Bacterial blooms in my established reef

[Denis]

Hey all.

so I’m a little lost with this one but here is a what is happening. I have some macro algae in the tank and I noticed one day it grows well, the next day it’s covered in a white film/dying I’m assuming. I notice I get white film on the glass and rocks as well as a cloudiness in the tank water.

I have macro algae that grows and I mostly house sps in the tank. They looked ok originally but have become pale which I thought had to do with the strong lights I was running. I had the ab+ program set to 30% intensity which I just turned down to 20% and raised the lights to 12 inches above the water. Not sure what is causing the the cloudiness as it’s not a new set up. The live rock came from Florida and has been set up for 2 years with me. 


Current filtration and parameters 
-22 gallon sumpless mr aqua
-xp ato which is made for sumpless tanks
-mp10

-2 adult clownfish
-1 yellow coris wrasse
-cleaner shrimp 
-halloween hermit 
-some hermits and snails 

-salinity 1.026
-ca 410
-alk 8.6 last time checked yesterday
-nitrate undetectable 
-p04 .03 but have some random brown looking hair algae and had some clumps of green algae on the sand. 

Really just curious what do about it? I did have someone on reef2reef mention that an algae die off followed by a heterotrophic bacteria bloom makes sense but it wouldn’t have been the cause of the stripped nitrates. Only thing is are the nitrates undetectable just because it’s growing on the rocks? Is there something I’m missing? 
White fuzz on the macro now.

[overklok]

Could be dinoflagellates. 

[YHSublime]

The only thing I can think of is there's not enough nutrients for the macro to grow, and it ends up dying? 

 

You've had the live rock for 2 years, but with a bio load? Even swapping into a bigger tank was enough to throw things a little wacky, cloudy water, algae blooms. Took about a month to even out. 

[howaboutme]

My only thought is the low nutrients as well, not counting any atypical situations. The live rock likely does an excellent job in regard to the nitrogen cycle including using no NO3.

 

I'm having similar issues as my continued lack of NO3 seems to be causing problems here and there, though not the stringy stuff. I hate dosing so I'm trying every other week water changes and increased feedings instead and see where that takes me. Good luck.

[Denis]

12 hours ago, YHSublime said:

The only thing I can think of is there's not enough nutrients for the macro to grow, and it ends up dying? 

 

You've had the live rock for 2 years, but with a bio load? Even swapping into a bigger tank was enough to throw things a little wacky, cloudy water, algae blooms. Took about a month to even out. 

Yeah that’s what I think is happening. It grows and the more it grows, somehow there isn’t enough nutrients to feed it and starts to die off. Then eventually it starts up again. Yeah I would say bioload has been low with just snails, hermit, two clowns and a yellow coris. But I was doing water changes a week with 5 gallons and I think that isn’t necessary at all! Hence I’m going to cut back to maybe a total of 5 gallons a month. 

[Denis]

11 hours ago, howaboutme said:

My only thought is the low nutrients as well, not counting any atypical situations. The live rock likely does an excellent job in regard to the nitrogen cycle including using no NO3.

 

I'm having similar issues as my continued lack of NO3 seems to be causing problems here and there, though not the stringy stuff. I hate dosing so I'm trying every other week water changes and increased feedings instead and see where that takes me. Good luck.

Yeah it’s definitely low nutrients. Nitrates undetectable and po4 checked today .02. I always felt like everyone says more feedings is great but I feel that becomes more problematic if it’s more food that’s uneaten. I’m considering dosing nitrates and po4 since some of the most beautiful tanks I’ve seen/read about are fairly high in n03 and p04.