I can't figure this algae out

[tyler_drogell18]

no because it is a very seldom amount of lighting and spectrum. do you have an over flow with sump or regular filter?

 

[mr11]

Yeah I have an overflow with sump set up.

 

[Browner20]

@SwerveCle - it is really hard to tell from that pic but based on the pic you do have it looks like it might be dinos. I hate it to say that because when I saw this post first everyone seemed to just have cyano which in my opinion is no biggie, my tank gets them from time to time and it just goes away without any intervention on my part - maybe a shrimp molting or something caused a nutrient spike?

Not to scare you but I lost most of my SPS corals thinking I had a cyano outbreak and really I had a burgeoning dino infestation. I saw it happening and for the longest time I thought that it would just reverse course until it started choking out my SPS corals. I did the manual removal as much as I could in tank, lights out for 3 days, dosed peroxide and those things seem to keep it at bay but never get rid of it. Finally several months ago I pulled out every piece of rock and gave it a peroxide bath. I think it solved the problem although there are a couple spots where the skeleton (for lack of a better term as it is just a jellowy shell) of the dinos are left mainly on the dead monti shelves that I dipped. I am going to just break off those shevles and frag the little bits of live coral that remain.

I am happy to report that I picked up several SPS frags from a fellow local reefer and all are doing excellent and what remained of my other SPS are fine and regrowing as well.

Long winded way of saying, research on this site as much as you can on what you got and get going as soon as you can if it is dinos!

 

[tyler_drogell18]

the algae feeds on phosphates so it will make your phosphate read low on a test yet be feeding your algae so I would buy a thing of chemi-pure elite and put into
overflow to drop food to algae and also cut lighting down

 

[john.m.cole3]

I killed my whites, reduced my blues, and cut my photoperiod back to 5 hours. Tonight I'm going to remove the rocks and scrub them w/ a toothbrush out of the tank in clean SW, then spray peroxide and let sit for 7 minutes, rinse in clean SW again, siphon sandbed, replace water in DT and return rock. Lot's of work and I hope it produces results. I'm also dosing 1 ml/10 gal 3% peroxide every 12 hours when lights are out and covering the tank for all but the 5 hours the lights are on.

 

[mr11]

I'm running GFO and carbon so is there an advantage of switching to chemipure elite? Agree on cutting whites photoperiod and I've been trying to be more conscious of my feeding.

 

[tyler_drogell18]

yes chemi pure elite is mainly for phosphate and not sure what GFO is but carbon will only clean water a little and reduce heavy metals

 

[mr11]

GFO is granular ferric oxide which pulls phosphate, I'm pretty sure it's in chemipure elite so essentially the same thing. Welcome to R2R by the way

 

[tyler_drogell18]

yeah I'd definitely use something to draw out phosphate and I've personally only used chemipure elite but probably serves the same purpose

 

[lariat8099]

I'm having the same issue. I cut my lights back to 6 hours and running a GFO

 

[Todd31]

I recognize that dark brown cruddy algae in your pic. Had it. I tried hard to get it identified. Asked all my LFS and local reefers. Never figured it out. It did eventually go away on its own. Keep up your good water quality and habits and i think you will win the battle.