Long, Brown, smells bad stuff.

Hi,
I've got a 75 Gallon Saltwater tank, Nitrates got over 50 and had a bad Red cyano bloom. Been doing large water changes and the red cyano went away, and I thought I had Dino bloom, but not sure what it is now. The tank has a really bad funk smell to it, and it gets the long, thin stringy stuff growing everywhere very fast. What makes me question it's Dino's is that I can actually pick up a string out of the tank and hold it, where I think Dinos typically break apart into powder the minute you touch them. I know a couple pest majano anemones aren't even happy, and some green mushrooms are shrinking when this stuff gets near them. I left all lights even in the refugium off overnight, and the brown didn't really seem to disappear then either, further leading me to think it may not be Dino's (hope springs eternal!)

Params: PH 8.0 - Started dripping Kalk today to slowly bring it up.
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate: 25 -- still going to do some 20 % water changes, too much traveling.
New T5 lights on a 10 hour cycle.

Don't have phos testing kits yet.

running GFO and carbon.

Any help appreciated.

 

Welcome to 3 reef.

If it is dino I feel your pain, nasty stuff. Usually towards the end of the lighting period dino will develop air bubble along the strings.

Weather it is dino or not I would consider doing a complete black out on the tank for at least three days. It will not adversely affect your corals.

This is how I won the dino battle.

Complete black out of 4 days, with a reduced lighting period afterwards of about 4 hours.
Cleaned off all rocks and corals daily with a turkey baster and then clean out the mechanical filters once the water cleared.
No water changes prior to the blackout and none during.
Raised the magnesium to 1650.
Raised the pH to 8.4-8.6.

A full tank shot of the tank will help others as well.

 

Scientific Description- Light brownish menace. It looks like snot growing up from the rock or sand, with trapped air bubbles in it. Not to be confused with algae that has an air bubble that has landed on it, dinos make them. Not all species of dinos are bad the one pictured is though, and has caused many aquarists to tear down their tanks.

Manual Removal - Remove the rock and place it in a large saucepan. Add water enough to cover the rock. Boil the tar out of it. Rinse and repeat with scrubbing in between. Let dry for 3 days in sun.

Clean Up Crew- Don't bother.

Why it happened - You didn't quarantine, and you have available nutrients for it.

Starving it out - Use a phosban reactor or a macro like chaeto to take down phosphate. If you have a nitrate problem too, you can add more live rock or rubble to the tank, do some more wcs, add macro, add dsb, etc...

John's Tip - Reduce your phosphates and other nutrients. Iron needs to be controlled. (Everybody forgets about Iron but that can cause problems too.)

I looks like dino to me i really hope it isnt this stuff i battled it for about 4 months until i got pissed and it caused me to restart my tank and trash everything

 

Thanks Corailline, hate to take a full tank shot with it looking like this. :-[ But here it is. Oddly, my 33 gallon and my 125 gallon are fine (Thank heavens!), it's just this one. And yes, it has a bubble algae outbreak as well, but that wasn't bothering much other than me, and was working that down naturally.

 

dose it have bubble at the end of the tips?

 

I don't see any bubbles, it's more either laying flat like a spider web or has long strands waving in the flow.

 

Hard to tell from the picture sorry. When I had dino it really irritated my zoanthids and almost killed off the colony. It grew from the tips of corals, such as my sps, but they faired well over all. I did the water change, chemipure, phosban, purgien route and no improvement.

A marine biologist told me that you can not positively ID dino without microscopic inspection and he is the one that told me to stop the water changes and how to proceed, and it worked. It was almost enough to make me give the hobby a break for awhile that is how frustrating it was.

 

When you did your black out, did you wrap the tank for complete darkness, or just kept the lights out?

Thanks for you help.

 

Yes I did cover the tank glass to prevent any day light from entering, but I made sure there was enough area or gas exchange. It does not look like you have a lot corals so now would be when I would treat it aggressively and be careful about cross contamination to the other systems.

 

I don't want to get overly optimistic, but for some reason, it's slowing way down on growth, and isn't nearly as bad this afternoon. Only change I've made in last two days is start dripping Kalk, started back up Phosban reactor with Rowaphos in it. Lights have been on all day, and I'm not getting bubbles mixed in with the strings. :-/