Cali Kid Corals

kinetic Reefer 170

It seems like all your efforts are making things worse not better. I don’t remember my dinos were that bad and I hardly did anything to rid the tank of them.
 
That’s why I don’t like small tanks, so hard to get everything dialed in Perfect auto pilot mode.


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I will definitely need to do manual removal! It's really easy to blow off rocks, and the sand is easy to vacuum. I'm trying not to do too many water changes so I can keep the NO3/PO4 in check, but maybe I'll do small bits of it every day.
 
Tried to suck up as much of the dinos as possible in another water change. I then blasted it all off the rock and hope most of it gets caught in my filter cup filter and my skimmer.

I dosed about 5ppm of Nitrates today. Phosphates are dropping a bit since I haven't dosed aminos. Crossing my fingers more algae can take over tomorrow.
 
tankguy said:
your set up is insanely clean
Click to expand...

Thanks! Unfortunately my tank is now full of dinos. Thick mats grow over everything. I'm using a baster to blast it off of my SPS nubs every couple hours. One already STN'd. My BTAs are now completely shrivled up (though my Magnifica seems unaffected).

I'm going to suck the dinos manually out again before dinner.

I'm now dosing 5ppm of nitrates and keeping phosphates around 24ppb. More green algae, but way too much dino.

My plan:
  1. Keep doing manual removal (vacuuming up with water changes) daily
  2. Keep dosing to keep nitrates / phosphates higher
  3. Try to grow Chaeto to outcompete the dinos
  4. If all else fails, dose DinoX after lights out and hope the anemones don't die
 
Anemones can generally eat larger food particles and get the nutrition they need.
So I would spot feed them instead of dosing.

I really think with the dosing you are mostly just feeding the dinos.

Have you thought about hydrogen peroxide dosing?
 
rygh said:
Anemones can generally eat larger food particles and get the nutrition they need.
So I would spot feed them instead of dosing.

I really think with the dosing you are mostly just feeding the dinos.

Have you thought about hydrogen peroxide dosing?
Click to expand...

I'm not actually dosing for anemones. I'm dosing to increase my NO3/PO4.

The idea is to increase NO3/PO4 enough to grow non-dino algae. Ultimately, that algae will consume the NO3/PO4 that's produced in the tank, rather than the dinos. The chaeto that's coming next week should help with that as well.

The nems should be fine with just the light. I do spot feed some mysis to my BTAs every couple days. The Magnifica I'm hoping I can keep from growing too fast, so I don't feed it at all (on purpose).
 
Dosing today up to:
NO3: 5ppm
PO4: 0.2ppm

Manual removal of as much dinos as I could get. Still plenty.

I'm going to keep this up for a few more days. Crossing my fingers!
 
Another update:

NO3 didn't drop at all, maybe a little less purple?
PO4 dropped a lot

More green algae. I'm hoping this is a good sign, though the dinos are still growing in full force. uGH!
 
My all time favorite coral is the Hawkins Enchinata. Ever since I started reefing. I never had any success, but my latest tank it was doing great. Coloring up, encrusting. I was worried my dinos would kill it. But it was one of the few SPS that kept alive. Well, today the dinos have done it. I found it covered and when I blasted the dinos off, the skeleton is totally white.

So out of all my corals, I'm down to one digitata. The dinos are growing like mad.

Manual removal and a steady dosing of PO3/NO3 doesn't seem to be working for me. I might throw in the towel and dose some DinoX this weekend. Really bummed.
 
Photos, finally! Here it is, probably the worst shape I've ever seen a tank.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 5ppm
Phosphates: 0.5ppm
Ca: 440
Alk: 8
Mg: 1680

26309153358_845d1c4700_b.jpg


40149250452_6a2328e339_b.jpg


I haven't cleaned the glass in almost a week so that green algae can grow, which is why it's kind of hard to see. But there's a ton of dinos everywhere. The overflow is full of it too. Nothing is happy in there. SPS are mostly dead now. Lost a turbo snail, two scarlet hermits, and two tiny fighting conches. So far the BTAs haven't died yet, but they're usually shrivled up. Magnifica seems to not give any damns.

Same patch of sand a month ago:

24809405207_cdf4e58569_b.jpg


So I did a 20% water change after blasting as much dinos off the rocks as possible, and siphoned tons of sand. Still plenty left over, but I did my best. Then I dosed DinoX. Yep. F THEM ALL. I'll let it ride out for 2 days, then another 20% water change, put carbon back in, add chaeto, and start dosing PO4/NO3 again. We'll see how it goes. I'll keep doing DinoX + 20% changes for about a week.
 
Thank you for sharing. Your photography is so beautiful I’m sure it’s painful to post. But it also makes your images much more useful to the community since we can really see what you see. Best of luck with the Dino-X treatment.

Seems like some species are susceptible and some aren’t. It definitely looks like dinoflagellates but I’m curious if you ever confirmed and speciated with a microscope?


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