing it too much) and off the sides of the glass. I couldn't tell if you have any wavemakers in the tank, but if you don't that's something I would look at (Tunze, Sicce, etc.) Deal with the algae first before you start dosing nitrate as that may just exacerbate the issue.

If you search a bit on R2R you can find some methods others have used to treat dinos (with varying degrees of success).
 

vetteguy53081

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Not dinos but rather Calothrix which is a member of Cyano and often fuzzy and hairy in appearance with air bubbles which try to escape. It requires removing the rock and placing in a container of tank water and scrubbing with a firm toothbrush or automotive detail brush.
After cleaning add snails such as : Margarita, nerite, trochus, astrea, and ninja star as well as some carribean blue leg hermits and pitho crabs for control.
 
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ExoS

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Thanks for the responses. You are right about the airbubbles @vetteguy53081. I have some trochus snails but they don't seem to eat it at all. I am hesitant to try hermits because of all the bad press they get. So I guess maybe I need to try a different type of snail. My emerald crab doesn't seem to eat it either. Hmmm well I am glad to know its cyano and not dinos at least.
 

vetteguy53081

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Thanks for the responses. You are right about the airbubbles @vetteguy53081. I have some trochus snails but they don't seem to eat it at all. I am hesitant to try hermits because of all the bad press they get. So I guess maybe I need to try a different type of snail. My emerald crab doesn't seem to eat it either. Hmmm well I am glad to know its cyano and not dinos at least.
Trochus will work after cleaning. They will not take this down. Also add chemipure Elite to gradually lower Phos
 

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