Grey-Brown Algae Strands

mickeyfish

Member
Hi All,

Can someone help me pinpoint the type of algae this may be? It suddenly started appearing in low light areas behind rocks and such, but as you can see in the video there is plenty of flow over it.

It can be best described as grey snot with a reddish tint and it’s expanding to lots of places and clogging pumps and filter floss daily.


Parameter (phosphate is ppm and it needs to come down).
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Tank is 6 years old and most SPS and LPS are thriving.
 
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If it looks and behaves like cyano but is not, maybe it's just some other type of bacteria. Are you carbon dosing or feeding aminos?
 
If it’s snotty my guess would be a bacteria bloom or possibly a type of chrysophates
 
When you do your weekly water changes syphon that off. Get ahead of it by syphoning and get your water parameters in their optimum ranges over the next month or so.
 
FYI I am carbon dosing AND I recently upped it from 5ml per day to 7 of NoPo4x to try and get the phosphates down, but as you can see it’s not helping.

Tank has struggled with high phosphates for years. I have never managed to get it down, but I do have 7 fish in a Biocube.
 
Nitrates are between 5-10 per the API kit (barely moves off yellow). Yes I have a skimmer in the middle chamber of the Biocube, and filtration is the inTank Media basket with floss and Chemipure Elite.
 
There's many kinds of cyanobacteria and it's pretty safe to label your stuff as such. FWIW adding labile DOC, aka carbon dosing, is fraught with issues as labile DOC is implicated with both acute and chronic aspects of coral reef degradation.

First thing I would do is start reducing and stopping the amnount you're dsoing. As mentioned above I would do frequent small water changes ans siphon out as much of the nuisance algae as possible

While your PO4 is higher than what corals typically see on reefs it's not a particualar problem yet. If PO3 is between .03 mg/l and .5 mg/l I'm not going to bother messing with it.


Here's some links:

"Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas" This video compliments Rohwer's book of the same title (Paper back is ~$20, Kindle is ~$10), both deal with the conflicting roles of the different types of DOC in reef ecosystems. While there is overlap bewteen his book and the video both have information not covered by the other and together give a broader view of the complex relationships found in reef ecosystems

Changing Seas - Mysterious Microbes

Nitrogen cycling in hte coral holobiont

BActeria and Sponges

Maintenance of Coral Reef Health (refferences at the end)

Optical Feedback Loop in Colorful Coral Bleaching
Optical Feedback Loop in Colorful Coral Bleaching / Curr. Biol., May 21, 2020 (Vol. 30, Issue 13)

Richard Ross What's up with phosphate"
What's up with phosphate? by Richard Ross | MACNA 2014

Microbial ecology: Algae feed a shift on coral reefs

Coral and macroalgal exudates vary in neutral sugar composition and differentially enrich reef bacterioplankton lineages.

Sugar enrichment provides evidence for a role of nitrogen fixation in coral bleaching

Elevated ammonium delays the impairment of the coral-dinoflagellate symbiosis during labile carbon pollution
(here's an argument for maintaining heavy fish loads if you're carbon dosing)

Excess labile carbon promotes the expression of virulence factors in coral reef bacterioplankton

Unseen players shape benthic competition on coral reefs.

Global microbialization of coral reefs
 
This is amazing information. Thank you @Timfish. I am going to ramp down the carbon dosing, symphonic out as much as I can with water changes over the next few weeks and hopefully it reduces.

Thank you.
 
ROhwer's book talks about shifting equilibriums of ecosystems and I would reccommend reading through it. SOmetimes it can take just a small variable to shift from coral to algae dominate system. But correcting it may take a good deal more effort. I've found fixing nuisance algae issues typically take 1-4 months so patience and consitatncy is needed, even if at times it seems things might be getting worse.
 
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