Dinos??

[JPR1212]

Hey everyone!
I have a Innovative marine fusion pro 25 lagoon. It just finished cycling a couple weeks ago, i finally noticed some algae other then the ones i saw during the cycle start to appear. However, unfortunately it may be dinos. Can anyone help me id this to verify? From what i can understand i thought dinos where from nutrients bottoming out which is not the case here. so i'm kind of confused on what's going on.
Stocking:
2 clownfish
anemone
+cuc
Parameters:
Ammonia-0ppm
Nitrite-0ppm
nitrate- 10ppm
Phosphate- .08ppm
temp- 78
salinity- 1.025

 

[blaxsun]

Looks like bubble algae (the shiny, spherical stuff).

 

[jcolliii]

Looks like diatoms to me. Part of startup.

 

[Uncle99]

It makes good sense that those are diatoms, considering your nutrients are available and the age, young as pointed out above.

 

[JPR1212]

I’m glad to hear that! My fighting conch is going to town on it constantly. How sure can I be that it is some other algae then Dino’s? The only thing that concerns me is how rapidly it spreads and the bubbles always seem to follow along with it. Anemone and fish are fine and if need be I can move them to my 90g. But it does seem to be getting a little string or hairy like. I’ll see if I can get a close up pic when I get home. But Is there anything I should do to combat this?

 

[Lavey29]

You don't need lights if you have no corals and your tank will build biodiversity and microfauna and then several months down the road add corals and light.

 

[Uncle99]

Some will be consumed by clean up type friends, but, I’d manage those by sucking them out.
I’d do nothing else as your numbers look good, however you don’t mention Alk and this parameter is critical to achieving solid water chemistry. With great water chemistry, your good guy bacteria will continue to increase its population and will overcome the diatom pest.

 

[Lavey29]

Some will be consumed by clean up type friends, but, I’d manage those by sucking them out.
I’d do nothing else as your numbers look good, however you don’t mention Alk and this parameter is critical to achieving solid water chemistry. With great water chemistry, your good guy bacteria will continue to increase its population and will overcome the diatom pest.

Does good bacteria defeat diatoms or do they just run out of silicates in the sand to eat and die off after some weeks? Some tanks are multiple years old with huge biodiversity but get an unexpected diatom bloom due to silicates introduced into their system sometimes by outdated filter on RODI? At least I've read of these occurrences

 

[Uncle99]

I just don’t know.
I do note that when chemistry is stable, diatoms, Cyano, Dino’s may come, but ultimately go in time without changing anything.
All these guys need light, so a reduction in whites can help move this process along.

 

[JPR1212]

Some will be consumed by clean up type friends, but, I’d manage those by sucking them out.
I’d do nothing else as your numbers look good, however you don’t mention Alk and this parameter is critical to achieving solid water chemistry. With great water chemistry, your good guy bacteria will continue to increase its population and will overcome the diatom pest.

Your right I haven’t really checked for alk. I keep up with my weekly water changes. I kind of just assumed that they’d be stable and high enough since I’m using the coral pro reef salt. I’ve thought the same about my other 90g that’s been up for a few years now. However, that just has mainly lps and a few sps here and there. How important of a role does alk play in water chemistry?Maybe I should start checking this more frequently.

 

[Uncle99]

Your right I haven’t really checked for alk. I keep up with my weekly water changes. I kind of just assumed that they’d be stable and high enough since I’m using the coral pro reef salt. I’ve thought the same about my other 90g that’s been up for a few years now. However, that just has mainly lps and a few sps here and there. How important of a role does alk play in water chemistry?Maybe I should start checking this more frequently.

In my opinion, critical, it plays multiple roles and for me, is tested every few days.
You want Alk to remain rock solid, flux in Alk leads to very unhappy everything.
Mine runs 205ppm no matter what time I test.
Make sure Mg is accurate first, then check salinity, finally check that Alk.

 

[Dan_P]

Does good bacteria defeat diatoms or do they just run out of silicates in the sand to eat and die off after some weeks? Some tanks are multiple years old with huge biodiversity but get an unexpected diatom bloom due to silicates introduced into their system sometimes by outdated filter on RODI? At least I've read of these occurrences

Diatoms do need silicate, but they also need nitrate and phosphate to flourish. Adding silicate can encourage diatoms to grow when silicate is depleted. The appearance of diatoms on new surfaces is normal. After bacteria establish a biofilm, diatoms follow. Diatoms populations decrease as the surface biofilm matures, and maybe as the silicates become depleted. The diatom narrative in this hobby is based on anecdotal evidence and little if any identification of the organism causing the brown film. For all we know, a brown stain is a diatom bloom or dinoflagellate bloom. There are physical characteristics of a dinoflagellate bloom, but again, we have little data to say how reliable these are. Basically, we have a poor understanding of why microscopic life suddenly grows vigorously in an aquarium.