Need an id for what is possibly bacteria?

[Luke’s reef]

Hi all, firstly id like to start by saying that I have failed at finding anything close to similar on bother forums and online in general.

So I've recently battled GHA and now as that has almost completely gone with only a few patches left on the back glass of the tank thanks to no pox and a new uv steriliser, it seems as a strange new thing has taken its place.

The top of rocks & wave makers are constantly covered with lumpy grey matter. At first I thought it was just die off from the gha but now I am not entirely sure, it is easy to remove the larger lumps with a turkey baster but a thin grey layer stays behind it almost looks like detritus but i have two reefwave 45’s providing a ton of current in my reefer 525xl.

What ever it is once i blow it off it returns a day or two later. I have stopped dosing no pox around a week ago incase it is indeed bacteria growing on the rocks as it has started to grow on my lps and softies and they seem bothered by it.
I can post parameters if you need them. Just to point out im running an ulns so even tho my no3 and phos are at 0 im supplying the food they need daily manually as per the aqua forest method of feeding.

Any help in finding out what it is or how to get rid of it would be very much appreciated.

 

[ZoixDark]

If you take the pictures under white light your phone might not freak out as much to get a clearer picture BUT, kinda looks like sponges.

 

[Luke’s reef]

If you take the pictures under white light your phone might not freak out as much to get a clearer picture BUT, kinda looks like sponges.

Yeah photos are on full whites, about 30% blue. Ill try to get better pictures tomorrow.

Ive had a variety of sponges before and this neither looks or acts like it. It grows back within a day two max. Ive never had a sponge grow that quick before. Also texture wise is more like touching fish poop if that sounds right lol.

soft to the touch and breaks apart. It really looks like detritus but Ive never seen it accumulate/grow this fast.

 

[taricha]

Voting for chrysophytes.

 

[Luke’s reef]

Oh now looking at algae under that name and it does look very very much like that, I think you may have found what it is @taricha. Now lets see how we can get rid of it, ill keep you guys updated.

 

[brandon429]

It’s the c Taricha mentioned

we are all still in the experimental phase for that requisite hitchhiker

people get it when they’re not dosing no pox, I feel strongly it’s a simple benthic hitchhiker on hard scape items


there aren’t enough work thread corrections out there to find a strong % cure, hammer away as you will with various items to see what works

 

[Luke’s reef]

Hey @brandon429, just changed the 2 reefwaves I have on the tank to try and get more flow without ticking off the few corals I currently have. I have also gone ahead and changed out the filter floss and then turkey basted the hell out of everything along with a short flow boost to push everything into the sump.

As for no-pox well Im not sure if I should continue the dose as paramiters are zeroed and Im tired of daily dosing additives. So I think my plan going forward is continue to use the baster every few days to coincide with the day I change out my floss, will also start doing aquaforest -np pro & pro bio S at half the dose to atleast make sure I have a good nitrifying bacteria in the tank.

As for the nitrate and phos, I do have some on hand that I can dose in very small amounts just to get em detectable on test kits maybe that will eliminate the algae as from what ive been reading it mostly sugests its photosynthetic and grows with the use of silctates in the water column.

Paramiters
Temp: 25 cel
Salinity: 1.025
Ph: 8
Kh: 7.8
Cal: 410
Mg: 1180 (on the low side, slowly dosing to increese)
Phos 0.012
No2: 0
No3: 0
Silictate: 0
Coper: 0

As for information on what and when Im dosing:

Dosing Aquaforest -np pro & pro bio s (2drops), Plus adding a small amount of Red sea ab+ on alternating days at night.

As for fish and corals I am using a mix of mysis with garlic, ocean nutrition pellets and plankton elixer to hand feed corals on alternating days aswell.

 

[brandon429]

How many gallons is this tank

 

[Luke’s reef]

525 liters minus displacement ect its about 500L, Ive actually replaced a few of the products on that schedual as it provides the same things as RS AB+. Coral stock wise I have a chalice, eyuphillia, lobo, huge sarcophyton, few shrooms here and there, and two small colonies of zoas. so everything I do dose I put it in at half the recomended dosage for my tank.

 

[brandon429]

100+ gallons is pretty big for a deep clean, I was checking to see if physical removal was an option. Not common removal, true cleaning. Jon did it here as an example. Try other dosers first, but before quitting the reef if it gets bad, try this:

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Luke’s reef]

Yeah deep clean is defo an option but as a last resort. Things are not that bad atm so we will push on with things see how it goes for the next few weeks.

Im also going to see if my lfs can bring a decent shipment of turbos to help clean some what as this pandemic has new stock few and far between.

 

[brandon429]

If your tank was mine it would be deep clean first so the lowest mass condition is made, then I’d order a pond sterilizer off Amazon well oversized to handle growback. No degree of work would be parameters or dosing response.

as usual this is not what anyone else in reefing would do

the uninvaded are a loony group. The rip clean and uv are good fallbacks for sure

 

[Luke’s reef]

If your tank was mine it would be deep clean first so the lowest mass condition is made, then I’d order a pond sterilizer off Amazon well oversized to handle growback. No degree of work would be parameters or dosing response.

as usual this is not what anyone else in reefing would do

the uninvaded are a loony group. The rip clean and uv are good fallbacks for sure

Running a uv on the tank atm but ofc not oversized as the space i have in the sump area is very limited. But yeah not discarding the clean just last option for me

 

[brandon429]

I wouldn’t have removed the current one you have, or assumed it would work as well as the one I’d buy. I would have kept the system as is, dual uv ideal, reduced invasion mass by hand before any attempted in tank dieoff treatment, added my favorite pond sterilizer from zon, and it won’t win.
the opposite of what the masses do is what I do

We have to lose a lot of reefs to invasion to arrive at where Im at in the process.

 

[Luke’s reef]

Thats true, if i had space and money id have all this covered but with anything in this hobby (time/money/space) ‍ But I am positive that I will get this sorted eventually. I can be quite persistent lol and after all this is one of the only things that keep me sane in my home atm no way I will get rid of my reef

 

[brandon429]

This is exactly the type of job I think they’ll have decently tuned bacterial dosers for one day

 

[Luke’s reef]

Yeah, not much is to be found about this type of algae tbh. So its down to trial and error, prob is with bacterial dosing is to be able to get a decent product is dam right expensive.

For example I have always wanted to try vibrant which everyone states is one heck of a bacterial strain but man it costs €70 locally for a single bottle.

 

[Luke’s reef]

Evening all so after a very long fight it seemed to have been caused by using red seas no-pox. A few months after this post I spoke to a friend down at a nearby fish store and the first thing he asked when I showed him the pictures was are you using nopox lol few weeks later with no dose and what do you know the strange thing started to die back.

so I can now finally say the tanks completely clear of what every that goop was, still convinced it was bacteria. However the nopox was super effective in my tank I now use a refugium to keep nutrients in check.