Help! Algae ID

Do you have egg crate in this tank?

Have you tried bumping up the pH or magnesium?

 

look up dinoflaggelletes

 

Nope - been following the egg crate/chrysophyte thread but I have no egg crate to remove to help the situation!

Dinoflagellates were my first thought, however the fact that it is completely colourless (despite the brown tinge in the photos) pushed me more toward the chrysophyte route.

Would you suggest decreasing the photoperiod? Increasing magnesium? Just waiting till it exhausts its nutrient supply?

 

Looking closely, this algae seems to be light dependent as it is not growing on any shaded surfaces.
Because of this, I am thinking of doing a 3 day full blackout.

Is this a silly idea?

 

I did a 4 day complete black out, no light at all. I was treating Dino. Raising the pH and mag, reduction of water changes for a while, cleaning the rocks and corals off with a turkey baster and then clean the mechanical filter finally worked for me.

I do not think that is Dino, but you already know that.

It can not hurt, my corals were not adversely affected by it.

 

Ok so I think it's about time for an update...

I tried raising pH and Mag for ~2 weeks on top of not having done a water change for >1 month. NOTHING! The algae seemed to grow faster and faster every day! It was getting to the point where I had to clean it off the rocks daily or it would start growing over my corals (which were already looking pretty angry).

Starting last Sunday I started a full blackout. I cleaned off all the algae I could, then changed the carbon, cleaned all mechanical filters, turned up the skimmer and put black trash bags over the glass. I left the tank this way for 4 days.
My soft corals got pretty angry, and some of the smaller SPS frags lost some colour, but we got through it ok. The alkalinity also went from 8 to 10.5dKH without dosing anything (other than kalkwasser in the top off).

The algae situation is 100x times better than it was. Most of it has disappeared. There is still a light covering of fuzz on the rocks, so I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'm much happier with the state of the tank.
My lights are only on 3 hours a day at present (with actinics on 1 extra hour each side, so 5 hours total).

I was thinking another blackout might help with the remaining fuzz, but I don't know how long to wait between blackouts.
Any advice?

 

While its in that fuzzy stage I'd throw a couple Mexican Turbo snails in there. They'll knock it right out

 

Hmm interesting.

When my algae issue started to look like it was making a come back I just reduced the photo period again. I probably did that for about 3 months.
It finally just died, but mine was dino.
Four day total black out, than 2 hours a day, up to four than back to 2 it went on like that for a couple weeks. Finally it just died out.
Hope someone that has actually beat this chimes in. Maybe pm member blackraven and see how turned out for him.

 

I sent blackraven a pm, hopefully he can give me some advice. But someone else must have encountered and beaten this!
Anyone????

 

If it is chrysophytes then it is silica based. Running gfo to lower silicas, andchange out your DI resin because silica are the first to be released from resin