Is this Dinos or Diatoms? Microscope and white light pics for reference

[Cchamberland]

This is in a 20 gallon AIO with a protein skimmer, UV sterilizer (recently added) and some matrix carbon in the back. It seems to get less apparent at night which leads me to think it's Dinos, but the microscope couldn't magnify enough to get 100% verification. Yes my Nitrate and Phos need to come up, and I'm looking into ways to do that. I heavily feed this tank to try and help bring them up. I'm also dosing phytoplankton and think I'm going to start beneficial bacteria in a bottle. I have Dino X but after reading all of the horror stories I don't want to go that route yet. I also have food grade H202 and am leaning that way. Also was told this weekend to dump the skimmate back into the tank but that seems iffy.

Tank parameters all via Salifert:
Alk: 9.3
Calcium: 450
Magnesium: 1350
Ammonia and Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
Phos: 0
Salinity: 1.026
PH: 8.2
Temp: 77-78
Photoperiod: 8 hours, with 1 hour ramp up and down, lit with an AI prime 8" over the water running mostly blues with some whites and no reds or greens at 35 watts at peak.

 

[Mechano]

Too hard to tell via your microscope. Can you increase the magnification?

 

[Cchamberland]

That's the best I could do, unfortunately.

 

[thedon986]

Age of system?

 

[Lavey29]

Looks like dinos to me especially with bottomed out nutrients contributing but without better magnification it is difficult to confirm. Sometimes severe diatoms can have a similar appearance to dinos.

 

[Cchamberland]

Age of system?

About 2 months.

 

[Idech]

Dinos have a rust color and diatoms are brown, IME. This looks like dinos.

 

[thedon986]

Yeah leaning towards dinos. Diatoms don’t really form a mat. On the microscope if you can see anything moving like Roombas bouncing around then it’s dinos. Definitely raise N and P and once confirmed, dosing sodium silicate is good to encourage diatoms to displace the dinos.

 

[Cchamberland]

Dinos have a rust color and diatoms are brown, IME. This looks like dinos.

That's what I'm thinking as well. I did just recheck all of my parameters a little while ago and am finally seeing some nitrate at 10ppm, so hopefully that will help to start alleviating this problem.

 

[Idech]

That's what I'm thinking as well. I did just recheck all of my parameters a little while ago and am finally seeing some nitrate at 10ppm, so hopefully that will help to start alleviating this problem

In my case it never had anything to do with low nitrates (I’ve had them 4-5 times). My nitrates were at 45 ppm when they started again.

 

[Lavey29]

In my case it never had anything to do with low nitrates (I’ve had them 4-5 times). My nitrates were at 45 ppm when they started again.

And Phosphate?