Is this dinos or cyano?

[drummerboyevil]

Story time: Tank was fallow for 8 weeks while I treated all my fish with hypo. Kept nutrients in the water for the SPS with rotifers, oysterfeast and reef energy.

Reintroduced the fish and am now having a bloom of this:

Doesn't seem to be the "strings" or have the bubbles that I hear about and have seen pictures of with dinos. Last night I siphoned a lot of it out into a filter sock with the help of light basting, and it comes off the rock as intact strands for the most part.

I had something similar to this a few months ago and it seemed to resolve on its own. Should I be worried?

 

[mcgyvr]

Looks like dinos to me..
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2531708

 

[Becks]

I would say cyno

 

[drummerboyevil]

I would say cyno

Kinda what I thought considering barely if ANY bubbles involved even with lights on.

 

[mcgyvr]

perform the test in the link and see what you find...
I hope its cyano too for your sake..

 

[drummerboyevil]

Appears to be dinos based on that test. Started lights out and covered tank and sump from light. Hooking up GFO and carbon. Picked up some two little fishes biactiv bacteria and will start dosing peroxide nightly. Unfortunately my pH will only be 8.0 or so and I'm already dosing kalk in ATO. Planning on lights out for 72 hours at which time I'll pull the carbon and GFO. I also removed my chaeto since it will be unlight and is contaminated.


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[Buzz1329]

I must be missing something because it looks like GHA to me?

 

[Lsufan]

If u look closer he has some Dino on the same rock as the GHA

 

[mcgyvr]

I must be missing something because it looks like GHA to me?

Yes the brown stringy stuff covering most of the algae

 

[ssick92]

Looks like the beginning of dino's to me... But if it doesn't get much worse or starts showing bubbles, then you may have lucked out and just have some stringy cyano.

Good luck!

 

[drummerboyevil]

Alright 72 hour blackout is over. During the blackout I had the tank completely blacked out with heavy black curtains.

I also changed filter socks about twice a day, ran GFO and Carbon in a reactor (I normally just run a small amount of carbon passively, no GFO). I removed the GFO and Carbon before lights came on this morning.

I also dosed food grade 35% peroxide daily at an equivalent dose to the 1mL/10 gallon of the 3% peroxide (can't remember what it worked out to right off hand... something like 1.3mL for 150 gallons).

LEDs and blue T5s are on right now with zero signs of dinos. Hopefully I have weakened them enough for them the have died out, but we'll see. Some of my SPS have washed out quite a bit which I think is probably more of an effect of the GFO than the light.

I'll keep the thread updated.

Oh, and my cleaner shrimp survived the peroxide.

 

[drummerboyevil]

Also surprised that I haven't lost a single snail to this.

 

[mcgyvr]

Some of my SPS have washed out quite a bit which I think is probably more of an effect of the GFO than the light.

.

Could just be the 3 days without lights or the peroxide.. Not sure I'd ever put peroxide into a tank with SPS corals..
It seems to be ok with zoas and a few others but many reported SPS problems due to it from what I've read..

I've only used peroxide on rock that was removed from the tank, dipped/scrubbed/rinsed and put back in..

 

[drummerboyevil]

Well I was in the clear for 10 days, but I have some bubbles showing up on the rock now. The suspect algae above never really showed a lot of bubbles to be honest, so I don't know if this is the same thing, but I want to catch whatever it is early.

 

[ajoe]

I had a similar issue and the 72 hour blackout was only a temp fix same as yours. I waited about a week and managed best I could then did a 5 day blackout (fed small amount in the dark of night days 4-5 to keep their bellies full) and that did the trick. Not sure if the SPS can handle that long of a black out as I don't have any so maybe someone can chime on that before you consider that. I also trimmed back feeding to one every 2 days. Fish have pretty small systems and most people over feed leaving food and lots of pooh for the tank to deal with. Only takes a few remaining strains to reignite which is what is happening. I also would cut back on the lighting for a while. Maybe run blues only or at the most whites at 20-30% for a few hours a day. It's never one thing that causes this but a culmination of factors.

best of luck.

 

[gmcpickup66]

How about if you have anemones? I have 2 and would like to try the lights out for 3 plus days. Would that be ok? I went 3 days last time and my anemone wasn't happy. Anyone tried with anemone before?

 

[ajoe]

bump

 

[drummerboyevil]

I went lights out for 72 hours already and I have a BTA. Didn't move or anything.

 

[gmcpickup66]

Are you planning on longer then 72 hours?

 

[drummerboyevil]

Are you planning on longer then 72 hours?

No, since the rate of progression is MUCH slow than before the first black out I'm going to try 36 hours blackouts every week or so and see how it goes.

I haven't lost a single snail, fish or coral to this yet so I think this is a more reasonable approach so long as it doesn't grow exponentially. I think I'm going to start dosing a good bacteria as well.