ID cyano or dino

[bdouglas119]

I have been dealing with the brownish red growth for a couple months now. If I do blackouts on the tank, it will die off and take a week or so to take hold again. It doesn’t sheet like cyano, or her stringy like Dinos but it’s clearly photosynthetic as it does back at night and comes back strong during the light. I’ll post parameters as well.

 

[T-J]

Diatoms perhaps.
I'd send out a sample of tank water for ICP testing to see if you have any silicates. I use ATI for my testing, as it includes a test of your RODI water as well as your tank water.

 

[Uncle99]

Leaving the sand bed and rock at night is Dinos, the golden type usually.
First thing is to get a reading on nitrates and phosphate, you may have “zeroed”. If so, fix that first.

Clean your filter every morning before lights on so we can toss those Dino’s that got trapped when lights out.

You can UV them during darkness times when they leave th3 sand, during daylight, vacum up as much as you can, just the surface, and do lightly.

All that reduces the Dino population and if you put your nutrients at correct levels, they should be gone in say 30 days.

Water chemistry in terms of Alk must be solid.

keep up the fight daily, you’ll win.

 

[saltyhog]

Doesn't look like cyano. Could be diatoms or dinos.

Not all dinos can be treated with UV. Just because it disappears at night does not mean it's going in to the water column and is treatable with UV. Some species retreat to the depth of the sand at night.

If it's dinos it doesn't look like one of the types that's sensitive to UV. The only way to be certain which is to get it under the microscope for an ID.

 

[jrmailo]

Doesn't look like cyano. Could be diatoms or dinos.

Not all dinos can be treated with UV. Just because it disappears at night does not mean it's going in to the water column and is treatable with UV. Some species retreat to the depth of the sand at night.

If it's dinos it doesn't look like one of the types that's sensitive to UV. The only way to be certain which is to get it under the microscope for an ID.

I agree. If this is dino, it looks similar to prorocentrum outbreak that I had. UV was not effective against them (unlike ostreopsis).
My outbreak for reference. Dino sp. was identified via a microscope