mattwils71
New member
i have quite a serious algae problem in my tank but i have absolutely no idea what it is???? ill post a pic in min, but its been here for 3 weeks and has only gotten worse plus its really ****ing off my corals 
pico reef pest algae problem challenge
- Thread starter brandon429
- Start date
reefknight
New member
Brandon
Has anyone attempted to directly dose the entire display tank to eradicate dinoflagellates and GHA? Mine has been rather overran with both and I have been hitting the tank hard with GFO and GAC but neither are removing. I have hit the rock structures with a turkey baster to remove excess waste, am conducting extra water changes, lights are reduced due to a ballast being blown out in my fixture for two weeks and I have reduced feedings.
At this point it means something pretty drastic to get things back in line. I have been examining options for peroxide treatments as well as as carbon dosing. Carbon dosing is a bit tricky at this level though due to my test results.
SA - 35%
Alk - 8.5
Ca - 480
Mg - 1700
PO4 - 0.08
NO3 - 0.50
I feel that the nuisance algae is utilizing the NO3 & PO4 before it can be read by the tests and the levels are higher than indicated. Still I feel that they're lower than what may be assisted by carbon dosing. So peroxide may be the way to go, problem is I can't remove the rocks and the algae is everywhere.
Has anyone attempted to directly dose the entire display tank to eradicate dinoflagellates and GHA? Mine has been rather overran with both and I have been hitting the tank hard with GFO and GAC but neither are removing. I have hit the rock structures with a turkey baster to remove excess waste, am conducting extra water changes, lights are reduced due to a ballast being blown out in my fixture for two weeks and I have reduced feedings.
At this point it means something pretty drastic to get things back in line. I have been examining options for peroxide treatments as well as as carbon dosing. Carbon dosing is a bit tricky at this level though due to my test results.
SA - 35%
Alk - 8.5
Ca - 480
Mg - 1700
PO4 - 0.08
NO3 - 0.50
I feel that the nuisance algae is utilizing the NO3 & PO4 before it can be read by the tests and the levels are higher than indicated. Still I feel that they're lower than what may be assisted by carbon dosing. So peroxide may be the way to go, problem is I can't remove the rocks and the algae is everywhere.
don_chuwish
Member
I just beat dinoflagellates with a double whammy attack in my 36G bow. First off, they weren't horrible. Had some cyano, of various colors, in both my HOB refugium and the DT. Killed that off with ChemiClean but will NEVER do that again. Very bad reaction from many corals this time.
A while after that I started seeing the dinoflagellates taking hold. Snails dying, corals unhappy, snotty strings with bubbles in various places. Nitrates & phosphates tested zero, but I assumed that was due to rapid consumption of them.
3 days lights out and daily dosing 2ml of hydrogen peroxide completely eliminated them. Now I can measure a small amount of N-NO3 (0.25ppm with Red Sea) and Phosphate (0.05 Hanna).
The water and sand have never looked cleaner, the corals are happier, snails more active. It's transformed the tank. My dose is pretty low, the 36G tank, plus about 5G of filtration minus sand and rock is probably about 25-30 gallons of water. Only needed 2ml of H2O2 to do the trick.
Never saw any signs of stress from livestock, including fish LPS, SPS, softies, snails, hermits, 1 unidentified crab, and 2 candy stripe pistol shrimps. Amphipods in the HOB refugium seemed fine too.
I can't believe how clean my glass is staying now!
- D
A while after that I started seeing the dinoflagellates taking hold. Snails dying, corals unhappy, snotty strings with bubbles in various places. Nitrates & phosphates tested zero, but I assumed that was due to rapid consumption of them.
3 days lights out and daily dosing 2ml of hydrogen peroxide completely eliminated them. Now I can measure a small amount of N-NO3 (0.25ppm with Red Sea) and Phosphate (0.05 Hanna).
The water and sand have never looked cleaner, the corals are happier, snails more active. It's transformed the tank. My dose is pretty low, the 36G tank, plus about 5G of filtration minus sand and rock is probably about 25-30 gallons of water. Only needed 2ml of H2O2 to do the trick.
Never saw any signs of stress from livestock, including fish LPS, SPS, softies, snails, hermits, 1 unidentified crab, and 2 candy stripe pistol shrimps. Amphipods in the HOB refugium seemed fine too.
I can't believe how clean my glass is staying now!
- D
enchelycore808
Member
Hmm never thought to use this in a reef.. Usually used it to spot treat planted tanks. You can spray it on the surface to get rid of the film that builds up too.
DLANDINO
D.L. Heritage Rings
Wondering if anyone on this thread stumbled across my HA post seen here http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2364127&highlight=successful
Lowefx
New member
Why did he get banned? He helped my when i tried this peroxide on HA (Bryopsis) Unfortunately, after 3 tries, it grew back. I think it is a great temporary fix, and im going to give it another try with the baking soda. Im now running Zeovit, so my nutrients are very low, so it may NOT grow back this time around. Will it interact negatively with ZEO????
l8_apex_it
New member
Brandon has been so helpful. It is shame that he has been banned. He has really fostered the growth of this thread.
I have had positive experiences with H2O2 because of him.
I have had positive experiences with H2O2 because of him.
rcharliesam
Member
Updates. Spot treated second rock on Sunday. Also have been doing low daily dosing to keep the rest in check.
Second spot treated rock
first spot treated rock
Tank shot
Original state (11/13/13)
Four months later.
Would occasionally see some sprouts of hair algae pop up, but nothing that a brief period of re-dosing didn't fix. There are probably even a couple of sprouts in this picture. Nothing at all like before, thankfully. My sand is looking cleaner, I do get some accumulation in the back corners of my Solana, but that is 100% due to the design of the back wall \_____/ (top down), which prevents proper flow back there.
A few notes, not sure if the dosing hurts SPS or if I just can keep SPS in my tank for some reason. I haven't tested, I prefer LPS and Softies anyway, so a non issue for me. Others may want to proceed with caution however.
My LTA ended up eating my cleaner shrimp, not sure if it was due to him scavenging for food, or if he was perhaps in a weakened state. But I have researched nem's eating shrimp and it has happened before, so possibly just coincidence.
I've seen quite a few folks talking about dinoflagellate problems. I had a severe problem. I've attached a photo below that shows the sand-bed, but it was everywhere, and it was killing my tank. I was able to conquer it. Now, I didn't use H202, but what I tried did work, so I thought I'd share (because it's always nice to have options).
I fought this stuff forever, tried everything I could think of, including full black-outs, but nothing worked for long. So what I ended up doing was buying a diamond goby to hep stir up the dinos on the sand. Nothing churns your sandbed better than a diamond goby. Then I replaced all my filter media with fresh carbon and GFO. Then, and this is what I'm convinced is the most important part, I added a UV Sterilizer. Seeing as how the dinos propogate in the water column and just attach somewhere, it's important to clean the water, in addition to the muck.
This fixed the problem in days. The goby loosened everything off the sand, which was sucked up and filtered out by carbon & GFO. The UV Sterilizer killed whatever was in the water (I'm no scientist so I don't know if it's spores or what!). I continued to run the sterilizer for about a week longer, and then removed it. The stuff hasn't come back since.
I was almost at the point where I was ready to pour bleach in the tank and walk away, but this last ditch effort worked, and saved my tank. Whatever solution you choose, do it fast, because Dinos are nasty. They not only look like crap, they cling to corals which can kill them, and they release toxins into the water that kills everything else. I lost a ton of coral to this stuff... so be aggressive!
Before:
After
I fought this stuff forever, tried everything I could think of, including full black-outs, but nothing worked for long. So what I ended up doing was buying a diamond goby to hep stir up the dinos on the sand. Nothing churns your sandbed better than a diamond goby. Then I replaced all my filter media with fresh carbon and GFO. Then, and this is what I'm convinced is the most important part, I added a UV Sterilizer. Seeing as how the dinos propogate in the water column and just attach somewhere, it's important to clean the water, in addition to the muck.
This fixed the problem in days. The goby loosened everything off the sand, which was sucked up and filtered out by carbon & GFO. The UV Sterilizer killed whatever was in the water (I'm no scientist so I don't know if it's spores or what!). I continued to run the sterilizer for about a week longer, and then removed it. The stuff hasn't come back since.
I was almost at the point where I was ready to pour bleach in the tank and walk away, but this last ditch effort worked, and saved my tank. Whatever solution you choose, do it fast, because Dinos are nasty. They not only look like crap, they cling to corals which can kill them, and they release toxins into the water that kills everything else. I lost a ton of coral to this stuff... so be aggressive!
Before:
After
don_chuwish
Member
Great stuff! Seems to me that the UV did the same job as the H2O2 - kill'em in the water column. If I see even a tiny bit making a comeback, one nighttime dose of H2O2 kills it off. I'm trying not to dose all the time, but even when I was it seemed perfectly harmless. Glass stays cleaner too!
- D
rcharliesam
Member
Slight hair algae on my back wall... but for the most part, it has stayed away. Corals are thriving now that the algae isn't taking up all of the nutrients.
(Un)fortunately, I have found this thread. I seem to have a pretty bad dino infestation. It seems I fell trap like lots of others unaware of the existence of dinos, thinking that I just had an algae problem.
This all started for me immediately after changing over from PC lights to LEDs. I had a single 48" PC with half actinic, half 10k, and I moved to a single Current Orbit Marine LED plus 3 Trulumen's as well (2 50/50 actinic/12k, 1 full 12k). I tried not to add too many more watts of light (or so I thought), but I guess that I did since it's hard to compare watt to watt. Not realizing the amount of additional light that those put out, I think I had them turned all the way up from the get go. Well, apparently that was enough light to bleach my mushrooms (hairy as well as some blue/green) in a matter of days if I remember right. My Kena Trees were doing amazing before but have withered away to about half the size probably due to the additional light as well. I don't have any other corals. The hairy mushrooms have just taken over the tank for the most part. Oh yeah - I guess you could say I have an anemone, or maybe hundreds. I have had aiptasia for a long time and hit it with Aiptasia-X here or there. I had just a few prior to this "algae" showing up, but now I guess the water quality has gone down enough that they have spread.
It's worth noting that apparently my salinity has been high for quite a while. I hadn't calibrated my spectrometer in a long time and it was reading 0.005 low I found out. That has been corrected as of a week ago.
Here are my params as of last night (using mostly Hagen master kit):
Salinity 1.025
ph 8.1
Nitrite .1 mg/L
Nitrate 5mg/L
Phosphate .25 (was .50 last week)
Calcium 440
KH 8
My tank has been setup for probably 7-8 years (have lost track). I have cut lights back heavily already thinking it was algae. Now I am considering hydrogen peroxide dosing plus complete blackout for 3 days.
I just got some new fish last week after the LFS told me it was just carpet algae and that a tang will eat away at it (*sigh*). So now I have a clown, Sailfin tang, bluehead wrasse and a very nice regal tang. I most certainly do NOT want to hurt these guys, but I really don't care much about the coral. The hairy mushrooms are a pest pretty much, and I can get a kenya tree start up again.
Any thoughts to my particular case that may not have been mentioned before?
Pics:
(Die aiptasia!)
(Thick stuff... but doesn't seem to have quite as many bubbles as other pics I see of dino)
(mushrooms here are clearly bleached compared to how dark they were before)
This all started for me immediately after changing over from PC lights to LEDs. I had a single 48" PC with half actinic, half 10k, and I moved to a single Current Orbit Marine LED plus 3 Trulumen's as well (2 50/50 actinic/12k, 1 full 12k). I tried not to add too many more watts of light (or so I thought), but I guess that I did since it's hard to compare watt to watt. Not realizing the amount of additional light that those put out, I think I had them turned all the way up from the get go. Well, apparently that was enough light to bleach my mushrooms (hairy as well as some blue/green) in a matter of days if I remember right. My Kena Trees were doing amazing before but have withered away to about half the size probably due to the additional light as well. I don't have any other corals. The hairy mushrooms have just taken over the tank for the most part. Oh yeah - I guess you could say I have an anemone, or maybe hundreds. I have had aiptasia for a long time and hit it with Aiptasia-X here or there. I had just a few prior to this "algae" showing up, but now I guess the water quality has gone down enough that they have spread.
It's worth noting that apparently my salinity has been high for quite a while. I hadn't calibrated my spectrometer in a long time and it was reading 0.005 low I found out. That has been corrected as of a week ago.
Here are my params as of last night (using mostly Hagen master kit):
Salinity 1.025
ph 8.1
Nitrite .1 mg/L
Nitrate 5mg/L
Phosphate .25 (was .50 last week)
Calcium 440
KH 8
My tank has been setup for probably 7-8 years (have lost track). I have cut lights back heavily already thinking it was algae. Now I am considering hydrogen peroxide dosing plus complete blackout for 3 days.
I just got some new fish last week after the LFS told me it was just carpet algae and that a tang will eat away at it (*sigh*). So now I have a clown, Sailfin tang, bluehead wrasse and a very nice regal tang. I most certainly do NOT want to hurt these guys, but I really don't care much about the coral. The hairy mushrooms are a pest pretty much, and I can get a kenya tree start up again.
Any thoughts to my particular case that may not have been mentioned before?
Pics:
(Die aiptasia!)
(Thick stuff... but doesn't seem to have quite as many bubbles as other pics I see of dino)
(mushrooms here are clearly bleached compared to how dark they were before)
For some reason I cannot edit my post above, but I just realized this is in a nano forum. I have a 72g bowfront and 18ga sump, if that makes any difference.
Is this 100% dino or is it really another type of algae?
I just added some additional LR from a friend who tore down his tank, and the dino are all over it 2 weeks later. I am considering pulling as much rock out as possible dipping it in fresh water. I read here or somewhere else that freshwater kills dino within a few seconds. If I lose some mushrooms doing this, I don't care. This might help significantly with the dino on the rocks, but clearly I have a lot on the glass itself too. I keep trying to scrape it off, but it comes back again very quickly. I did a 50% water change last night before reading that apparently you want to avoid water changes while having an outbreak, so i'm done with water changes for a bit.
The main thing I do not want to do is end up causing my tank to cycle again (don't want to harm fish at all).
I'm also considering adding a UV sterilizer if that would help get some dino out of the water column (and I can get a huge amount out by dipping the rock in fresh water).
Lastly, I added a GFO yesterday to help bring down Phosphates since they were a bit high.
Thoughts?
Is this 100% dino or is it really another type of algae?
I just added some additional LR from a friend who tore down his tank, and the dino are all over it 2 weeks later. I am considering pulling as much rock out as possible dipping it in fresh water. I read here or somewhere else that freshwater kills dino within a few seconds. If I lose some mushrooms doing this, I don't care. This might help significantly with the dino on the rocks, but clearly I have a lot on the glass itself too. I keep trying to scrape it off, but it comes back again very quickly. I did a 50% water change last night before reading that apparently you want to avoid water changes while having an outbreak, so i'm done with water changes for a bit.
The main thing I do not want to do is end up causing my tank to cycle again (don't want to harm fish at all).
I'm also considering adding a UV sterilizer if that would help get some dino out of the water column (and I can get a huge amount out by dipping the rock in fresh water).
Lastly, I added a GFO yesterday to help bring down Phosphates since they were a bit high.
Thoughts?
Last edited:
urbanrat84
New member
Without knowing more about your setup, just the age of your reef alone makes me go straight to 'old tank syndrome'. You might find this an interesting read. See what you think. I've been through the same thing recently. After a while the biological filtration in the tank in the form of rocks and sand can become a source of nitrate and phosphate and needs some attention to restore the balance again.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/10/aafeature
I think there is a place for hydrogen peroxide being applied in your scenario, but first I would give the tank the biggest clean of its life and a series of big water changes - in stages to avoid causing a cycle. Start with the sump. Clean the glass, equip, rinse off any live rock and siphon out any detritus/algae. Once you've done the sump, add a filter sock to your overflow if you haven't already and start on the display.
Take the rocks out one at a time and go over them with a pair of bone cutters. Manually remove anything undesirable - ie. the aiptasia - by using the bone cutters to snip off a sliver of rock underneath them. This means they will be gone forever! No growing back.
Use phosphate and nitrate removal aids for a while to address any leaching from your rocks. There are countless chemical filtration options to explore.
You may also want to introduce a few kg's of new live rock to the system or use a bacterial product such as Dr Tims One and Only Nitrifying Bacteria to boost the nitrifying bacteria population in your tank back to where it should be. You'll know this has worked when you see your nitrates reduce.
Just my 2 cents, I can certainly sympathise with you! I would use the hydrogen peroxide to keep algaes to a minimum while you are addressing the source of the problem.
Thanks for all of the comments. I was also wondering about "old tank syndrome" as well since most things I've been reading talk about people's tanks setup for a couple-few years, not 7-8 like mine. Never thought I would look into buying BONE cutters
. Good idea about cutting away the aiptasia though. I went to my local area marine society with the issue as well and they proposed the same - clean as much as possible out and dose H2O2 3%.Luckily I tested my water last night and PO4 is now 0, NO3 is 5mg/L, and Salinity is holding at 1.024-1.025. So my GFO reactor seems to be doing the trick on phosphates. I have also turned off my lights and when i used a flashlight I couldn't see dino's anymore. Here are more pictures from Monday night (I'll get more again tonight if I see improvement):
urbanrat84
New member
Thats the results I would expect to see when the nitrifying bacteria population is at a healthy level. So perhaps rock leaching IS the problem.
