Are these the dreaded dinos?

[Kathryn Lawson]

Newbie here, I've noticed some brown slime growing on a few rocks that I got with frags on them from FragFest. The frags came off while I was dipping them (Coral Rx), but I had relatively little live rock in my tank (10 gallon), so decided to add them anyway, which may have been a huge mistake. Are these the dreaded dinoflagellates? There was a long string of brown slime coming off of the left rock, but I removed it from the tank (wrapped it up in toothbrush bristles and rinsed vigorously in freshwater) before I thought about taking a picture.

 

Will any of my current livestock eat whatever this is? I have 5 lightning dove snails (one is checking it out in the photo, so I'm hopeful), two Florida cerith snails (I think that's what they are), and a stomatella snail, plus three micro brittle stars and some tiny mysis shrimps.

 

Should I remove the effected rocks to help limit the spread? Or is that like shutting the barn door after the horse has run off?

 

Thanks in advance for your help!!

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Kathryn Lawson
Not sure why my pictures are upside down, or how to fix them...

[howaboutme]

Can you flip the pictures? It's hard to see but that looks like hair algae. You can scrape it off or get snails/hermits that will clean it out in no time.

 

edit: just noticed you tried to flip picts.

Edited November 9, 2022 by howaboutme

[DaJMasta]

Unless you start seeing sort of snotty trails leading up with bubbles in them, I wouldn't confirm dinos, but they can look like that at smaller heights.  That said, while dinos were once a big cause for concern, they're now sort of just a nuisance.  I've had some small amount in my tank almost since its inception, and just keeping your nitrate and phosphate levels above zero (which is usually what's otherwise best for corals and such) will keep them manageable.  Could also be shorter hair algae, sometimes it can look brownish when dying or in drastically different lighting.

While I've seen some CUC advertised as predators of them, I don't know how effective they will really be, since if it is dinos, they will grow back within a few days - so a predator of them would have to cover the same spot pretty frequently.

Since whatever it is is still on a plug, you could likely pull them out, dip them in something, or scrub them a bit and clean it off pretty well.  You'd want to check compatibility with what corals you've got, but a bit of hydrogen peroxide dabbed on the affected areas or a diluted H2O2 dip could likely get it cleaned up.

Edited November 10, 2022 by DaJMasta

[Origami]

I see algae on a few rocks (quite probably GHA - green hair algae - but possibly some other variety). There's also a slight browing on the substrate that could be detritus, algae or maybe diatoms if the tank is pretty new. I don't see evidence yet of dinoflagellates, though. 

[Kathryn Lawson]

Thank you all! To clarify, on top of the green filamentous algae, there's a bit of brown snot-like goo. I removed most of it with a pipette - it's not filamentous, but truly like slime, and it seems to come away from substrate fairly cleanly. I haven't found bubbles in it yet, but I have found gobs of it spread across the other rocks and sand in my tank (I suspect they pulled off of the streamers and were carried by the water flow), and have done my best to remove those also. They've come back a bit over the last few days, but I seem to be able to keep up with it for now.

 

I'll also try to feed the tank a bit to raise the nutrient level a bit - I've also been seeing some cyanobacteria (red stringy algae-like stuff), which from what I've read can also be due to low nutrients.  I don't have any livestock that require regular feeding yet, but maybe I can try to give the feather dusters and brittle stars a little bit of powdered fish flake.