Ugly algae growth?? Help!

jsousa

Member
Getting some ugly long slimy looking brown-green algae. They are strands that produce bubbles. Kind of annoying since my water quality is pretty darn good. I run a Prodibio LNS and supplement with ZeoVit additives. My parameters are very good little or no nitrates, PO4 usually somewhere under .06, Alk at 8, CA at 480. Corals look excellent. Good growth and color.

I can only suspect a few things. I started dosing Iron to help with my greens. Even though my Iron is very low, pretty much undetectable, I have heard it can cause an algae bloom. Also, I just added another set of T5's. Now I have 2 250w Radium 20Ks, 2 80w T5s and 2 24" 24watt T5s. Th 2 shorter T5s were added on the sides of my tank to fill in the darker areas. Thirdly, I just dosed Interceptor and that helped my corals tremendously. They look great now. Not sure if that can have an effect. And finally I did a major cleaning removing some excess algae rhat I found growing in my overflows.

Any ideas of what type of algae that could be, how it could have be grown and how I can remove it? I'm feeling too good about my tank right now for this stuff to get the best of me.
 
I'll try to snap some pics of it tonight. From what I have read, and my experience with cyano (I had many years ago), I'm leaning towards dinos.

I have not tried to increase flow or cut back on lighting yet. This just appeared 2 weeks ago. I run my MHs for 6 hours a day and T5s for 8. How long do you guys think I should cut them back for? MHs for 4hrs? T5s for 6? Or just cut back the MHs to 4 only?

If the case was dinos, what feeds its growth? Is it just light? PO4? NO3? Should light reduction to the trick?
 
Not sure I follow. I haven't lowered my light cycle yet. Just asking for some thoughts.

BTW, its definitely dinos. I really think it came from me moving rocks around the tank and removing some rock from the tank. Kind of stirred up the sandbed some probably releasing phosphates into the water column.
 
Back
Top