Cyano, dinoflagelles, or simply diatoms?

[keebler]

I can't figure out what the heck this brownish-red plague is.
My levels are perfect...my lighting is good, I use walmart ro water, I am about to get an ro/di, I use coralife salt, I am very confused. My tank has been up for say 4 months and I should not have diatoms, but what if my water source is full of silicates??? I was also thinking excess nutrient, but my skimmer skims like a champ...it is an octopus hob.
Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and phosphates are all 0.
Calcium is 480
Alk is 12
If you need some better pictures, I can get some...but here is my plague. What is it and what do I do?

 

[lighteningthes]

Wish I knew because my 4 month old tank has this crap everyday! I can clean my tank and they next day it is back in full force!

 

[keebler]

I'm about to do a 100% water change and clean my sand. I want to know what the problem is, what I did wrong, and what this crap is. If it's cyano, I have no idea why I have it??? It also pops up on my glass if that helps. If I am doing something wrong, educate me, but don't be mean.

 

[subielover]

Is it stringy? It looks like diatoms to me, but if it is stingy and flowing in the water then it is cyano. JMO

 

[keebler]

Originally Posted by subielover
http:///forum/post/2814219
Is it stringy? It looks like diatoms to me, but if it is stingy and flowing in the water then it is cyano. JMO
Yep, stringy. Hey, what do I do? Why did I get it? But wait, there aren't any bubbles???

 

[keebler]

I have a plan. Tell me what you think. I do nothing until I get my ro/di filter, then I will do a 60% water change, get rid of as much of this as I can, kill the lights for 5 days, but keep the fuge light on. Then I will constantly clean the fuge of any of this crap. That way, when it dies, the nutrients from the dead stuff will be taken up by cheato rather than new diatoms. What do you think of that?

 

[subielover]

Well if its cyano, it is not an algae and not soley dependent on light. Cyano is a bacteria, do a search a lot of information on this board about it. I battled it a month or two ago. I had to increase my flow, maybe you should do the same

Good luck, I know how terribly frustrating it can be. It can also be from excess nutrients as well. You should evaluate your feeding schedule and how much flow you have in the tank. HTH

 

[sjk2840]

I have the same cr## in my tank. My tanks been up since March. This is what I did. Feed 1 time a day, cut back the lighting to about 6 hours a day and went to my local fish store and they told me to use this stuff call ed Algaefix-it works slowly. Then I got this idea and scrubbed all of my live rock-you couldnt even see the color on my rock-it just looked brown. I did use the water from my water change to clean my rock, but now my ammonia and nitrites went up a little- I hope I didnt kill off all of my beneficial bacteria. But, the tank looks good.

 

[sickboy]

If it is cyano, I had to deal with it a couple months ago.
Here's what I did:
-Cut back feeding drastically, didn't get rid of it.
-cut back lighting, didn't get rid of it.
-increased/changed flow, worked a little
-took out all of my rock and washed it, then vacuumed out the sand, didn't work.
I tried everything I could find. My water tested perfect on my API test kits, so i didn't think that was the problem. Well, I got desperate and put a phosphate pad in my filter.......
....completely gone within a week, and hasn't been back since!! My situation could be a special case, and I think it did me a lot of good to change the flow and decrease feeding, but my tank is much less of a hassle now that I just run a phosphate pad. (Oh, and I also buy my water by the gallon, which could be part of the prob, but according to my test kit....)

 

[keebler]

Originally Posted by sickboy
http:///forum/post/2814319
If it is cyano, I had to deal with it a couple months ago.
Here's what I did:
-Cut back feeding drastically, didn't get rid of it.
-cut back lighting, didn't get rid of it.
-increased/changed flow, worked a little
-took out all of my rock and washed it, then vacuumed out the sand, didn't work.
I tried everything I could find. My water tested perfect on my API test kits, so i didn't think that was the problem. Well, I got desperate and put a phosphate pad in my filter.......
....completely gone within a week, and hasn't been back since!! My situation could be a special case, and I think it did me a lot of good to change the flow and decrease feeding, but my tank is much less of a hassle now that I just run a phosphate pad. (Oh, and I also buy my water by the gallon, which could be part of the prob, but according to my test kit....)
Sounds exactly like my problem. I have some phosphate remover in my room somewhere, I'll give it a whirl. But I did increase my flow by adding a spray bar over the sand and another powerhead, but nothing has changed. I'm going to go do that now. I don't have a lot of faith, but hey...it's worth a shot. Thanks. I buy my water by the gallon too, so when that changed, hopefully I can get over this.

 

[big]

It sure looks like Cyano to me.........I think the posting above covers the solutions to it.....

 

[keebler]

All signs point to excess nutrients. But since I have 3 fish, I don't see how the small amount of food I feed daily can do this. Maybe it's stupid walmart's water...

 

[keebler]

Okay, put some phosguard and some of the cheato from the sump in the overflow. Now all of the water that goes through the overflow gets filtered. I've never used phosguard before, but I got it a long time ago when I started because I was worried about phosphates. They are 0 though...