Pest Algae
 

So recently my tank has started to grow a long, stringy brown colored algae that grows mostly during the day. It prefers area's with high flow and grows on the glass the thickest. Any idea why it may have shown up all of a sudden? My corals don't seem very happy with it.

Do a search on dinos, you're not going to happy about this.

Some further details on your tank, how old, how big, flow, chemistry, lighting, bulb age. anything and everything you can write up for us will help.

I did some further reading and a lot of people say its a diatom bloom.

My tank was set up in august.
flow- 2 return outputs, 2-24 koraline powerheads
In need of a water change prob pretty badly though, havent had time with school.

Think it could be just a diatom bloom? If not I'll post more info

Diatoms are usually a brown powdery dusting rather than stringy. If you can get a pic, that might help..

Ya thats what I thought to. Also this stuff produces bubbles so ditom bloom sounds off.
The pic isnt of my own tank but its the same stuff

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ill deliver the same bad news again...sorry.... looks like you have dinoflaggelates(the worst for spelling) id get a def id from someone who has had better expereinces(if there are any) but raising your ph is a start.i would read up on it carefully before doing this though, i believe there is some product you can use for this safely i just cant remember whats the name atm:) goodluck

But my pH is already in the safe range for reefs...I can't go any higher

I started my tank about a year ago and I've gone thru almost every kind of algae bloom since then, including dino's for about 4 months. I was worried from the stuff I read about them and I narrowed it down to 2 choices. First choice was to blast them with a turkey baster almost daily and then suck out as much as possible. My second choice was the total blackout for 4 days (wrapped with a blanket and everything) but I only would do this if my first choice fell thru. I blasted that stuff off my rocks for about 4 weeks straight and did a big water change weekly and they eventually stopped showing up. But, this did coinside with an outburst of various types of macro-algae that has continued evolving to this day....hope this helps

I'm sure others experince with Dino is diff but mine has been going on 2 months now and istill have it but I'm winningthe war steady W/C and manual removal has worked for me so far I hate messing with perams so I try to do anything other then extra dosing and stuff

Well I did a 2 day black out. Scraped as much as I could off the glass and corals. Then it just dissapeared and these little red worms are where it used to be... something has populated and eaten it. so no idea what these little red guys are but I'm sure they'll die off when they eat the last of the dino algae. amazing how even the smallest reefs work.