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Alex’s IM 150 EXT

Some reflections on why I (probably) got Dinos in the beginning

As many others, and despite the use of live rocks and several other measures to start off with a strong biome (confirmed by an Aquabiomics test which showed a 90/90 score after 30 days), I got Dinos after approx three months of setting up this tank.

Happy to hear other thoughts or disagreements, but getting Dinos early on seems to be such a common problem and in many cases very difficult to resolve in a reasonable time, that I wanted to learn from this problem more than I thought I did previously, and document these thoughts of potential reasons.

The Dino topic seems to be a rare topic where even experienced reefers do not have a strong response to as this appeared to be a more ‘recent’ pervasive occurrence in reef tank and folks did not have this as much in the past when they started, or they were able to resolve this with a bit of UV and blackouts when it did come up.
  1. Allowing low nutrient levels to persist for several weeks: I knew the tank was too clean in the beginning, but it looked visually good and it was hard to convince myself to make it dirtier intentionally. Also, testing errors or accuracy ranges with test kit could mean that my actual values might have been even lower than measured, specifically phosphate, possibly at 0 at times.
    • What would I do differently next time? Getting both nitrate and phosphate up to at least 10 and 0.1 ASAP would be my main objective to potentially and reasonably protect myself against Dinos early on. This might come at a cost of other algae growth, but it would be still easier to resolve than them (although some say GHA is worse than Dinos, and I partially agree).
  2. Starting up a refugium from ‘Day 1’: This is a tough one as I really liked the idea and purpose of a refugium. I did this for biome purposes, not for nutrient management. I liked to have a dedicated area in the sump to which I could add copepods, apmhipods, other critters, and I thought the cheato anyway needed time to grow. I had the light down there at 12 hours daily which was probably just too long.
    • What would I do differently next time? Setting up a refugium without cheato in the beginning could be a compromise, to add all the critters etc, but not having the nutrient export early on. Only when I see nutrients at minimum levels as I had mentioned above staying consistently or even increasing beyond that would be the time for me to start growing chaeto.
  3. Watching the power of my skimmer and utilize lower settings: I do not believe my skimmer is not overpowered, but I was running it at ‘regular’ levels early on. In hindsight, this seemed to not make sense but I am chasing PH, and this was something I thought I wanted to do and did not like the idea of the skimmer to running at lower levels and lower its impact on PH contribution.
    • What would I do differently next time? Starting the skimmer at the lowest setting and see where nutrients will go. Similar to the refugium, slowly increasing its power when I feel I crossed the minimum threshold where I believe nutrients will not go lower than I wanted to be. Also, I started the tank in December when windows were closed and CO2 levels were higher, actually adding to the issue of lower PH with skimmer settings being high, adding more high CO2 into the tank - still I thought keeping the skimmer setting higher would help. To get a good PH early on, I would use a CO2 scrubber from the start, setting the skimmer at the lowest setting. This would result in a desired PH if chasing PH is my objective.
  4. Adding trace elements (wrongly) too early: I moved my gonies and several other corals over from the nano tank where they had been doing very well. So I was (very) concerned that the new tank would mess them up, and I wanted to make sure the traces were aligned with what I had in the nano tank. I used the Reef Blueprint (Captiv8) ISOL MT all in one solution for this at its recommended value from the beginning. This is generally good product if you know what it does and what it does not. For starters, it is not complete, and it misses several trace elements and focuses only on some. It is also rather strong, so overdosing even if staying at the recommended value is rather likely. As the theory with dinos is that traces are out of balance, in addition to low nutrient levels, ISOL MT is at high risk to contribute to the issue how it is designed.
    • What would I do differently next time? Not dosing trace elements in the beginning would feel uncomfortable to me, but I assume this is what most would recommend in response to reading the above. If ISOL MT is used, I would use a third of the recommended value in the beginning, and see how it plays out on the ICP. Also, I would probably not use this product anymore given it is incomplete. If I was to start over, I would go with an alternative approach for dosing traces. I will switch to Balling light from Fauna Marin (fanboy) - see future post - and their approach is to start with a trace element supply at the lowest level and require measuring consumption of major traces to determine how minor traces need to dosed. Also, their focus is on keeping traces in balance vs actual values. Both should certainly help with overdosing traces in beginning and getting imbalances potentially contributing to algae and/or Dino issues.
 
I’d like to try some once I get phyto culture going if you have some to spare. Hoping to get kids at the school with the seahorses to start culturing phyto and some pods eventually
I'd be happy to share! Will you be at CFM? I can bring some with me and I'll set aside some phyto for you too. If you setup your pod culture right (or by luck as was my case), the phyto will culture itself with your pods. Most of my daily harvest are from a 5 gal tisbe tank that is loaded with tisbe and the phyto that is reproducing in there with them. I also gutload my pods with spirulina powder. So you could get away with having a single container to culture both!
 
I'd be happy to share! Will you be at CFM? I can bring some with me and I'll set aside some phyto for you too. If you setup your pod culture right (or by luck as was my case), the phyto will culture itself with your pods. Most of my daily harvest are from a 5 gal tisbe tank that is loaded with tisbe and the phyto that is reproducing in there with them. I also gutload my pods with spirulina powder. So you could get away with having a single container to culture both!
Please share pics of that described rig
 
I'd be happy to share! Will you be at CFM? I can bring some with me and I'll set aside some phyto for you too. If you setup your pod culture right (or by luck as was my case), the phyto will culture itself with your pods. Most of my daily harvest are from a 5 gal tisbe tank that is loaded with tisbe and the phyto that is reproducing in there with them. I also gutload my pods with spirulina powder. So you could get away with having a single container to culture both!
Probably not. Too far to tease myself with corals I can’t buy. But maybe I’d drive down for some pods and phyto…
 
Please share pics of that described rig
It's literally a 5 gal tank from PetCo with a glass lid. I have a single airline tube on one end going at a decent rolling boil. I do have some white/red LED lights above it. They are some cheapo grow lights I picked up many years ago that were originally meant for sprouting microgreens. Does the word picture help at all? If not, I just made a video for some folks in another group. I would just need to edit & upload to YouTube and post somewhere here. I'd rather not hijack Alexander's thread.

I harvest one of these every few days for personal use. This past week, I've harvest multiple 16oz bottles for some other local reefers.
Probably not. Too far to tease myself with corals I can’t buy. But maybe I’d drive down for some pods and phyto…
Did you want to just meet up that day before it starts? No need to drive to Salinas for pods and phyto man. I can try and shipping them to you too if you would prefer that.
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Curious how the results differ, is one type more dominate post Dino’s vs pre (if at all or any change)? More to just clues to trying to understand biome and since you had the data figured I would ask.

If it didn’t change it would “sound” like some critical resource limited. If it did change or rebalance it would “sound” a competitive thing. Purely conjecture here, so take with a grain of salt.
 
Switched my minor and major trace supplementation approach from Captiv8 and Kalkwasser to Balling light (Fauna Marin) today.

Both Calcium and Magnesium parameters are too high so these two will currently not be dosed until they come down, including Trace 1 and Trace 2. Given my Alkalinity is only at 7.4 (Hanna), potentially 0.6 lower if measured more accurately (ICP), I am dosing their alkalinity and Trace 3 product only, 66ml daily as per their online calculator.

The switch is a bit strange since their approach is 100% consumption oriented and minor traces are added in relation to the consumption of major elements. So I will not be able to dose certain traces until the major elements allow to dose them. The endgoal is to have all in a more permanent state of balance (only deteriorated by coral growth) to each other, and the focus is less on actual parameters, although this will still be an objective to a reasonable extent.

Will need to test daily at least alk and CA until this is stabilized but afterwards this should be far less involved. Magnesium will take a while to come down most likely.

IMG_1520.jpeg
 
Those are some very pretty colors!
I hope it makes your corals happy
One of the most popular trace supply system used in Europe; they think Kalkwasser use is what they had done 20 years ago and it seems to provide short-term success but long-term problems, which is why it has become now rather unpopular in Euope to dose Kalkwasser, which made me curious as to why since folks there like to save money too if they can. The Captiv8 system if done properly is more time-consuming, and I wanted to simplify, which this does - ‘light’ in German stands for easy, not for ‘less’, so the name is a bit misleading. Anyway, did not buy it for the color boxes :).
 
One of the most popular trace supply system used in Europe; they think Kalkwasser use is what they had done 20 years ago and it seems to provide short-term success but long-term problems, which is why it has become now rather unpopular in Euope to dose Kalkwasser, which made me curious as to why since folks there like to save money too if they can. The Captiv8 system if done properly is more time-consuming, and I wanted to simplify, which this does - ‘light’ in German stands for easy, not for ‘less’, so the name is a bit misleading. Anyway, did not buy it for the color boxes :).
Long term problems with kalk in what way? With trace minerals not getting replenished?
 
Long term problems with kalk in what way? With trace minerals not getting replenished?

From what I understand (which is not a lot), it builds trace and phosphate deposits in the tank, which will be potentially released only years later, and which then lead to phosphate spikes without explanation and significant trace imbalances leading to e.g., cyano, late stage dino issues etc. So people stopped using it in Europe many years ago when they realized that the root cause for many of their issues appeared to be Kalkwasser. I have been pestering Claude/Fauna Marin with a video request to explain this topic/problem in much more detail and much more accurate than my little high level issue statement here, and he promised to provide this. The use of Kalkwasser seems to be dead in Europe, and this was reason enough for me to not do this anymore for now.
 
From what I understand (which is not a lot), it builds trace and phosphate deposits in the tank, which will be potentially released only years later, and which then lead to phosphate spikes without explanation and significant trace imbalances leading to e.g., cyano, late stage dino issues etc. So people stopped using it in Europe many years ago when they realized that the root cause for many of their issues appeared to be Kalkwasser. I have been pestering Claude/Fauna Marin with a video request to explain this topic/problem in much more detail and much more accurate than my little high level issue statement here, and he promised to provide this. The use of Kalkwasser seems to be dead in Europe, and this was reason enough for me to not do this anymore for now.
Interesting. Thanks. Haven’t heard about that. Seems…strange, but anything is possible
 
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