What's this??

[petcellar]

I've been doing ok on the algae front for a long time.... struggled with valonia for a bit but have some pithos and they are keeping it in check.

This is a new one though.... I tried to get some good pictures. The bubbles make me worried about dinos, but it isn't all over the gravel and such. It's very thick and relatively slow growing on the rockscape.... but thick/bubble and CUC not interested.

 

[Subsea]

Is it soft, mushy, spongy, brittle?

Is it easy to pull off?

Have you tried siphoning it off?

How long has this tank been set up?

What are your N & P concentrations?

 

[petcellar]

Sorry for the late reply. It's just been crazy busy lately.

Unfortunately, I think it is dinos. It has been very slowly spreading and has that bubbly snotty look.

The tank was about 1.8 years old when unfortunately my Red Sea 900XXL G2 catastrophically failed.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/red-sea-seam-failure-tips-for-tank-transfer.1148737/


At the time of failure there had never been dinos and really hardly any nuisance algae at all.... everything seemed to be in a good balance. However, an emergent tank transfer, sand cleaning, coral die off ect probably messed up all the equilibrium.

As far as N and P, my nitrates run about 10-15 and phos about 0.5. I know that's crazy high on the phos, but until now has never been a problem so I never got excited about it.

I already have a UV sterilizer. I think I'm going to work on some manual removal / UV sweeper. I also am going to work on trying to get my phos down gradually without wild swings.... probably will be easier said than done.

I've been adding some Microbe Lift to the tank, but I also ordered some small amounts of live sand/rock from TBS to seed the tank and try to get it back where it was before the leak/transfer.

Any advice is appreciated. I've dealt with hair algae and valonia before and think I have a pretty good handle on that, but this is a new challenge for me.

Thanks.