Jestersix

BAR Bio-Transplants?

I started my reef tank from a bottle of Dr Tims and dry rock seven months ago. Maturing slowly.

My tank’s greatest ability currently is hosting and blooming dinoflagellates. Yeah. (Tank journal link below for a closer look through USB scope.)

I understand why: the system lacks bio diversity. It was, after all, launched with dry rock and a bottle of bugs.

General parameters good (NO3: 3, PO4: 0.04), now I’m concentrating on boosting bacterial/microfauna diversity.

Wondering what your and other BAR member’s thoughts are of seeding new tanks with bio diversity? In particular IPSF’s approach (below).

Do BAR members share from their own tanks with one another rocks and muck to provide a boost? Is this a thing?



I’m staying patient and avoiding additive or UV options at this point. I have added a couple jars of AlgaeBarn 5280 Pods over the last 4 months. And lightly feed phytoplankton (along with feeding 7 small fish).
 
I have asked for sand from other people's tank. Like a cup or something to help seed. It was from tanks that I liked and looked nice,
 
I would assume the various bottle bacs are all different strands...so you could get diversity by supplementing with different bottle bacs.

I also think your tank is prolly more diverse than you think, because all of the various frags / plugs you introduce will likely have different strains as well
 
Way back I ordered Garf Grunge to seed a tank.
A cup of sand or some rubble from someones tank can work.

Just be warned, you can get the bad with the good.
 
I started my reef tank from a bottle of Dr Tims and dry rock seven months ago. Maturing slowly.

My tank’s greatest ability currently is hosting and blooming dinoflagellates. Yeah. (Tank journal link below for a closer look through USB scope.)

I understand why: the system lacks bio diversity. It was, after all, launched with dry rock and a bottle of bugs.

General parameters good (NO3: 3, PO4: 0.04), now I’m concentrating on boosting bacterial/microfauna diversity.

Wondering what your and other BAR member’s thoughts are of seeding new tanks with bio diversity? In particular IPSF’s approach (below).

Do BAR members share from their own tanks with one another rocks and muck to provide a boost? Is this a thing?



I’m staying patient and avoiding additive or UV options at this point. I have added a couple jars of AlgaeBarn 5280 Pods over the last 4 months. And lightly feed phytoplankton (along with feeding 7 small fish).
Interesting. Didn't realize lack of biodiversity leads to dino blooms.
 
Interesting. Didn't realize lack of biodiversity leads to dino blooms.
I would say it was stated far to strongly.
Better would be:
There is an unproven theory about the lack of bio-diversity increasing the chance of having a Dino problem.
Largely because key competitors to Dinos are missing.

There are plenty of tanks without bio diversity that do not have Dinos.
There are plenty of tanks with Dinos that do have good bio diversity.
 
That brings me to a thought... out of 12 tanks, the one tank I used Dr Tim's to kick start is the one I am having the most problem with in terms of dinos...

I wonder if there might have been a batch problem.

I've pulled live rock and frags from across at least 2 or 3 of my other tanks, but my problems persist (not intentionally for biodiversity but for decorative reasons).

It probably got exasperated by my using filtered water at work to ato.
 
Honestly I never seed my tank with anything but wait it out and never experienced Dino (knock on wood) unless my water source was bad.


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I wish I knew the answer. It would be interesting to know where these beneficial bacteria live - which are in rubble/sand, in the guts of fish/sponges, on macro algae, so we’d know what needs to be transferred between tanks to get the full gamut.
 
I started my reef tank from a bottle of Dr Tims and dry rock seven months ago. Maturing slowly.

My tank’s greatest ability currently is hosting and blooming dinoflagellates. Yeah. (Tank journal link below for a closer look through USB scope.)

I understand why: the system lacks bio diversity. It was, after all, launched with dry rock and a bottle of bugs.

General parameters good (NO3: 3, PO4: 0.04), now I’m concentrating on boosting bacterial/microfauna diversity.

Wondering what your and other BAR member’s thoughts are of seeding new tanks with bio diversity? In particular IPSF’s approach (below).

Do BAR members share from their own tanks with one another rocks and muck to provide a boost? Is this a thing?



I’m staying patient and avoiding additive or UV options at this point. I have added a couple jars of AlgaeBarn 5280 Pods over the last 4 months. And lightly feed phytoplankton (along with feeding 7 small fish).
How old is the system?
Am gonna go on a limb here and say 99.9% what you have is diatom or diatom+cyano.
Just be patient and wait for the ugly phase to pass. Avoid chemicals and magic bullets..

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I believe I have dinoflagellates, ostreopsis specifically (this R2R thread discusses), because of their appearance when magnified and their motion. For instance:

Video #1: I found this searching for "dinoflagellates in motion":

Video #2: I just shot using a magnifying camera. Shown is a close-up of my gravel bed. Notice the motion of the specks. Compare to video #1.

Video #3: Just a couple days ago the same area of sand bed looked like this. I vacuum the sand every couple days.

Video #4: I found this searching for "diatoms in motion". Not the same as above.


I don't doubt that this is part of ugly phase. But I'd like to be proactive in addressing this. What I am reading is the dinos can explode in systems that are new (I'm 7 mos in) that lack bio-diversity (described above). I'm going to keep up with vacuuming so they don't get too much of a foothold, seed the tank with more pods, phytoplankton, and bacteria from mature systems.

At least it's interesting, as much of a pain as it is. But it has me concerned -- and it's keeping me from adding coral.


Other info:
 
This does look like dino, I thought your system is new..

Well if its indeed dino, i do not think it is normal as part of the ugly phase. Dino is such a bug I honestly do not know what is the right solution for it. The forums are filled with magic bullets and methods that make no sense, and if you track most of these methods the long term success is not proven...

I had dino in the past, on a 2 years old very mature system, I faught it for a year with diffrent methods, nothing worked. The only thing that worked (disclaimer I do not know it it was a fluke or not) is when I used a product called phycoex that I imported from Germany.
The problem is that I had to reset my system 6 months after the treatment cause we moved out of the house so I am not sure what is the long term success of the product, but for the 6 months I had after treatment the system was dino free

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Thanks for the tip on Phycoex! I found this with some additional suggestions RE UV and additional options:

Sorry earlier I was talking about diffrent thread I think... I thought this was the thread where the recommendations is to turn off skimmer, increase nutrients, overfeed...ect. that thread gained traction for some time. Which I think it was really bad ideas people were following..

that's one of the reasons I do not like R2R, it's full with missinformstions and lots of misguided convictions lol...sorry for the rant...personal openion

I think part of the problem is that people would deal with diatom or cyano, they go read and think what they have is dino and start messing with their system and creat such an imbalance. If you do not have expensive coral or sensitive one it's ok coral survive and conviction become "that was a viable solution" but if you have sensitive coral u realize the imbalance have caused more damage than good..

I went back to my older notes and refreshed my memory on what I have learned over a year of battling. One thing i remember was, I felt the informations on european forums were more aound and scientific driven, unfortunately...
If you want I can try and work with you but you have to be patience, give it at least 2 3 months, not try other that one thing at a time and ofcourse I cannot guarantee anything.
I have an extra bottle of phycoex, am willing it give it to you, but I need to check if it has an expiration.

Do you wanna try and work together on plan? It up to you..

If yes, we need to know all the details if your system. One thing I got from my notes was that dino thrive in high silica water, so we need to know if you have high silica. In the past I did had high silica and it was because of a damn flex vinel tubing I had on my return..
Then we need to get your paramaters accurately without a doubt.
Then we need to look at your equipments, filtration both mechanical and biological, your flow rate and return rate, your husbandry..etc...

Let me know if you want to try, I rather first we understand the system, correct what might need to be corrected then the phycoex is last solution...


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I tried uv big time it did not work, dino live on the substrate, it's not even proven that UV can kill it and if it did, it will only kill what's suspended in the water column..

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Just to clarify, reasons why I do not recommend you ise the phycoex immediately are
1- this bottle costed me 200$ to buy and import, am not asking you to pay for it am willing to give it to you, just saying
2- if indeed this product work, as I said I am not 100% sure of the longe term success, it's better used as a last solution on your system because the cost of mistake on your system is low, you do not have heavy ciral load. So even a reset is low cost, But for someone who had a full system lile what I had, if this product work, we better use it with someone desperate who cannot reset. Now I did indeed end up losing all my coral but that was for diffrent stupidity on my end
3- when I tried phycoex I also tried couple of things in parallel which was my mistake. I was panicking cause I tried many things over a span of a year.. So I am not sure if the results I got was purely from the product or product helped along side the other things I did or even product did not work at all it was just the things I tried.

Make sense?

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I would be reluctant to add some strange chemical from Europe to my tank.

Seeding with more bactaeria/fauna may help.
Along those lines, perhaps consider Vibrant. (or other bacteria+carbon supplement)

Key question: What are you doing for nutrient control??
There are many methods. Chaeto, algae scrubbers, water exchange systems, GFO, carbon dosing, lots of coral, and so on.
But if the answer is nothing more than a skimmer, you may want to fix that first.
 
I would be reluctant to add some strange chemical from Europe to my tank.

Seeding with more bactaeria/fauna may help.
Along those lines, perhaps consider Vibrant. (or other bacteria+carbon supplement)

Key question: What are you doing for nutrient control??
There are many methods. Chaeto, algae scrubbers, water exchange systems, GFO, carbon dosing, lots of coral, and so on.
But if the answer is nothing more than a skimmer, you may want to fix that first.
Funny fauna is European ha ha
I think vibrent is just as a snake oil in my openion as any other bottle (phycoex or others)
But totally agree nutrient control and biological filtration is key here.
The problem is that dino have hit tanks that are mature as well as not...


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On my old tank I'd been battling dinos for over a year until I accidentally added 10x the recommended dose of Vibrant. The dinos melted away in 24 hours and my corals seemed fine. IME there must be something in vibrant that targets algae.
 
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