identify brown killer stuff / microscopic pictures

Ragnarokas · 06/08/2020, 02:08 AM

Dear users,

Suddenly out of nowhere my aquarium is covered with brown stuff. Snails died, and corals - especially polyps such as greenstar (which has been very thriving before), and zoa are retracted and seems to be very stressed as it is all covered by that brown stuff. It can be dusted off in some areas, so I thought about diatoms, but it may be sticky in others + snails die-off = maybe dino. Phosphates are not detected, nitrates around 3 . I have collected some of the stuff from the covered corals and put in under the microscope. I attached the images, but please check the video, as *it* moves and maybe this is more informative.

Do I understand correctly that it is some kind of diatom after all, not the dino?

Thank you very much,

Link to video: https://youtu.be/CnQ-lS26HSc

https://ibb.co/z6xZrn7
https://ibb.co/LvMb1Lp

kharmaguru · 06/08/2020, 05:24 AM

Based on some googling, it looks more like diatoms than dinos. Diatoms don't explain die off though, so perhaps this is just another symptom of some other problem. This website has some interesting microscopic images of reef microbes:

https://reefs.com/magazine/hunting-with-a-microscope/

Edit: There is a toxic diatom called pseudo-nitzschia but all the images show a very long skinny diatom. My search was far from exhaustive.

truben1010 · 06/08/2020, 05:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ragnarokas

Dear users,

Suddenly out of nowhere my aquarium is covered with brown stuff. Snails died, and corals - especially polyps such as greenstar (which has been very thriving before), and zoa are retracted and seems to be very stressed as it is all covered by that brown stuff. It can be dusted off in some areas, so I thought about diatoms, but it may be sticky in others + snails die-off = maybe dino. Phosphates are not detected, nitrates around 3 . I have collected some of the stuff from the covered corals and put in under the microscope. I attached the images, but please check the video, as *it* moves and maybe this is more informative.

Do I understand correctly that it is some kind of diatom after all, not the dino?

Thank you very much,

Link to video: https://youtu.be/CnQ-lS26HSc

https://ibb.co/z6xZrn7
https://ibb.co/LvMb1Lp

I’M not sure with these pics, but it sounds like something I recently had with my aquarium in October 2019. Some brown stuff started growing and all of a sudden my corals died and then my fish died too. My tangs picked on it and then got sick and died. The water then became sort of cloudy. I used dynox and it helped a lot! I’m not sure if we are talking about the same thing here , but that is my input on it.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

06/08/2020, 05:24 AM	#2
kharmaguru Registered Member Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Oshawa, ON Posts: 125	Based on some googling, it looks more like diatoms than dinos. Diatoms don't explain die off though, so perhaps this is just another symptom of some other problem. This website has some interesting microscopic images of reef microbes: https://reefs.com/magazine/hunting-with-a-microscope/ Edit: There is a toxic diatom called pseudo-nitzschia but all the images show a very long skinny diatom. My search was far from exhaustive. __________________ Master Algae Grower Current Tank Info: 20 gallon mixed reef, mangroves, algae scrubber, DIY LEDs Last edited by kharmaguru; 06/08/2020 at 05:33 AM.