Unidentified algae, possibly chrysophytes???

[MiataRacer]

I'm having a problem with some sort of algae in my 40B reef tank, I think it's chrysophytes but I'm not completely sure. I've attached some pictures of what it looks like, it's short and almost clear, but definitely stringy. It's thicker in some areas than others. Anyone else think it's chrysophytes? If so, what should I do to get rid of it? I haven't found much information on how to get rid of chrysophytes online. I'm currently in the process of a 3-day blackout, does this help? My parameters are listed below:

SG: 1.025 - 1.026
Nitrates: 20 ppm
Phosphates: 0 ppm
Alkalinity: 8.3 dKh
Calcium: 450 ppm
pH: 8.0

The thumbnails uploaded sideways for some reason, I hope you can see the fuzzy edges of algae on the rocks.

[bertoni]

If the structure are chrysophytes, the blackout might help. It should stop their growth over the blackout period, at least. I'm not sure what you are seeing. You might look at some pictures of foraminiferans. I can't see enough in the pictures to determine much at all.

[MiataRacer]

Well I have a picture attached of what it's similar to. It's not foraminiferans, and the stuff in my pictures looks almost like a little hazy outline with some white dots in it. Weird thing is, it even grows where there's not much light; it's on the undersides of my rocks as well.

[bertoni]

If the organism is growing as well under the rock as in the light, I would guess it's not a chrysophyte. There are a lot of possibilities, though, and I easily could be wrong about the chryosphytes and lighting.

[MiataRacer]

Yeah, that's the problem, it seems to be something weird that's not easy to identify. My tank is only 3 months old, so maybe it's some sort of "new tank" thing that might go away once the tank matures. It's so weird, it's only on some surfaces in my tank but not others. It's not on the sand, not on the glass, and not on the overflow box or outlet pipe for my protein skimmer. My 6 hermit crabs of various types don't seem to touch it. :confused:

[Dan_P]

Cyanobacteria look like this when they first appear.

[MiataRacer]

This isn't exactly a recent thing, it's been in my tank for weeks now, if not at least a month or two. I decided to go ahead and turn the lights on again today early, if anything it seems like the darkness made it grow more.

[bertoni]

It'll be interesting to see how the organisms respond to light.

[MiataRacer]

After turning my lights back on, it seems to be doing nothing differently than before when I had my lights on. I asked the owner of my LFS, and he said it's possibly a form of diatoms and that diatoms can take many forms, and sometimes they can grow without much light. I'll give manual removal a try when I do my next water change either tomorrow or Sunday.

[bertoni]

Okay, please let us know how well the manual removal works.

[MiataRacer]

So I just got around to doing my water change today, and I scrubbed what I could (unfortunately not all of it) from the rocks. It seems to have come off relatively easily, and I'll see if it comes back.

[MiataRacer]

Okay, an update: now that my water is clearing up (I stir the sandbed and turkey baste my rocks during water changes), I can see that my manual removal doesn't seem to have actually removed much; it seems to have helped a little bit, but a lot of the weird stuff remains. However, one area that seemed particularly helped by scrubbing with a toothbrush now has air bubbles, and it's on the underside of my live rock. To me this indicates I might actually be dealing with cyano, except that the bubbles are only on a small area of the live rock, it doesn't look anything like the pictures I've seen of cyano, and I wonder if it may have to do with oxygen levels in the tank, as my temperature increased by 5 degrees yesterday (my house's air conditioning died) then dropped back down to normal at night after I added a window air conditioner.

[bertoni]

That's interesting. I would expect chrysophytes would be easy to remove, but I'm not sure. There are a lot of organisms in the ocean.

I'm not sure what the bubbles might be, but I'd expect cyanobacteria in the areas that get light, as you stated. They might just be air bubbles from elsewhere in the tank.

[MiataRacer]

Yeah, at this point I think I'm going to just leave it alone and see if it goes away, except maybe removing excessively long strands. It seems to be causing no harm to my fish, corals or crabs, so I think I've just been obsessing over it too much, especially considering that my tank isn't well established yet.

[CStrickland]

The first pics looks like pineapple sponges, and the second one looks like algae that started to grow and then died back as your tank matured. Dead/dying gha looks like fuzzy white stuff and can require some force to scrub off at the base, like the fronds just break away but the bottom holds on.

[MiataRacer]

The first pics looks like pineapple sponges, and the second one looks like algae that started to grow and then died back as your tank matured. Dead/dying gha looks like fuzzy white stuff and can require some force to scrub off at the base, like the fronds just break away but the bottom holds on.

Thanks, so if I just leave it alone will it go away on its own? I have so much of it on the rocks that I don't want to try to scrub it all off.:hmm5:

[CStrickland]

Nah, I'd keep scrubbing. Manual removal is the worst, but also the best way to get stuff out of your tank. If you're curious I guess you could choose a test patch to leave alone, and monitor to see what comes of it.