Dinoflagellates

Show a larger image of the algae if you would please.

Cyanobacteria with a mixture of Diatoms can look a lot like Dino. This seems more likely in a tank the age of yours.

Dino is snotty in appearance, very brown with the air bubbles like strings all along the string. It grows extremely fast, I could watch it grow a couple inches in a photoperiod, after having just cleaned the rock work and corals. Dino like to grow the tips of corals as well. Since some Dino is toxic you may notice a decline in zoanthids, and death of snails.

Take a look at the link below and the other nuisance algae that may looks very similar to Dino.

Nuisance Algae ID Guide

 

Thanks for the link. Here's another photo. Im also wondering what the shot of the black slime is, if anyone has an idea. Maybe blue green cyano?

I haven't seen any dead snails as of yet. But I also haven't noticed anything trying to eat whatever it is.






I think i might also have lyngbya on my overflow.

 

Yeah that does look like Dino, sorry, bummer.

The black is Cyano though.

I have heard of people using AlgaeFix, I have not used it and I would not recommend using it without a ton of research first.

If you did not have so many corals I would recommend a prolonged black out.

 

Im not a big fan of chemical solutions when there may be other natural ones. How should i raise my ph that much? I'm considering starting to run zeo as a solution to my cyano problem. I would do gfo but since i intend to eventually do zeovit in the future anyway it seems pointless. I still have a lot more research to do before pulling the trigger on the zeo system though.

I guess as per my dino/ cyano problems I'll stop feeding my corals and wont do a water change for awhile. I also want to get my ph up to the range you recommended. Should I slowly raise my alk until I get within that range? my Ca and Mg are already on the high end of the ranges.

 

That is what I did. Used Part 2 of a 2 part dosing system. Alk ended up around 11. I also raised my mag to 1600. For some reason algae does not do well in my tank at higher mag levels. Remember small changes.
I would trying some manual cleaning as well as a shorter black out like 3 days.
At the time I had dino I had sps/clams/lps....no corals showed any adverse reaction to the black out.

 

Just wanted to pop in for an update. For no apparent reason my dinos have almost all died off. I'm obviously very thankful for this.

I'm not sure if this will help anyone else or if any of this is part of the solution to my problem. It is also possible that they were going to die off on their own.

I had a massive outbreak of gha during my cycle and when it died off i thought that what was left over was dead gha. I now realize that some of these were dino. about a week and a half week ago i received my order of a few zeovit products, coral snow, LPS amino acids and coral booster. I have been a little less than the recommended dose for each of these. I also had a small outbreak of cyano during this time which also subsided.

I'm not claiming that any of this is a solution to dino but somehow I don't have them anymore.

 

well, that is very good news!

 

Well just an update. I ended up doing a 5 day blackout and tried to increase the PH to 8.6. Only turned on the light 5 minutes a day to feed the fish. I also added a large clump of chaeto into the sump and left that light on.skimmed heavy. I was running GFO during this period. It appears to me to have worked. It appears that under the dino was GHA growing too. Well the dino is all gone but a tiny 1" square patch on the sand(this is in my 60 gal). The GHA is also slowly been disappearing.