Algae or dinos and parameters

[childers]

I've been battling some stuff that is growing on the glass and the rocks some. Small amounts on the sand. The lack on the sand may be to the conch and crabs cleaning. I have a two year old and an 8 month old so water changes sometimes get put off. I scraped the glass right before doing a water change today. After the water change my results are:
Phosphate: 0.034ppm (Hanna)
Alkalinity: 6.0 (Hanna)
Nitrate: 1ppm (Hanna)
Calcium: 375ppm (Salifert)
Ph: 8 (Salifert)
Magnesium: 1070 (Salifert)

I've been unhappy with Reef Crystals because everything was mixing with low values. I switched to Aquaforest Reef Salt. This is the first batch I have made.

Anyways I have a few things I'm trying to learn. First is there a LFS that has a microscope so I don't need to purchase one right away? Second, a few months ago I emailed pics to BRS and they said it was golden hair algae. After many hours of reading online I am wondering if they are dinoflagellates. I'd really like to get a proper ID. Most of what I read says when nitrate and phosphate bottom out that gets the dinoflagellates going. Well I have low nitrates and high phosphate. (I didn't know to rinse frozen food until recently.) I will test the water coming out of my RODI tomorrow/tonight.

I am planning to do another water change to lower the phosphate and think I may need to start dosing nitrate until I have more fish. Thank you for you reading, I look forward to your responses.

 

[shanepike]

Dinos look like snot, and have air bubbles attached to the streamers:

dinoflagellates reef tank - Google Suche

Hair algae looks like hair or, in my recent case, feathers, and it doesn't have the air bubbles attached to it like dinos do.

Here's what's worked for me to eradicate GHA in four different tanks:

• Get your phosphates under control - removes the food that the GHA requires in order to grow
• Mexican turbo snails (and maybe pincushion/tuxedo urchin) - just absolutely decimates the long pieces that nothing else will touch
• Scarlet hermits - eats the smaller filaments that the big guys leave behind
• Regular CUC - eats the GHA when it's still tiny, before it can get a foothold

What (and how many) of each depends on the specifics of your tank.

I've never rinsed frozen food, FWIW.

 

[childers]

I've got a pretty good clean up crew. Plenty of hermits, couple bumble bees, astreas, trochus, emerald crab, conch and some other snails. Yesterday I tested my phosphate twice. It's reading 0.015ppm

 

[shanepike]

Only turbos and urchins will eat the long pieces, though. Other CUC are only good for eating it in its infancy. If you don't have turbos or urchins (turbos have always worked better for me), the only way to get rid of the long pieces is to scrub it and suck it out manually.

 

[childers]

I've been thinking about getting an urchin. Again I'm leaning away from hair algae. I'd really love to find someone who has a microscope so I can confirm what it is. Im leaning towards dinos

 

[msporleder]

"golden algae" is usually a name for chrysophytes.

I did the whole dino microscope id + treatment thing recently but I'm in the city, so it might be a bit of a drive for you..

Do you have a thread with pics of this algae? Does it go away at night?