Cali Kid Corals

kinetic Reefer 170

jorahx4 said:
That is one massive anemone.
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One of the smallest Magnificas you'll find!

JVU said:
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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Unfortunately I don't have a microscope. After reading a ton of threads on microscopes and dinos, it seems like I'd need to invest in quite a nice one to get a good read. I was hoping to just treat it generally with NO3/PO4 to get algae to outcompete, but it hasn't worked. I weirdly dislike microscopes. I still have nightmares of chemistry class (terrible, slightly racist highschool teacher). I chose my career path almost 100% to avoid chemistry (chose the single engineering major that did not require chem).

From what I've read, it seems like DinoX will work on most, if not all types of dinoflagellates. And then good levels of constant NO3/PO4 will also help keep them at bay. So that's what I was trying to do. If I'm missing something and must figure out what kind of dinos I have, then I guess I'll try to get a microscope. Just so many pieces and things just to look at it once. Seems kind of overkill. Maybe I'm just too stubborn.
 
Day 4 of DinoX is done. I've done two doses of DinoX. Just did a third.

Day 0:
  1. Manual removal of dinos (as much as possible)
  2. Took out carbon
  3. 8ml of DinoX
Day 2:
  1. Manual removal of dinos (as much as possible)
  2. 20% water change
  3. Ran carbon for a couple hours, then removed it
  4. 8ml of DinoX
  5. No more NO3/PO4 dosing
Day 4: (today)
  1. 45 minutes of manual dino removal
  2. 20% water change
  3. 8ml of DinoX
Here's a photo after trying to remove as much dinos as possible:

38447127050_772826c098_b.jpg


The dinos are returning less and less but still growing quite a bit. I think that is attributed to:
  • Manual removal
  • Very little NO3/PO4 now
  • DinoX

I have a new ball of chaeto from AlgaeBarn sitting in a bucket. I'm going to wait until Friday to pop it in so that the DinoX doesn't kill it.
 
Apon said:
maybe you need more rock for beneficial bacteria to grow on? add some filter filters?
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The reason I was getting dinos, in theory, is that my NO3/PO4 were undetectable. No matter how much I fed, it would be zero. The bacteria that breaks down ammonia down to nitrates is fine, and whatever else was taking up po4/no3 was just too much. Basically things were too beneficial. Algae has a hard time thriving in low no3/po4, but dinos do not. The idea is to kill the dinos off, then dose a bunch of no3/po4 to grow chaeto to outcompete.

I didn't make it up, I've been reading tons of threads on R2R and elsewhere. I don't know if it's going to work... but I have no better method to go by at this point.
 
Looking much better. Keep it up, you will beat it.
Sounds like chems are ideal. Just need to manually remove for a bit longer and give it some time.
You may consider vacuuming sand bed as well.
 
rygh said:
Looking much better. Keep it up, you will beat it.
Sounds like chems are ideal. Just need to manually remove for a bit longer and give it some time.
You may consider vacuuming sand bed as well.
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Yup, I'm vacuuming up the sand every 2 days. Hopefully things clear up by tomorrow and I can put some chaeto in. I'm leaving for the weekend (3 days), so I'll probably skip those days and just resume dosing DinoX when I'm back.
 
jorahx4 said:
Man idk how you vacuum the sand every two days. I hate doing it! And delay it when ever I can.
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Well, this is only because of dinos. I only vacuum it when I do my weekly (or every other week) water changes otherwise. It feels good getting rid of the 1/4" mat of dinos on the sand. Goes from brown to white.
 
Solitaryensis said:
That tiny digitata is looking good! Lol
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Haha yeah, that little guy is somehow powering through it. His tissue is looking bad, but the polyps are still extending and the growth is still happening. Digitatas are tanks, I'm giving it a good chance of surviving this whole ordeal!

Thanks again for the frag theo!
 
With DinoX and every other day manual removal, I have about 5 hours of dino free looking tank.

BTAs are constantly pissed off, but magnifica seems OK. My last surviving SPS is losing color on the skeleton (digitata) but polyps are still out. Not sure how long it will hold on for.

It's still a beautiful tank while it lasts. After 5 hours, or a few hours after the light comes on, I start getting a mat of dinos. After about 24 hours a nice 1/4" to 1/2" mat of dinos covers everything. Ugliest thing ever.

I'm really good at 20% water changes now. I clean the glass off, use a blower to get all the rocks clean, then use the siphon to pull 10g of water out of the tank through the sand to pull as much dinos off the sand as I can. Works pretty well.

Problem is, I'm going through so much RO/DI and salt with no end in sight.

I'm thinking of getting a 5 micron filter sock, and siphoning into a bucket through the sock. Then dumping the water back in. I'm pretty sure dinos can't get through 5 microns. This might be a lot better than constantly doing water changes. Think that would work?
 
So like @daddio had suggested, maybe I should dose a carbon source, just for this treatment process.

I have a UV running, but I can turn that off. New modified plan:

- Manual removal every 2 days
- Dose DinoX every 2 days
- Dose NoPoX every day
- No U/V, heavy skim
- Stop dosing AquaForest 1+, 2+, reef minerals

The goal is to starve all the Dinos completely with a super UNLS and kill them at the same time with DinoX. Once they're gone (from sight at least), I'll turn everything back on, put Chaeto in a reactor, and dose a bunch of NO3/PO4. I'll stop dosing NoPoX. The idea will be to let the chaeto outpace the Dinos.
 
I personally wouldn’t flood the system with nutrients right after you get the dinos under control.

The 5 micron sock would filter out the dinos but would also probably clog too fast to be practical.


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A good 5 micron filter would work,but I doubt flow would work for siphoning.
You would need to siphon directly to bucket, then slowly drip back in through filter.

+1 on not adding nutrients
 
JVU said:
I personally wouldn’t flood the system with nutrients right after you get the dinos under control.

The 5 micron sock would filter out the dinos but would also probably clog too fast to be practical.
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rygh said:
A good 5 micron filter would work,but I doubt flow would work for siphoning.
You would need to siphon directly to bucket, then slowly drip back in through filter.

+1 on not adding nutrients
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Thanks guys! I guess I've never had a 5 micron bag before and didn't think about how slow flow would move through it. Might be better to just do more water changes.

What are your thoughts on not adding nutrients? I was hoping that would kick start algae growth, but am I delusional into thinking the chaeto will immediately start outpacing anything else?
 
Adding general nutrients kick starts growth on whatever is growing.
Which in this case is Dinos.

Unless you add a very specific nutrient that Dinos cannot eat, it sure seems like you only make the problem worse.
 
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rygh said:
Adding general nutrients kick starts growth on whatever is growing.
Which in this case is Dinos.

Unless you add a very specific nutrient that Dinos cannot eat, it sure seems like you only make the problem worse.
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I'm hoping the chaeto will be the thing that grows, especially if the dinos are more or less wiped out. I guess they might come back, but NoPox and Chaeto together might work together to outcompete the dinos? I'm planning to run the system with a constant dosing of NO3/PO4 ongoing to avoid the dino outbreak again.
 
The only way chaeto would help with dinos is to consume all the nutrients (making tank ultra low nutrient), but probably wouldn’t be able outcompete dinos head-to-head.

Chaeto doesn’t do anything to help cover the surfaces in your tank like rock and sand to prevent dinos.

Bacteria (NOPOX) is much more effective at outcompeting more complex organisms like dinos. But again not likely crowding out dinos from surfaces, since it’s growing in water column.

When people talk about encouraging algae to crowd out the dinos they are talking about surface algae and coralline.


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So I poked around with algae scrubbers a lot over the years, (made 4 different ones) and was pretty active
in those forums back when they were switching to LED and such.

The only thing that truly seems to truly "out-compete" everything is hair algae in a waterfall scrubber.
Hair algae can grow very fast.
It gets optimal light, since it only has a thin sheen of water.
It gets tons flow, being a waterfall after all.
It can even use extra atmospheric CO2.

A lump of chaeto does not even remotely compare.

I had one, and it did pretty much out compete everything else. Even coral.
Which is why I eventually went away from it.
That, and it drained nitrates faster than phosphates.
 
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