Algae ID (under microscope)

[SDJustin]

My build is about 20 months old.
Lately (past month) I've lost a few medium to large corals colonies. first a big fast growing stylophora, but lately all my acroporas have algae on the tips with bubbles showing up in/on that algae. I'm not sure if it's cyano, diatoms, or ???

Below are two pics. One taken with a cheap USB style microscope, and one taken with an iphone 'zoomed out.' For size references, the entire 'blob' is about 3 mm wide and 10mm long. the 'strands' visible in the USB microscope image aren't readily visible with the naked eye. it's dark brown / almost black with a slightly maroon tinge.

I think green hair algae is bigger, and, well, green.
I do have some nuisance 'red pom pom' algae in my sump, but this is darker and more 'slimy.'

I'm trying to figure out if I should treat for dinos, cyano, or ???

My Montipora seem to be resisting better so far.

Any help appreciated!

-Justin

 

[Tankkeepers]

Not a great pic but looks to be hair with possibly dinos mabey cyno but I dont see any red tint(not all cyno is red tho depends on lighting) looks brown mixed in any chance you can get a better lit pic of the tank itself

 

[SDJustin]

I need to get a real microscope with glass, not plastic, lenses.

Here is another photo after everything has dried out on the slide.

It's harder to get pictures in the tank for a few reasons. 1) I've been gently brushing it off the acro tips with a toothbrush and 2) I'd need to get out my 'real' camera with a macro lens on a tripod, etc.

Does anyone have close up / microscopic pictures of red slime algae handy? My quick google search didn't produce any results although I'm about to go spend some more time doing just that.

 

[SDJustin]

Below is an image of 'Oscillatoria' (a species of cyanobacteria) from a prepared slide from fisher scientific.

I'm going to treat the tank with Chemiclean and see if I get any results. Here we come crazy skimmer!

Oh...and I swear that I saw the algae 'move' under the microscope. At first I suspected there was a copepod or arthropod moving around in there, but I didn't find any and the movement stopped. Oscillatoria lutea can 'move' to orient to a light source. hmmm....

 

[SDJustin]

I let the algae dry out and am able to get a much better image under my cheap USB microscope.
I think the answer is... it's both cyano (red stringy filaments) AND dinos (brown dots).

I treated with Chemiclean and did eliminate most/all of the 'stringy dark stuff' (cyano) but still have the 'brown dusting' problem. I started a half strength course of Dino X (20ml in a 160G display + ~40g water volume in sump) last night. All is well so far but still have a brown dusting. I'll up the dose to 30ml of DinoX tonight. 5m treats 26G of water, so 26Gx30ml/5ml=156G

 

[Tankkeepers]

Would not surprise me at all if its both as you can have both at the same time