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.
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.
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.