ID help please

Sniffingkrylon · Dec 13, 2022

Can anyone help me ID this please. It wasn’t there on Sunday, only change since then is a surface skimmer because my tank had some film on the surface of the water and it cleaned up the surface, great. Now this stuff came up and my guess it has something to do with that. I thought it was cyano because in the usual lighting it looked reddish but in white light it’s rust colored. I ordered chemiclean and it should get here tomorrow. Nitrates seem normal, around 20 maybe a little less. I have to get my water tested at my lfs tomorrow water change is due Friday but I’ll get it done tomorrow because I don’t want this to spread. Turned off the whites on my light, I usually run them pretty high. Anyway, this was the best pic I could get. Thanks in advance.

Zach B · Dec 13, 2022

Possibly diatoms if it's a rusty color as you stated. Either that or cyano in my opinion

Sniffingkrylon · Dec 13, 2022

Zach B said:
Possibly diatoms if it's a rusty color as you stated. Either that or cyano in my opinion

Thanks, I’ll try to treat for cyano. Looks like my CUC is getting after it now but I don’t think they’ll get it all before if gets worse.

Sniffingkrylon · Dec 13, 2022

Color corrected image, im still learning how to edit pictures for this kind of lighting.

Sniffingkrylon · Dec 19, 2022

Alright this stuff has persisted. I cleaned it up hoping that would be enough for it to go away but it’s back not so much on the rock but on the back wall, a little on my glass and, oddly, on one of my snails, only one. Seems like copepods like the stuff, because they're making an appearance where this stuffs growing but my snails won’t really touch it. I was going to treat for cyano but I don’t want to lower my good bacterial load considering the tank is new still. If it is cyano I will treat but don’t want to treat unnecessarily. When I got my water tested nitrates were at 3ppm if I remember correctly and my phosphate was at .01. Too clean is what I was told. All I have is live rock, seachem matrix and a bag of carbon (chemipure blue) in the back of my tank for filtration. Any ideas?