Dinoflagellates, Cyano, Diatoms, Something else?

[mossimo654]

Hi all,

My tank finished cycling a few days ago. I have 0ammonia, 0 nitrite, 5ppm nitrate, and close to 0 phosphate.

Towards the end of my cycle I started getting the "new tank uglies." After researching a bit I realized that this was diatoms. They took over some live rock and some of the sand, but I didn't pay too much attention to it since it's supposed to be normal.

However starting two days ago, I noticed that there were some "air bubbles" floating on top of the algae. They started to proliferate until today, where they're ALL over my tank! I'm afraid that this is dinoflagellates. I've attached two pictures that are fairly indicative of what they look like.

When I rub them with my fingers the air bubbles stay intact and float around my tank, and the pieces of algae stick together and float around. They don't feel like mucous which makes me hopeful that it's not Dinos, but I really don't know!

This has inspired me to invest in a cleanup crew (was going to wait... but it's cycled so might as well).

Check out these pics

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="//imgur.com/a/CXd0B/embed"></iframe>

 

[Grimreaperz]

Could be red slime algae from what I have red so far and my LFS showed it to me. Red almost hairy looking stuff with bubbles all on it.

here is a pick from Google. Does it look like this?

Apparently those bubbles are nitrogen bubbles? please correct me if I am mistaken?

 

[mossimo654]

Could be red slime algae from what I have red so far and my LFS showed it to me. Red almost hairy looking stuff with bubbles all on it.

here is a pick from Google. Does it look like this?

Apparently those bubbles are nitrogen bubbles? please correct me if I am mistaken?

It's so hard to tell b/c of different lighting and stuff. The consistency looks the same. I'm having a bit of confirmation bias as I'd obviously MUCH more prefer cyano in my new tank than dinos. To my eyes the stuff in my tank looks much more brown, but that could also be because of all the diatoms as well.

Is there anything that eats cyano? I suppose I could probably just figure out that way...

 

[Grimreaperz]

I think some snails and some crabs are known to eat it. I am not 100% sure on that. still researching everything myself I am new as well. Just the bubbles keyed me into Cyano as the person at my LFS said "That's how you know its red slime from the bubbles" as she proceeded to rub them off. As i asked her about some red (what turned out to be coraline apparently) patch on my rock.

But I could be wrong as I said still doing research on all this myself.