Nuisance algae or just tanks ugly phase?

tanstrobels

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Hey everyone, I recently adopted a family friend's tank because they didn't want it anymore and am back in the hobby full swing now. The first (and last) tank I had was 11 years ago which was a 55 gallon mixed reef. I'm planning on posting a build thread soon!

I have recently had a bit of an algae bloom and I'm not sure if this is just the ugly phase (which I am fine with) or if this is a nuisance algae that I should try to treat. I also understand that depending on the type of algae there are things that you should and shouldn't do. I don't want to misdiagnose and do the wrong thing to make it worse.

The tank is about a month and a half old and has a combination of cured live rock and old live rock from the previous tank (I had to buy a new tank because it cracked on the move). The sand is new as well. I bought a red sea 50 led about two and a half weeks ago and put it on acclimation mode. Had it ramp up from about 40% up to now where the peak is 95%. The light spends most of the day ramping up and down. I have corals so turning this off isn't an option.

The algae itself is gold/translucent and will grow on top of coraline as well. It's been the same for about a week and a half now and hasn't gotten really any better or worse. I tested my nutrients and they are zero for phosphate and nitrate. Before the algae, I was keeping the levels around 3ppm for Nitrate and 0.05 Phosphate.

So my question is what type of algae is this? Chrysophytes? I have ideas of what to do but am curious if I should just leave it and let the tank sort it out or intervene.

IMG_5926.jpg 64616713726__89AB90E2-E096-44CE-ACF7-FF9BDC6FE62B.jpg
 
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tanstrobels

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Did a bit more research and it looks like tank uglies to me which is fine.

Anyone see an issue with doing the following in an effort to increase biodiversity in the tank and increase nutrients.

I normally feed every other day and would change it to daily.
Dose a low dose of brightwells microbacter7 to increase biodiversity.
10% water change every week to scrub the rocks and remove excess algae.

Thanks,
Tanner
 
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tanstrobels

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I just seeded my tank with tisbee pods the other day and have been dosing a small amount of phyto feast for them. The phyto feast isn't the live kind though. I'm assuming you are talking about dosing live phytoplankton?

No UV light, this is a 15 gallon JBJ AIO.
 
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tanstrobels

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Purchasing a UV light isn't something that I am going to pursue. For a tank this small (15 gallons) it'd probably do more damage than good. If that's not the case someone please enlighten me :)

I can live with the chrysophytes if it's just an ugly phase but if I can help kick it early even better. Assuming that these are chrysophytes it's probably caused by the new light and super low nutrients I'd guess. I was feeding my two fish every 2 - 3 days and performing 25% water changes a week. So numbers have essentially bottomed out.

What I plan to do is low dose for two weeks the brightwells microbacter7 to help with biodiversity, start feeding my fish every day to help kick up the nutrients levels and hold off on the water changes. Aiming for 6ppm NO3 and .75pp PO4.

If this doesn't work and numbers continue to stay bottomed out I'll buy some Nitrate/Phosphate and dose accordingly. Unless the algae is something else then I'll probably find out very quickly that adding more nutrients is a bad thing.

Anyone with chrysophytes see a significant change when you started adding a lot of nutrients to the water or did it just slowly disappear? How long did that usually take?
 
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tanstrobels

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Following up here on my success of getting rid of the chrysophytes. A little bit of patience is all it really took. It's been about three and a half weeks since the issue began.

I held off on the water changes and fed the fish daily for about two weeks. During this time I also limited the filter floss changes to once a week. This helped bring up the nutrients.

I then did a small 2 gallon water change, and used the old water to pull out one of the larger rocks to scrub a lot of the algae off it. I added two new astrea snails to help with the remainder of the algae and began dosing brightwells microbacter7 daily. I was doing a third of the recommended dose per day they have for my tank size.
 

topjago

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Following up here on my success of getting rid of the chrysophytes. A little bit of patience is all it really took. It's been about three and a half weeks since the issue began.

I held off on the water changes and fed the fish daily for about two weeks. During this time I also limited the filter floss changes to once a week. This helped bring up the nutrients.

I then did a small 2 gallon water change, and used the old water to pull out one of the larger rocks to scrub a lot of the algae off it. I added two new astrea snails to help with the remainder of the algae and began dosing brightwells microbacter7 daily. I was doing a third of the recommended dose per day they have for my tank size.
What where your phosphates and nitrates?
 
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tanstrobels

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Nitrates were 2, phosphates were 0.03. Still trying to bring my nitrate up a little higher and will probably always feed my fish daily from now on (doing a water change in a 15 gallon tank takes 10 minutes maybe so no big deal). I could also tell the nutrients was coming up because a couple corals had some color come back to them. I have some aoi zoas that got a little dull. I think one of the biggest helps I had was using live cured reef rock with this tank. Helped out compete the chrysophytes.
 

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