Diatoms or Dino?

[Brockly]

What is this stuff?

So I have a 75g tank, 100G total water volume. It is just over 2 months old so pretty new. Cycled in 3 weeks with dr Tims one and only. I have about 50 lbs of "real reef rock" and 1-2 inches of sand. It has 3 fish and a few coral frags. So pretty low bioload. I run a protein skimmer and dose 2 part. I don't currently have a chateo refugium for nitrate export but will be setting up a chateo reactor this weekend to help. As well as I will be adding some marine pure bricks over the next few months to help with a lower rock to gal ratio. I run carbon and Gfo in a reactor. China box led lights and 2 jaebo pp8s for flow, set to a medium to high flow environment. I am not a new reef keeper been doing it for 10 years. But that was 10 years ago. So I am out of practice. My levels are: 10 dkh, 400 calcium, 1300 mag, 8.2 ph
Phosphate tests 0 with Hana checker so must be Pretty low. My only level of concern at this point is nitrate. After the cycle they were 100. I dropped it to about 10 with many water changes and that's were it stays. I can't get it below 10. The reactor should help in future with that though

BUT ANY WAY TO THE POST......

Is this diatoms, or something else. I haven't seen diatoms that grew long and waved in the water? I'm hoping it is and will go away on its own in time. But it is getting worst not better at this point. It has been growing in sand and ALL over the rocks for about 2 weeks. I'm just hoping it's not something worse. I have seen images of dinoflagulants and they are longer stringy and contain bubbles. At this point, my algae doesn't do that.

Thoughts? Based on what it might be any recommendations. It's hard to sit by and watch it get worse.

[Danny_15]

Defenitly not diatoms. Diatoms are not furry.

Sent from my SM-G928T using Tapatalk

[Ron Reefman]

If it starts to grow up toward the surface and develops lots of air bubbles in it, it's dinos.

[Brockly]

It's getting longer every day

[nereefpat]

Originally Posted by Brockly

It's getting longer every day

well, don't let it. syphon it out. 1/4" line like on your RO works well.

[Brockly]

Well I started a 3 day blackout and I will be h2o2 dosing as well. Let's see what happens

[Heuristic]

I run carbon and Gfo in a reactor.

Stop doing this for awhile and your dino will go away

[Brockly]

Originally Posted by Heuristic

Stop doing this for awhile and your dino will go away

Please explain. Seams counter productive

[Ron Reefman]

Originally Posted by Heuristic

Stop doing this for awhile and your dino will go away

Originally Posted by Brockly

Please explain. Seams counter productive

Yes, please explain. How does running a carbon filter and GFO filter encourage dinos (assuming that's what this is)?

The 3 day black out may make it go away, but if it's dinos (and maybe even diatoms), it's a temporary fix. If you have leds you could run blue and violet leds and not the white and red. It works almost the same as the black out. You can do it longer and the corals don't care, they still get their blue spectrum for photosynthesis, but the algae wants red spectrum which it gets from white and red leds. You need to take away the nutrient source as well as the photosynthesis ability.

[Heuristic]

Dinoflagellates are organisms and the reason you're getting a bloom of them is because they are out competing the other algae's and bacteria in your tank in resource consumption. When running a GFO reactor that you may not need, it is creating an environment where dinoflagellates absolutely thrive. I figured this out when researching my dino issue and removed my GFO media, started feeding a little heavier to help the good bacteria/algae's out compete the dino and doing less frequent, very large, water changes in conjunction with blow off the rocks and my dino problem went away. I've seen a few other people take their GFO reactors offline and it helped as well.

[Ron Reefman]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but feeding the tank more nutrients that algae and bacteria need to a tank that has dinoflagellates just seems very counter intuitive. It seems to me that the dinoflagellates would just grow that much faster. Maybe there is something else going on there?

I wonder what the experts in the Chemistry Forum would say about your approach?

[ReeferNoob4ever]

Does it look slimy? If so, it's most likely dinos. Heuristic has a point in the sense that the dinos are more bacteria than algae so your issue is likely a bacteria imbalance AND a nutrient imbalance. I suppose the debate is whether to feed more or less. Sometimes people let their GFO media go for too long and it starts leeching impurities.

[Heuristic]

Originally Posted by Ron Reefman

I'm not saying you're wrong, but feeding the tank more nutrients that algae and bacteria need to a tank that has dinoflagellates just seems very counter intuitive. It seems to me that the dinoflagellates would just grow that much faster. Maybe there is something else going on there?

I wonder what the experts in the Chemistry Forum would say about your approach?

I am thinking it more has to do with getting the tank a little dirtier than anything. Here is a thread that talks about a similar thought process from someone who had a very bad dino outbreak and got rid of it
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=1620464

I started having a GHA problem in my tank, so I talked to some people and they all told me to throw a bag of gfo/carbon in to my filter sock. It worked great at stopping the growth of my GHA, to the point it actually killed a ball of chaeto because they were no longer any waste for it to strive on... That's when the dino starting coming in. Out of no where I had dino spewing everywhere. I started researching the kind of environments that dino strives in and quickly realized it was the gfo bag that got me to create that optimal environment. I pulled the bag, fed a little heavier and my new ball of chaeto absolutely exploded and my dino's are all but gone.

[MrNurse]

Looks like chrysophytes to me.