50seven
New member
I'm off searching the internetz for a trustworthy pest algae ID site, but in the meantime thought I'd post here with some photos...
Backstory:
Since the beginning of summer I've been battling what I thought was a GHA outbreak. GFO, ATS, carbon, tried it all. No change. About two months ago the hairy green algae morphed into a dusty rusty algae. It's weird stuff, it looks like living rust particles in the water. Looks like a combination of built-up detritus and hair algae, but reddish brown.
But- I may have caught a break...
This ordeal really had me scratching my head. Until I poked around in the refugium, and noticed that the magnet on on of the powerheads had completely exploded and was almost completely rusted out in the water, leaching who-knows-what. Add to that the remains of a disintegrated drywall screw in the back of the sump, I may have a variety of unknown elements in my water.
So I'm on a regular regimen of WC's, but I'm still not sure if the algae is receding or not. So I'd like to know exactly what it is.
Anyhoo...
I was doing some reading, and wondered if the problem is really GHA or rather lyngbya. Hence the deeper look. The long stringy things are the hair algae. the little star puff things are, from what I can tell, the rusty particles. I need to get a better pipet to get a better sample of the rusty stuff to be sure.
If anyone has any knowledge as to what these varieties are, I would be glad to know.
Without any further ado, here are the photos:
Backstory:
Since the beginning of summer I've been battling what I thought was a GHA outbreak. GFO, ATS, carbon, tried it all. No change. About two months ago the hairy green algae morphed into a dusty rusty algae. It's weird stuff, it looks like living rust particles in the water. Looks like a combination of built-up detritus and hair algae, but reddish brown.
But- I may have caught a break...
This ordeal really had me scratching my head. Until I poked around in the refugium, and noticed that the magnet on on of the powerheads had completely exploded and was almost completely rusted out in the water, leaching who-knows-what. Add to that the remains of a disintegrated drywall screw in the back of the sump, I may have a variety of unknown elements in my water.
So I'm on a regular regimen of WC's, but I'm still not sure if the algae is receding or not. So I'd like to know exactly what it is.
Anyhoo...
I was doing some reading, and wondered if the problem is really GHA or rather lyngbya. Hence the deeper look. The long stringy things are the hair algae. the little star puff things are, from what I can tell, the rusty particles. I need to get a better pipet to get a better sample of the rusty stuff to be sure.
If anyone has any knowledge as to what these varieties are, I would be glad to know.
Without any further ado, here are the photos:
