Please can you help identify this

[ljwillyl]

Hi my tank is exactly 1 week old and I woke up this morning to a panic.

I started my tank off with imported natural sea water.

My nitrates are around 1 and phos is at 0.052 DKH 7.9

I have used an orange lense cover on my camera so it appears a lot more of a dark maroon color to the naked eye

 

[Euphyllia97]

My guess would be dino’s and diatoms :)

 

[VintageReefer]

If the tank is a week old you should avoid coral

The stuff you’re seeing is one of the various blooms your tank will go through. Bacteria blooms, cyano, diatoms, algae. hopefully you avoid Dino’s.

It’s called the ugly stage and it can last months, or you can have several different things happen back to back.

Was the rock cycled before you added it? Or was it sold dry?

 

[ljwillyl]

If the tank is a week old you should avoid coral

The stuff you’re seeing is one of the various blooms your tank will go through. Bacteria blooms, cyano, diatoms, algae. hopefully you avoid Dino’s.

It’s called the ugly stage and it can last months, or you can have several different things happen back to back.

Was the rock cycled before you added it? Or was it sold dry?

Hi the rock was scaped using purple coloured marco, I have 5 clowns a GBTA and GSP

As I used natural sea water i tested it and it was already perfect so chose to add those bits after clearing with LFS

 

[Euphyllia97]

Hi the rock was scaped using purple coloured marco, I have 5 clowns a GBTA and GSP

As I used natural sea water i tested it and it was already perfect so chose to add those bits after clearing with LFS

So just to be clear. You used dry rock and natural seawater to setup this tank 1 week ago? Is this correct?

How did you end up with 5 clowns? And did your LFS allow you to buy 5 clowns and a BTA knowing you just started a tank one week ago?

Just some remarks (no blame, but maybe your LFS is not that great)

- Clowns shouldn’t be kept with more than one pair in the same tank (unless your tank is really big, or coming from the same harem but that would require some knowledge/experience)

- A BTA needs a well-established and stable tank, it is not something you should add to any system after 1 week

- Your water might have 0 ammonia (what you call perfect) but note that most of the bacteria are libing on your rock and not in the water column. It could well be that the 5 clowns will be too much bioload for the system. (One week really isn’t a lot to come to a conclusion of having a full cycle)

-looking at this algae for example shows a lot of diatoms on the rock. This means you probably have nitrates in the water, which is a good sign, but also means that your rock is still young and low in bacteria. (Using up silicates in your tank)

Just don’t rush anything in this hobby, it doesn’t bring any good :)

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Its strange to have that much algae after only one week of the tank being built, it normally takes a few weeks to start seeing the diatoms. What size is the tank? Do you have good flow in the tank?

 

[twentyleagues]

Did you do anything to "cycle" the tank prior to adding livestock? Ammonia source and bacteria? The good news if you did not is with adding livestock you have started the cycle process. The bad news is that the little bacteria that came in on the bta and in the clowns gut will probably not be enough to control ammonia in a good time frame. You will need to watch ammonia closely if it starts to climb into +.05ppm you will need to do something to bring it down and keep it sub .05ppm, water changes. Doing water changes on this new of a tank will possibly bring other needed parameters into the red zone nitrate and phosphates inviting things like dinos and cyano. The stuff in the pic above looks like it could be dinos but if it is red in color under white light it is probably cyano both can trap or produce those air bubbles but that is typically more likely with dinos. Cyano typically happens from an imbalance in nutrients or places where waste has built up with little to no flow. Dinos can be spurred by to low of n and p. Both can and will happen when there is adequate area for growth with no competition ie a good bacterial colonization which if you didnt cycle the tank or use live rock that is already colonized.