Dr Holmes-Farley
Hello and first let me say how helpful your articles on reef chemistry have been. I've been in the hobby for 15 years and have learned more in the last year from reading your articles than in the rest combined. Its good to hear solid answers about alot of things that are often misconstrued in this hobby. I am writing today to try to get some answers on a very unusual problem i have been having with some of the tanks i maintain. Out of all the research i have done you are the only person who seems to have heard of this problem. I have been killing fish when i scrub troublesome algae off the sides of these tanks. I thought it was contamination with my equipment for the longest time. After taking a sample of this stuff to a veteran biologist up at CSU he identified it to me as Amphidinium Carterae a toxic Dinoflagellate that is capable of producing neurotoxins. I found your article on dinos doing a search and found that they don't like elevated Ph. I dosed numerous Kalk slurries, covered tank, and turned light off. I also did vigorous nutrient export using pura phoslock, polyfilters, and chemi-clean. it seemed to have worked for awhile however now with lights on and Ph back to normal its coming back. All water parameters check out well alk 3-4 meg/l cal 350-380 and Phosphate less than .03 yet this stuff still grows. It is dark brown in color and if let to grow for awhile will develop small hairlike structures on it. Coral and Coralline all do well. it only affects the fish which will go into shock breathing rapidly and darting around soon dying of asphyxiation if alot of this stuff gets into the water column. I desperately want to get rid of this stuff and cant believe that i am the first to ever encounter such a thing. I am hoping that you have heard of others having such problems and would love to hear some success stories on how they managed to eradicate this stuff. Any info or links you may have would be greatly appreciated. If you need more info or some pictures of this stuff i would gladly forward them to you. i have posted numerous threads on reef central but nobody seems to know what I'm talking about. I apologize for tracking you down like this but i am very eager to get some professional answers. Thanks in advance for your help.
Sincerely,
Justin Erwin
Owner/Operator
Reefscapes Service Co
6489 S Xenophon St
Littleton, CO 80127
720-244-5908
reefscapes4u@hotmail.com