What is this gooey stuff?

[BumpinTJ24]

I've had this stuff for a while. It grows on any dead piece of coral and keeps my corals from growing over it. I have to use a turkey baster a couple times a week to get it off. I do 20% water changes weekly. I'm thinking it is a possible phosphate problem due to a bad batch of water from my RO/DI. I need to order new filters. I've been using RO/DI water from another source in the mean time. My tank parameters are below:

S.G. - 1.026
Temp. - 77-79
NO3 - 0
NH4 - 0
pH - 8.05-8.12
PO4 - ?

I ordered a phosphate reactor and rowaphos to hopefully solve the problem. Just was wondering if someone could identify this stuff for me and let me know the possible causes. Thanks.

 

[fishdave739]

Looks like dinoflagellates to me. Don't just turkey baster it, siphon it out and replace just that water. Not big water changes, seems to fuel the fire. I just rid my tank of it, left the lights off for three days. You're o n the right track with new ro cartridges and po4 removal. I have crazy flow so it didn't do much in the tank but collected in the sump as snot.

 

[Ti]

You don't want to know......J/K
Yeh looks like dinoflagellates

 

[einsteins]

I have had the same stuff....Borneman identified it and recomended getting rid of silicates in the system...I ran phosban in a phosban reactor along with a bag of phosorb in the sump for 2 weeks now im just running the phosban in the reactor and it is almost completely gone....GL

einsteins

 

[chadfarmer]

dinoflagellates

 

[BumpinTJ24]

thanks guys. I also read that slowly raising my pH to 8.6 via kalkwasser will get rid of it. So along with the rowaphos that will be in thursday, a day without lights, small water change and the raise in pH will hopefully get me back on track. Thanks to all for the help in identifying it.