what to do if it looks like snot on your rocks?

tankedchemist

Reef enthusiast
So, since the big tank has been set up (September-Oct some time) I've, of course, had algae problems. Most of the annoying ones have gone away, with the exception of some bubble algae and some slime algae. The slime in question is the one I don't know how to deal with. At least, I presume it's a slime, because it looks as if someone with a bad cold has sneezed all over my rocks. It's brownish colored, and sometimes has strings that float upwards from the algae. It will come off the rocks easily enough and I can get it out but the :pooh: just comes back.

Water params are all normal. No phosphates. I use frozen food every other day and phyto 3x per week. Already have macro algae in the fuge, and nothin' but RODI has ever gone in my tank. Ideas?
 
Interesting about the nitrates. But I would guess it applies to specific types of dinos, or would it work, I wonder, with any type of dino. I still like Yote's and others' approach of a black out cuz it seems that once you guys do that, dinos are gone. What the guy is suggesting is to keep nitrates at 2-3ppm, but it would seem it doesn't get rid of dinos...just makes the tank uninhabitable, until the nitrates go away again, and they're back. Or did I undersand incorrectly?
 
I had that problem so I skimmed the water allot. At least 2 to 3 gallons a day in my 90. Added new salt water, Took about a week for it to start to go away. I also added a power head while I did this. My nitrates are always around 10 ppm with chaeto growing like crazy. I need more live rock when budget will allow.
 
Wow, it seems like everyone has had dinos lately! Pretty crazy. Seriously, this is not a problem that people ever posted about on this forum until the last few months.
 
Amanda,That is dinoflagellates.

I did the same things AG did to get of em in my tank.
I did a big water change,siphoning out as much of the dinos as I could.Then I completely blacked the tank out for a full 14 days.While it was blacked out,I dripped kalk 24/7 to keep the PH at or above 8.6.
The day I turned the lights back on,I did close to a 75% water change,again siphoning out anything I could get off the rock and sand.
I had my mind made up that if they came back after that,I was gonna pull all my fish ( the corals and inverts were either already removed or dead) and pour a gallon of bleach in the tank.
Good luck.Your fighting for the life of your tank on this one.
 
I don't know that it looks like that.... uhm. crapola. I'll take pictures tonight. Now I want to tell my coworkers I have a family emergency so I can rush home and take pics of the tank.... :(
however, I think my mom's tank might have that problem-- hers has those little brown sticks growing out of the rock like one of those pics does.
 
A good tip on dinos vs. cyano is that if you grab it and it breaks all apart when you try to bring it to the surface, it's dinos. If it stays together, it's probably cyano. What's your pH? If it's <8.2, try bringing it up to around 8.5.

For my dinos, I shut off the lights (except for an hour a day to wake up and feed the fish) for about a week and skimmed heavily (which sucked up the dying dinos).

Did you recently change your lighting?
 
Ok, so here's some pics of the algae(s) in question. pH is normal-- 8.2 in the evening. Haven't changed my lighting since this tank was set up.

algae.jpg


algae2.jpg
 
Ok, so the denser the "snot" gets, the redder it gets. so is it cyano? The cyano I had in my last tank started out very red, but this stuff starts brown then gradually becomes red.

As for that green stuff there, it's really hard to pull it off that rock. hair algae? OR maybe i have dinos?
 
The bottom pic looks like Cyano. The other with the green looks a bit like hair algae really. It will go away as you control your tank params ans get rid of its nutrients
 
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