Ugh, Help me identify and eliminate!

[Texastravis]

Tank is about 8 months old. 120 gallon rimless with a sump. I spent all the money like a lot of you and got auto roller mat and a good skimmer for nutrient export. I also have Chaeto growing in the sump under a Kessil purple/red refugium light. I put only about a nickle sized piece of Rods food in the tank once a day along with a small pinch of NLS pellet food. 1 gallon is auto changed every day and yes I use RO.

After initial setup with dry sand and bleach cured rock, I had the typical diatoms. That went away and I had a pretty tank for awhile with 0 nitrate and struggled with high PO4 at like 0.3. I could not get Chaeto to grow though and nuisance algae took over in the sump. I then had bad red cyano take over the display tank. I learned that 0 nitrate was bad and that it was the reason for PO4 not coming down. I started dosing nitrate and now have my tank dialed in at a consistant 0.3 PO4 and 5-10 nitrate. With parameters "perfect" I nuked the red slime with chemiclean. Tank was back to looking good.

Now I have another problem. I have some kind of algae growing all over everything and it has been there for at least 5-6 weeks now. I was thinking it was diatom since I had to do a large 30% water change after the chemiclean but it is a bit stringy. Not long stringy though. I wipes off of the rock very easy though so it is not like a hair algae. Any thoughts on what this is and how to get rid of it?

8 months $6k in and I am not enjoying myself much. I did not think the algae would kill corals but I have lost some hammers, a torch, gonnis, and even my pulsing xenia looks really bad. Only thing that looks good is Anthelia. I cannot grow coraline to save my life but have good alk and Ca. I think my tank is not algae free long enough to get corraline established.

 

[dvgyfresh]

This looks like some type of cyano , just a guess would be that the tank needs more flow and water changes. I would also dose dr Tim’s waste away. Don’t strip the tank of nutrients otherwise you could get a Dino’s bloom lol. This is why I’m not a fan of chemical products like chemi clean, you fixed the problem but not the issue causing cyano in the first place

 

[GoReefin]

Try a fighting conch they eat cyano.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

This looks like if cyano and dinos had a baby and then that baby grew up wanting to be GHA.
I think with po4 and no3 balanced you just need to keep removing it with your water changes, blowing it off with a turkey baster in between. keep high magnesium and introduce some coralline. Wouldn’t hurt to dose Microbacter7 sometimes it helps with cyano

 

[Texastravis]

This looks like some type of cyano , just a guess would be that the tank needs more flow and water changes. I would also dose dr Tim’s waste away. Don’t strip the tank of nutrients otherwise you could get a Dino’s bloom lol. This is why I’m not a fan of chemical products like chemi clean, you fixed the problem but not the issue causing cyano in the first place

I get thats why you are not a fan of chemical products but I thought I had addressed the issue of zero nitrates causing the cyano so used the chemiclean to give it a restart. The cyano I had was a deep dark red and in areas of low flow, this new stuff is something different. Yes maybe cyano but it is not deep red and it is not just in low flow areas. I have 2 MP40s for flow and I have to keep tham at least turned down to 50% or they whip torches and other corals like crazy, I was under the impression this was enough flow for a 4' 120 gallon. This algae is not developing just on sand bed or areas of low flow but everywhere. I am concerned that water changes may cause even more trouble since my tank is already low nutrients. My current 1 gallon per day what change is about 25% a month.

 

[Texastravis]

Try a fighting conch they eat cyano.

Yes I actually have no clean up crew... just tangs, gobies, and some cleaner shrimps. I considered getting something that would keep sand bed clean and eat this crap algae.

 

[Texastravis]

This looks like if cyano and dinos had a baby and then that baby grew up wanting to be GHA.
I think with po4 and no3 balanced you just need to keep removing it with your water changes, blowing it off with a turkey baster in between. keep high magnesium and introduce some coralline. Wouldn’t hurt to dose Microbacter7 sometimes it helps with cyano

Yes, I have had some serious trouble identifying this but since no bubbles then it isnt dino and since it isnt hard attached to things it isnt a type of GHA so it is likely some type of cyano. I have been thinking about dosing some kind of bacteria dependent upon replies to this thread. I definately do not regularly clean my rock or sandbed, I had been trying to set up a tank to prevent that but maybe I need to do that for awhile.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Yes, I have had some serious trouble identifying this but since no bubbles then it isnt dino and since it isnt hard attached to things it isnt a type of GHA so it is likely some type of cyano. I have been thinking about dosing some kind of bacteria dependent upon replies to this thread. I definately do not regularly clean my rock or sandbed, I had been trying to set up a tank to prevent that but maybe I need to do that for awhile.

I agree with everything but the no bubbles equals no chance of dinos, plenty of Dino strains out there. Once you do some routine removal and coralline grows over, you can switch back to cruise control with your tank

 

[GoReefin]

Yes I actually have no clean up crew... just tangs, gobies, and some cleaner shrimps. I considered getting something that would keep sand bed clean and eat this crap algae.

Get some snails and hermits as well

 

[brandon429]

If you rot that much mass in tank you’ll chemical soup it


must rip clean it

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

that’s your method, he does it four times. Once is plenty in yours
(The point being once isn’t too much work, he does it four times over to show how reef tanks are tough, and handle substrate rinsing well)

make a clean tank like that, then use all your current options considering now to fight growback, you’d specifically work now to ensure compliance and then coax long term compliance. You wouldn’t take actions to the water only, await dieoff, in the presence of corals and fish that need clean water. To show that wasn’t a one off luck, here’s 250 more and it always works great, it’s not an experiment. Not rip cleaning is the experiment.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

The specific next step after total compliance is forced is go on amazon and order a uv sterilizer meant for a koi pond, rated about three to five thousand gallons they’re pretty small nowadays, about $200 bucks

install it where it’s functional, it doesn’t have to be permanent nor ran 24x7 it’s armaments ready, and do run it for a while after the rip clean in response to that powerful invasion, its not like any other I’ve seen in years. This is a fantastic work job to see.

install it in the clean condition. not the invaded one, the forced clean condition as growback prep. These cheap sterilizers will last a year or two in reefing, they’re not like $1200 good quality reef ones but you dont want to spend that much until a smaller one models the fix you need and besides, it won’t last a year you can likely beat that with a rip clean alone. Still do the uv, that’s the specific troubleshoot for the reef.

dose nothing abnormal, the rip clean alone is likely to win we can see for pages. Have uv in place and ensure topoff and make water is the purest ro di no total dissolved solids at all. all other fixes chosen are less work and no example threads for fifty pages. This is the most in need of rip cleaning reef tank I’ve ever seen. That it’s a large job, costing a hundred dollars in new water alone plus ten hours work with no room for under rinse error or all your effort will be wasted, well you big tankers get all the neat fish there had to be a tradeoff somewhere for that natural benefit of large tanks. When they require deep access, large tanks wish they were pico reefs in a flash of irony.

 

[brandon429]

Matter of fact you need a custom model to assess growback before the rip clean.

remove three big test rocks and absolutely scrape them clean while rinsing off in blasts of freshwater like from a jetted garden hose.

jet with force, dislodge the invasion from crevices and detach any stuck corals before the job obviously. Force clean rocks and freshwater isn’t a harm like you think it would be, we already have a thread for extreme jobs using jetted tap and this is one.

Filtration bacteria are housed in bioslicks, this is already tested, it doesn’t sterilize your live rock or we wouldn’t be permitted to drink tap water, reefers over state it’s harm.

tap rinsing is directly indicated here per pic and mass levels, and it may help fend off the invader anyway with a little chlorine stress. We have already done this in that thread above, Amalee75 is the reefer and rocks skip cycle back into the system because jetted water for ten mins cannot remove bioslicks. They’re going back into saltwater fast enough soon after that it doesn’t matter. Getting the invaded out of every crevice matters.
If you are serious about fixing it I’ll post her work thread and it has yearlong updates after the prep for tracking.

you then run the rocks in a side test five gallon bucket nano, not your main tank. Heat it to 79 and run a powerhead in the bucket, its a mini reef to assess growback and in that test container you can apply scaled down water dosing of things, to test growback prevention only. All initial kills are forced out of the rocks before testing n the growback test chamber. After seeing how it fares a week or two it’s time to run upscale cleaning on the entire system, all at once, tap water rinsed sand, just like we do for fifty pages. This will be the second time we break saltwater rinsing in the thread and opt for jetted freshwater.


most will never take this level of control over a reef, most will take it down willingly. Big tanking is very hard sometimes when zero access is the rule.

 

[dvgyfresh]

Aw I didn’t know you had no clean up crew , this definitely had a play in the invasion . Def consider rip clean and cuc

I get thats why you are not a fan of chemical products but I thought I had addressed the issue of zero nitrates causing the cyano so used the chemiclean to give it a restart. The cyano I had was a deep dark red and in areas of low flow, this new stuff is something different. Yes maybe cyano but it is not deep red and it is not just in low flow areas. I have 2 MP40s for flow and I have to keep tham at least turned down to 50% or they whip torches and other corals like crazy, I was under the impression this was enough flow for a 4' 120 gallon. This algae is not developing just on sand bed or areas of low flow but everywhere. I am concerned that water changes may cause even more trouble since my tank is already low nutrients. My current 1 gallon per day what change is about 25% a month.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed it’s ideal to rip clean and in the compliant condition install a stronger cuc hoping to prevent re growth, and those can be modeled in the mini test bucket too, to see what even eats that stuff if anything.

we would not add the cuc to the current mass level, and hope they work. See how rip cleaning is the ultimate in taking responsibility…I have to offer it like 37 times to get one ‘yes, Im ready, the slime will not win’

36 would rather entertain the slime than work intently. Those fifty pages above were all the rare willing folks heh, that thread is the product of ten thousand reef tank rip clean offers. Only a scant fifty pages worth said yes. The rest as I read updates are still invaded to this day

 

[Texastravis]

What does "cuc mean? If I did a "Rip Clean" I honestly do not know what I would do different with this tank aside from maybe including a clean up crew and buying some bottles of bacteria as a preventative. This is a bit disheartening to do on a tank that is still quite young at 8 months. I was hoping that since I used dry sand and dry rock at set up that as my tank established, problems like this may go away. The tank is fed very little and has great nutrient export. From the responses in this thread, it sounds like I still do not know if it is cyano or dyno. I may try another round of chemi clean (which worked well before but this brown stuff came in the place of the red cyano) and then follow with a big water change all siphoned from the sand bed. The rock is very easy to clean with a brush, this brown stuff comes off easily. I may try to keep cleaning it and hope that coraline will establish, which it has not.

 

[brandon429]

You don’t consider the uv detailing different, it was specifically matched to your import and it’s part of the only cure set recommends pictured for the thread. We use uv in jobs like this effectively, but not all jobs need uv


modeling in a bucket, that’s not only different its unique to troubleshoots at reef2reef no other board does invasion control sub modeling.

worry about growback only when it’s occurring in the arrangement above and don’t select methods that have no proofs for pages. You have one of the most uniquely strong invasions I’ve seen.
for example, based on patterns in the rip clean thread you’d expect likelihood of a rip clean fixing it, we don’t have a collection of fails there.

to assume it will grow back isnt coming from any pattern threads posted. The tank above really is too big for your control willingness level so the modeling trick, build a sub tank and experiment with controls on it, is the right move.


even if one magic doser kills that in tank and saves you work, that’s specifically bad for the system it’s a chemical soup that will wedge in the spaces of rock we‘d have blasted clean vs packed in with monthslong waste stores.

 

[GoReefin]

Cuc = clean up crew

 

[Gup]

I get thats why you are not a fan of chemical products but I thought I had addressed the issue of zero nitrates causing the cyano so used the chemiclean to give it a restart. The cyano I had was a deep dark red and in areas of low flow, this new stuff is something different. Yes maybe cyano but it is not deep red and it is not just in low flow areas. I have 2 MP40s for flow and I have to keep tham at least turned down to 50% or they whip torches and other corals like crazy, I was under the impression this was enough flow for a 4' 120 gallon. This algae is not developing just on sand bed or areas of low flow but everywhere. I am concerned that water changes may cause even more trouble since my tank is already low nutrients. My current 1 gallon per day what change is about 25% a month.

My tank is 9 months old. Im trying to get it squared away perfectly, but I see your problem and I sympathize so much for you. Not a problem that I've experienced and I pray it never does have to me