Can anyone identify this?

[krullshards]

I've been bad about maintenance in my 5 gallon nano reef, especially having been sick for two weeks and just not having energy. Tomorrow I plan on doing a pretty thorough deep cleaning.

In the meantime, I just saw this stuff. Any idea what I am looking at here?

I have a small zoa frag, and a couple of small sps frags in here. I really need to up my maintenance game, but anyway. The only other things are a couple of peppermint shrimp, 2 -3 margarita snails, an emerald crab and a couple of hermits and most importantly a yellow clown goby.

Any idea what this stuff is?

 

[firefly73]

looks like the start of cynano whoo hoo . cut your lights and clean it up. add more flow sort out your maintanence cheers

 

[Deinonych]

Looks like dinoflagellates to me.

 

[firefly73]

Looks like dinoflagellates to me.

yeah i reckon your right bit pale and stringy for cyano plus the gas bubble is on the outside.

 

[krullshards]

Ok, so some research tells me these are definitely dinos. What are the recommended treatments? I have found the following method:

http://scaledmagazine.com/solution-dinoflagellate-outbreak-reef-aquarium/

And also another method that I found was to raise PH. Should I remove the shrimp, snails, crab and fish first?

 

[Deinonych]

There's a lengthy thread over in the Reef Chemistry section about dinos. You might start there.

 

[krullshards]

Great thanks!

 

[krullshards]

I just checked my water parameters ahead of my water change.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0

I had to check twice. It's been three weeks since I've done a water change because I was sick. I can't understand how the nitrates are zero. Could it be that the algae and dinos are taking it all up?