What algae is this?

[DmitryB]

It's a new tank, only up for a few months. Is this normal green algae/ugly phase? I'm concerned about the air bubbles on it? Or are these dinoflagellates? (This is under white lights; it looks brown under blue lighting.)

 

[EnterName]

How many months is a few months?

If it's stuck to the rocks but you can't see it growing in hairs or slime it's probably green coralline algae which is pretty common for young tanks. It's part of the ugly phase that takes a while until red/purple coralline algae overgrows it. Very short hair algae is also possible.

When it starts to get slimy I would take a closer look (preferably with a microscope), we had a nasty Euglenida outbreak recently here on the forum.

 

[Justfebreezeit]

Looks pretty normal to me.

 

[DmitryB]

How many months is a few months?

If it's stuck to the rocks but you can't see it growing in hairs or slime it's probably green coralline algae which is pretty common for young tanks. It's part of the ugly phase that takes a while until red/purple coralline algae overgrows it. Very short hair algae is also possible.

When it starts to get slimy I would take a closer look (preferably with a microscope), we had a nasty Euglenida outbreak recently here on the forum.

It's running since May, with live rock and ocean live sand. In reading up on dinos, it seems like low Nitrates and Phosphates might be contributing? I did have a fairly large drop in Phosphates over the last 3 months (from .9 to .17.) And yesterday people pointed out my Nitrates were getting a bit low. Can that be contributing to possible dinos?

 

[DmitryB]

Looks pretty normal to me.

I'm ok with the ugly phase; it's the air bubbles that worry me since that could be dinos.

 

[Justfebreezeit]

It looks there is quite a few bubbles in your water. Those might just be getting stuck on the rocks/algae. Hard to tell from the video but something to consider.

 

[EnterName]

It's running since May, with live rock and ocean live sand. In reading up on dinos, it seems like low Nitrates and Phosphates might be contributing? I did have a fairly large drop in Phosphates over the last 3 months (from .9 to .17.) And yesterday people pointed out my Nitrates were getting a bit low. Can that be contributing to possible dinos?

If dinoflagellates are a symptom or the cause of bottoming out nutrients is a controversial topic that gets discussed repeatedly on R2R. Dinoflagellates can certainly appear in both environments: High and low nutrient.

I personally can get them to appear in my system when I stop adding ammonia and phosphate. As soon as I start dosing again, they disappear just as fast. However I'm running an ultra low nutrient system where we are talking about nutrient levels far below yours and actually below the detection limit of home test kits (even Hanna Checkers) when I stop dosing.

0.17ppm PO₄ is more than enough, but if you are worried that 1ppm NO₃ is insufficient, you can take a look at ammonia dosing: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diy-ammonia-dosing-for-low-nitrate-systems.987087/. It might actually help you get rid of some phosphate which would be a nice side-effect.

If that growth is actually caused by dinoflagellates you should be able to blow some slime off the rocks using a feeding pipette or similar. If you know someone with a light microscope (cheap ones are fine) and manage to get some of that stuff off from a rock, we can look for a proper diagnosis/identification.

As your tank is just a few months old, I wouldn't stress it, even if it were dinoflagellates. They are very common in young tanks and don't have to become a problem. Before I started adding nutrients they were constantly present and slightly discolored the substrate while everything else was left alone growing fine.

Bubbles can be caused by everything that uses photosynthesis if the flow isn't strong enough to carry away the oxygen. They are just more frequently observed when Dinoflagellates are present because their mucus is trapping the bubbles.

 

[DmitryB]

It looks there is quite a few bubbles in your water. Those might just be getting stuck on the rocks/algae. Hard to tell from the video but something to consider.

There ARE bubbles flying around. I've been trying to work out the flow and it's tough. I want surface to move, but can't raise neither the Nero nor the MP 10 close enough to surface without getting those annoying vortexes, and that sends lots of bubbles. Otherwise I don't get much surface movement.

 

[DmitryB]

Ok so that was my 40 gallon.

Here's the newer 170 gallon. Which algae is this? If it's the ugly stage, I'm ok with that. If it's something malicious, I'm freaking out. The tank's been running for 3-4 weeks. There is no livestock in there. (Except 2 small hitchhiker urchins, which I haven't seen in a couple of days.) It's only all live rock (mix of ocean live rock and dry Pukani rock) and no live sand yet. I just ordered 150 lbs of live sand from GLR, I suspect it'll be here next week. And I ordered a CUC, which is also expected next week. This algae is on many of the rocks and the glass bottom!

I've been dosing the tank with Microbacter 7, Microbacter Clean, and Phyto (I added some pods in there about a week ago.)

 

[DmitryB]

For reference, these were my readings 3 days ago.

 

[EnterName]

Ok so that was my 40 gallon.

Here's the newer 170 gallon. Which algae is this? If it's the ugly stage, I'm ok with that. If it's something malicious, I'm freaking out. The tank's been running for 3-4 weeks. There is no livestock in there. (Except 2 small hitchhiker urchins, which I haven't seen in a couple of days.) It's only all live rock (mix of ocean live rock and dry Pukani rock) and no live sand yet. I just ordered 150 lbs of live sand from GLR, I suspect it'll be here next week. And I ordered a CUC, which is also expected next week. This algae is on many of the rocks and the glass bottom!

I've been dosing the tank with Microbacter 7, Microbacter Clean, and Phyto (I added some pods in there about a week ago.)

Green hair algae and maybe some diatoms on the rocks. Ugly phase stuff in my opinion judging from the tank's age. Even if it were cyano or dinoflagellates I would not really be concerned. The "normal" ugly phase is: Diatoms > Green hair algae > Coralline algae, but I've seen Dinos and cyanos anywhere in between or during those phases. If you used mostly live rock the ugly phase will likely be quite harmless compared to tanks started with only dry rock and sand.

 

[Justfebreezeit]

Agreed. Ugly phases can definitely include dinos and cyano.

But this very light colored hair algae which is a good sign.

 

[DmitryB]

This morning on my 40 gallon, using Hana HR kit, my Nitrates came up as 0. Since I don't have anything to dose on hand, do I just dump a crapload of food in there? (The only swimming livestock is a baby Coral Beauty.) The other livestock are algae, coral banded shrimp, snails, hermits and many frags. (Do I also turn off my protein skimmer?)

 

[Justfebreezeit]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. If the food goes uneaten the algae will grow like wildfire.

Id just pick a diy nitrate solution and start dosing that. Its not a problem that has to be solved in one day.

This will also help algae grow as well though so keep that in mind.

 

[DmitryB]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. If the food goes uneaten the algae will grow like wildfire.

Id just pick a diy nitrate solution and start dosing that. Its not a problem that has to be solved in one day.

This will also help algae grow as well though so keep that in mind.

Oh I've got algae already! LOL. But there are so many different types that it's

 

[Subsea]

This morning on my 40 gallon, using Hana HR kit, my Nitrates came up as 0. Since I don't have anything to dose on hand, do I just dump a crapload of food in there? (The only swimming livestock is a baby Coral Beauty.) The other livestock are algae, coral banded shrimp, snails, hermits and many frags. (Do I also turn off my protein skimmer?)

Zero inorganic nitrate is not a tank crash. In my 30 year mature reef, I dose 20 ml of ammonia twice a day when lights are on. Yet, when I bring samples to LFS the nitrates show zero.

If your protein skimmer is removing nutrients then allow slimmate to return to tank. Protein skimmers are excellent for gas exchange, do not turn it off.

 

[EnterName]

Zero inorganic nitrate is not a tank crash. In my 30 year mature reef, I dose 20 ml of ammonia twice a day when lights are on. Yet, when I bring samples to LFS the nitrates show zero.

I agree, natural ocean nitrate levels are far lower and corals do great there. 0.25ppm is the detection limit of the Low Resolution HannaChecker for nitrate and coral reef levels are often even lower. Corals don't care much for nitrate if ammonia and other nitrogen sources are available. To be fair though, coral reefs have higher amino acid levels as most tanks as they don't have a long half-life in our tanks, so it might make sense to keep nitrate levels above natural levels to ensure there is enough available nitrogen.

If your protein skimmer is removing nutrients then allow slimmate to return to tank.

This would re-introduce dissolved organics and also phosphate which might not be what Dimitry wants.

 

[DmitryB]

Yeah the Phosphates I'd rather not out back in! Funny thing with Nitrates is I went from "OMG these are so high!" to "wait, come back!"

I just ordered some Ammonium Chloride and will start adding that when it comes in. Adding manually I think is best??

 

[EnterName]

I just ordered some Ammonium Chloride and will start adding that when it comes in. Adding manually I think is best??

I personally let my dosing pump handle it because I prefer to add very small amounts very frequently instead of dumping in a lot of ammonia at once. However, I started with dosing manually and this worked as well. Only if there is a lot of nitrogen demand and you won't see any changes in nitrate over time you might need to use a dosing pump if you don't want to dump in too much ammonia at once.

 

[Subsea]

As a retired instrumentation engineer in offshore drilling for subsea blowout preventers, I see more devices as more failure points, but that’s just me so

I always manually add ammonia during lights on in a high flow area.