Maroon / Red Patches on glass and substrate

[Posseidon]

Hi Reefers,

Need some experienced advice here. I've fought diatoms and even dinoflagellates in the past and won those battles. I learned from my mistakes and take good care of my water parameters.

However, now I see some maroonish-red patches that grow on my tank glass and substrates. Yup, only tank glass and substrate & NOT on any of my Live Rocks. I can't ID them and not sure how to erradicate them. They look like semi-transparent maroon film that covers stuff like blanket. They are very lose and can easily come off by just sliding your fingers over them. So, I use the magnetic scrubber for the glass. But I can't siphon every substrate surface. Some areas are hard to reach.

Here's a pic of the stuff on substrate. Notice the film between the rock and goniopora:

Here's another pic of the films in my overflow box:

The tank's been running for over a year now. However, it's been running for about 4 months since my last battle with dinos, which involved tearing down the tank. I run BioPellets for nutrient export, in addition to water changes.

My water parameters are as follows:
NO3 - Fluctuates between 3 and 10 between water changes (depending on how I feed).
PO4 - Undetectable (I run Rowaphos and sometimes Seachem Phosguard to keep them in check)
SiO2 - Undetectable (I run Rowaphos and sometimes Seachem Phosguard to keep them in check)

All other parameters for keeping corals are in range. The fishes and corals are happy and doing well.

The stuff is turning my base substrates from good white to unsightly maroon color. Please help me fight it before its all over the place.

Thanks.

 

[Quik Z06]

Looks to me like Cyano. Have you tested your phosphate lvls? What kind of water do you use for water changes?

 

[Posseidon]

PO4 is Phosphate

 

[Posseidon]

Phosphate is undetectable. And I use RO Water for water changes.

 

[Posseidon]

A couple of questions:

1) Is Cyanobacteria and Red Slime Algae the same or two different species? Which one do you think I have?

2) I've been careful with Phosphate levels. However, can't say the same for Dissolved Organics. My skimmer works well and removes fair amount of gunk. But, I don't know how much more is still in the water.
Can I have Cyano issue if Phosphate levels are low but Dissolved Organics are high?

3) What role does lighting play in this? I mean, what sort of changes in lighting levels/intensity/spectrum can evade cyano but still be safe for corals?

 

[Nano sapiens]

A couple of questions:

1) Is Cyanobacteria and Red Slime Algae the same or two different species? Which one do you think I have?

2) I've been careful with Phosphate levels. However, can't say the same for Dissolved Organics. My skimmer works well and removes fair amount of gunk. But, I don't know how much more is still in the water.
Can I have Cyano issue if Phosphate levels are low but Dissolved Organics are high?

3) What role does lighting play in this? I mean, what sort of changes in lighting levels/intensity/spectrum can evade cyano but still be safe for corals?

1. Yes, same thing
2. Your test kit may register '0', but your system has phosphate. The cyano are using the phosphate, so you don't see it on the test.
3. The general consensus is that old bulbs, which color shift towards the red spectrum, can encourage cyano growth when nutrients are high. That's why you'll see recommendations to change bulbs often. I have found a similar effect with sunlight filtered through my room's window, but it's only apparent when nutrients are too high in the tank.

The tank is not very old and you've disturbed the system greatly fighting your other algae problems. I had similar problems a while back and solved them with a rigorous detritus removal program (vigorously basting the LR daily and vacuuming the SB weekly). Much of the phosphate (in it's many forms) resides in the detritus, so remove as much of it as you can. Clean LR & LS allows for more efficient denitrification, so you should see nitrate drop, too.

 

[Posseidon]

Thanks Nano for the advice.

1) Thanks for clearing that out
2) I understand. So, I'll up the PO4 removal by increasing GFO and Phosguard, though I don't register anything in the tester. At least these products will provide some additional competition to the Cyanos for PO4 while I battle them.
3) I'm using LED fixture. However, was running it at a little over 50% intensity. That was to acclimate back the corals gradually after the tear down. And then, I gradually noticed the red patches. I increased the light intensity by another 20%in the last couple of days. That's for the SPS. Hope the additional intensity helps.

Now, since these patches are fairly new and in a few places, today I manually cleaned them off from the overflow box and sand bed. Hopefully, they wont be able get enough PO4 to set foot or multiply.

 

[Nano sapiens]

I'd suggest increased detritus removal over more GFO/Phosguard. No cost and you'll be removing phosphate (and other nutrients) before they are further reduced and added into the water column. As stated, you'll also be increasing the ability of your tank to denitrify.

Watch your SPS cloration. If you run too much GFO/Phosguard they can turn pale from lack of phosphate/nutrients (not to be confused with bleaching caused by too much light).

Good luck!

 

[Posseidon]

Ok. I'll try to clean up my SB in every water change. The issue is that it's not easy to reach all grounds with the siphon gravel vacuum.

Do you use something specific or a DIY device? There would be many hard-to-reach places wherein I wished I had something like a flexible auto vac. And most of the detritus would probably be in such closed areas amongst rocks with least flow. Not to mention shifting of sand based corals around. Any advice on the procedure?

 

[Nano sapiens]

I use a commercial 'gravel vac' on a smaller sized tank. For larger tanks with a lot of rock work, cleaning is indeed a problem. Probably the only practical way to get much of it out (besides deconstruction) is to use a power head to flush in, around and under the structure.

 

[Timber77]

alot of people get red patches when they start vodka dosing or bio pellets or in your case have a new tank. . it will go away assuming your husbandry is solid. if your pellet reactor gets gunked up or cakes up with algae, etc it will definately encourage it. manually toothbrushing the rocks will help.

 

[Posseidon]

I run bio pellets and I've kept it in dark to avoid any algae build up on it. And these red patches are not on any of my rocks. They are only on the substrate and overflow box.

I've vacuumed my substrate and cleaned my overflow box. Since then, my overflow is clean. However, I notice some small and light red patches (very few though) coming back on the substrate.

The main observation is that, after I vaccummed the red patches, my substrate was clean white for a few days. And then, I started getting light green patches on my substrate. This isn't like your typical GHA. They look like bright green (They don't glow in blue).

Do Cyano also come in green? By removing the red cyano in last cleanup, are green ones now outcompeting the reds?

 

[Posseidon]

Here's the green film that's spreading over the substrate after cleaning out the red film patches. But this green film is covering a larger area compared to red.
By the way, its a beautiful bright green color. I wouldn't be thinking of taking it out if it was not nuisance algae/bacteria.

First red and now green. Is this an expected behavior?

 

[Griznock]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2279039

every thing you need to know about it is in this post

 

[Posseidon]

Most of them talk about cyano, as in RED species.
Do I have the a Green Cyano now? Just want to clarify that for my curiosity.

However, I realize that the fighting method would still be same. I got some SPS and think the 3 days light out might badly affect their colors. And it might take them months to recover the color. Plz correct me if I got this wrong.

I'll try one step at a time. For now, I'll siphon my sand with water changes. Hopefully, the volume of good bacteria may compete and then keep the cyano from multiplying.

 

[JDTimko]

My two cents.
i ran biopellets for a year and i had on and off cyano for a year. best thing i did so far was stop using biopellets, increase my vacuuming of sandbed, 15% weekly water changes and rockwork maintainance.
I think biopellets are not a balanced approach to managing nitrate and phosphate. pellets feed bacteria that use no3 and po4 in a ratio of 16:1 i believe. so if the ratio remains unbalanced, which it can very easily, i think it contributes to phosphate build up. we don't always see the phosphate in testing because cyano uses it up binding it quickly.
also coral needs a moderate and balanced amount of no3 and po4 to remain healthy, so the imbalance on either side of the scale can easily lead to unhappy corals. biopellets can work in theory definitely and in practice with a lot of supplements and careful adjustments to balance and limit the amount phosphate and nitrate reduction, but it just seems to be an exercise in futility in reality and overall more work than just doing more maintanence.

as far as removing phosphate currently in the tank. I agree with regular vacuuming of sandbed to remove built up detritus. also i like to take a small powerhead and blow off a 1/4 or 1/3 of the rockwork each week before a water change, getting into the crevices and stirring up detritus and then letting the tank clear while running the system powerheads at a speed that keeps the detritus suspended until it is trapped in filtration ( i use filter sock and then change it out with WC). then do weekly water changes until you find the level of nutrients you are aiming for and keep up the maintainance.
don't know if that is at all helpful to you, but it did help my battle with cyano.
Good luck to you and may your cyano die a quick and painful death.

 

[Posseidon]

Thanks JD.

Your theory about biopellets makes sense. However, in the past I used to struggle big time with nutrients. And then i started biopellets and it really helps keep my NO3 always below 10 (even when I miss water change a week). But, if this comes at the expense of cyano, then i need to rethink about it.

You've mentioned that you stopped biopellets and then increased vaccuming sandbed. Now, I'm curious if it was the "increased vaccuming of sandbed" or "stopping biopellets" that helped. I'll see if I can crack that by splitting the two activities. I'll try siphoning the sandbed for a couple of weeks to see if it works. And if no go, I'll take biopellets offline and observe for another two weeks (with regular water changes).

Hehe. Your "Good Luck" statement made me laugh.

Appreciate your explanation.

 

[Posseidon]

I've vaccumed my sandbed today.

And will continue the vaccum for a few more weekly water changes. Later, I'll leave the sandbed untouched and continue water changes. I'll observe if they come back or observe their growth speed if any.

 

[JDTimko]

when you vacuumed the sandbed did you notice if it was pulling a lot of gunk out or any at all? observing that would let you know if you need to continue vacuuming and how often. if it is still pulling gunk out you should probably continue.
also how far into the sand are you vacuuming? your sand looks like about the same grade of sand as i am using, which lets a lot of detritus to get down pretty deep in to the sand.

I vacuum mine every week because i feed both fish and corals moderately heavy and my sand just gets gunked up quickly.

by the way a neat trick i used to get the cyano off the rocks very easily was to take a 1/2" inner diameter hose and put a cone shaped plastic tip on the vacuuming side, which created a super suction tip and just rips the cyano off the rocks and out of every little crevice while draining very little water, takes it right off the sand too with very little sand attached to it.
For the cone tip I used one of the feeding tips from a julian sprungs feeding syringe and just widened the tip to just under the size of a pencil eraser. works great if you need to remove cyano while you get the source under control.

 

[Posseidon]

I've done a few water changes now and vacuumed the sandbed each time. At first, it pulled out a lot of gunk. Wow! I think that was a Phosphate factory down there. And then each time was comparatively cleaner. However, by fourth time 90% of the sand was fairly clean. The remaining 10% is due to hard to reach places with siphon, that i barely manage to clean each time. But then, these areas are in shade. So, not a good choice for cyanos to colonize. Anyways, after each vacuum, the rate at which the cyano used to return on the sandbed has drastically reduced. I used to notice a small tint or light patch that's barely visible unless you look for it. I used to take them out in the next cleanup.

Now, the vacuumed water does not pull any considerable gunk from the exposed substrate. Shall I just continue until no such small patches appear at all? Will that ever happen? I'm guessing the idea is to keep vacuuming until cyanos cannot get any Phosphates from the sandbed and hence not develop any such film. And then, leave the sandbed untouched for the good bacteria to colonize and hence compete cyano for space and nutrients. And then vacuum the sandbed once every month or so, to reduce the gunk and bioload on your filtration system. I think in a long-run matured tank, the amount of good bacteria in Live Rocks are enough for biological filtration and sandbed can be maintained for aesthetics appeal.

The cone-tip idea is good. I'll see if I can improvise something like that.