Reefer 170 reborn

[kinetic]

I hear @Ranjib Dey 's point of view a lot.

To be honest, it depends on the type of dino and where your tank is in terms of stability. In my opinion, dinos is not part of some natural period of "uglies" or maturity. It's purely because you had an imbalance of NO3/PO4 and somehow got dinos in the system that ultimately outcompeted other algae and flourished.

DinoX was absolutely crucial for me.

 

[Eugene]

I think you were stripping too many nutrients from the water with all your chemical filtration before, hence the need to add them back in. Are you still using gfo/phosban/etc...?

I don’t have any chemical filtration at all - only skimmer. I used very small amount of nopox but not anymore.


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[Eugene]

I hear @Ranjib Dey 's point of view a lot.

To be honest, it depends on the type of dino and where your tank is in terms of stability. In my opinion, dinos is not part of some natural period of "uglies" or maturity. It's purely because you had an imbalance of NO3/PO4 and somehow got dinos in the system that ultimately outcompeted other algae and flourished.

DinoX was absolutely crucial for me.

I hear this a lot too - who needs antibiotics when our body have immune system? But looks like the dino is a plague that immune system can’t resist. After years of having it I think I can starve it and keep under some control, but the whole tank will not be healthy.


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[kinetic]

Did you ever post in that r2r thread? Those guys/gals know everything about it. They can tell you exactly how to beat it, with real hard evidence and experience on very specific strains. I can't think of a better approach.

 

[Coral reefer]

So I really thought you were using like gfo, and phosgaurd or something before? That's why you had no nitrate and phosphate?
What is the root cause of needing to add nitrate and phosphate?
It seems to me that sure the corals were starving, but now the Dino is flourishing.
That makes it seem fairly likely that you reached a tipping point. For a while the corals were getting a good amount of nutrients, if you had been able to maintain that level it would have been perfect. But I think you probably went past that level and the Dino took hold.
My point is the amount you were adding was good to raise the nutrient level in the tank, but at a certain point you needed to switch to a lower maintenance dose, or better yet, cut it out and let the tank do what it's supposed to through higher bioload/feeding, or maybe even (gasp) cutting out the skimmer.
You may not see the nitrate or phosphate at "high" levels on your tests for several reasons, and think you need to keep adding in more to prevent your corals from starving, but my money is on the Dino being really efficient at using it up quickly and thus keeping the levels in the water column low. In essence I believe you are fueling the Dino by trying to provide nutrients for your corals. The Dino grows way faster than your corals and will out compete them.
I agree manual removal needs to happen. Maybe even chemical eradication/light deprivation, whatever it is im not really advising you on that part. My advice is this, starve them out. Your corals need a very little nitrate and phosphate. This should be getting provided by living things ideally. Don't add excess nutrients at this point. It seems rather evident to me that it is counter productive
At this point. Correlation is not causation, but I am entitled to my opinion.

 

[Ranjib Dey]

I hear this a lot too - who needs antibiotics when our body have immune system? But looks like the dino is a plague that immune system can’t resist. After years of having it I think I can starve it and keep under some control, but the whole tank will not be healthy.


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We are talking about antibiotics as part of your daily diets here, not as one time fix

 

[Eugene]

So I really thought you were using like gfo, and phosgaurd or something before? That's why you had no nitrate and phosphate?
What is the root cause of needing to add nitrate and phosphate?
It seems to me that sure the corals were starving, but now the Dino is flourishing.
That makes it seem fairly likely that you reached a tipping point. For a while the corals were getting a good amount of nutrients, if you had been able to maintain that level it would have been perfect. But I think you probably went past that level and the Dino took hold.
My point is the amount you were adding was good to raise the nutrient level in the tank, but at a certain point you needed to switch to a lower maintenance dose, or better yet, cut it out and let the tank do what it's supposed to through higher bioload/feeding, or maybe even (gasp) cutting out the skimmer.
You may not see the nitrate or phosphate at "high" levels on your tests for several reasons, and think you need to keep adding in more to prevent your corals from starving, but my money is on the Dino being really efficient at using it up quickly and thus keeping the levels in the water column low. In essence I believe you are fueling the Dino by trying to provide nutrients for your corals. The Dino grows way faster than your corals and will out compete them.
I agree manual removal needs to happen. Maybe even chemical eradication/light deprivation, whatever it is im not really advising you on that part. My advice is this, starve them out. Your corals need a very little nitrate and phosphate. This should be getting provided by living things ideally. Don't add excess nutrients at this point. It seems rather evident to me that it is counter productive
At this point. Correlation is not causation, but I am entitled to my opinion.

Thanks Mike, its a good points. I think tipping point was new RODI filters - Most likely I had enough silica for diatoms (I see it in icp rodi analysis) to compete with dino. And I saw it under microscope - diatoms with little dino but mostly diatoms. Tank was lean on nutrients and unhealthy. Than I change new filters I most likely cut silica supply and dino took over.


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[Eugene]

Another interesting observation is that looks like even someone took it under control, there is no end of this battle - in order to compete most successful cases grow macro-algae or use algae-scrubber. I'm not sure I can or want to fit those things in my small tank.

 

[rygh]

Total opinions here, could be wrong!

1) Once ANY pest gets seriously out of control, you often need drastic measures.
So while I agree DinoX, Chemiclean, etc, are not normally a long term answer, they are needed
at some times. But they are definitely not the ONLY part of the solution.

2) I am still not convinced that low-phosphates are bad.
I do agree there are all sorts of problems when you get nitrate limited.
Cyano, Dino, starving corals.
But really low phosphates being bad ... not so sure.

3) Target feed corals larger food.
Many corals can eat larger particles. Bacteria cannot.
So getting nitrate + phosphate really low, while target feeding, can still be ok with corals.

 

[Flagg37]

I agree about the po4. I’ve never had 0 po4 but the ocean is pretty much undetectable isn’t it?

 

[Eugene]

I agree about the po4. I’ve never had 0 po4 but the ocean is pretty much undetectable isn’t it?

I agree that low phosphates and nitrates are not bad as long as desirable species get enough but in my case it was definitely not enough - it's not low, it's almost unavailable for corals since it gets consumed by micro-algae first. I tried to limit nutrients (successfully) for years but that didn't work well - the overall tank wasn't healthy, corals didn't grow.
In the ocean there is always macro algae growing - look what's going on in Caribbean with sargassum - hundreds of tons of algae every day consumes extra po4. And even in ocean there is not always enough space for algae to grow (again look whats going on on Mexican coast of Carribean sea).
In small display tanks we can't afford that luxury to provide enough space for micro algae to grow and consume extra nutrients thus micro algae explodes. Both are kinda ugly IMHO.

 

[Chromis]

If I saw this in my tank I would follow the advice about removing the unwanted rusty growth along with sand that has growth on it until it went away or all the sand was gone. I would open up that dead space on the bottom of the rock structure by removing sand out from under it and get some macro algae. Manual removal until your tank can reach its natural balance will probably be better long-term than using chemicals.

 

[Eugene]

If I saw this in my tank I would follow the advice about removing the unwanted rusty growth along with sand that has growth on it until it went away or all the sand was gone. I would open up that dead space on the bottom of the rock structure by removing sand out from under it and get some macro algae. Manual removal until your tank can reach its natural balance will probably be better long-term than using chemicals.

Most likely will do both - already removing sand and once removed might use some chemicals to kill cysts or whatever left. Already doing first step - removing sand. I'm planning to do it slow until all gone.

 

[Eugene]

I'm also thinking about putting some cheato in sump to compete with micro-algae. What do guys think - I'm planning to put either acrylic box or baffle left of skimmer. It's tight but looks doable.

 

[Flagg37]

It might be doable but might not be enough room to really make an impact.

 

[JVU]

Small but proportional to tank size, right? 34g in display, 9g in sump, so if about 1/3rd of the sump is refug, it’s about 10% of display volume, which is pretty good.

 

[Coral reefer]

I dont understand why you are trying to do uppers and downers? You are adding extra nutrients , then trying to remove them simultaneously? Seems a lot simpler and easier to do neither...

 

[Eugene]

I dont understand why you are trying to do uppers and downers? You are adding extra nutrients , then trying to remove them simultaneously? Seems a lot simpler and easier to do neither...

I'm trying to get some stable situation - without adding extra nutrients nothing grows, with nutrients - corals happy and micro algae too. If I do nothing - dinos completely strips tank from nutrients 0 nitrates, 0 phosphates - nothing. I tried this for about a month. Even coraline is not growing anymore. Thats when dinos flourish - when there are not enough nitrates and phosphates for anything else.
My thought is that I need to add something that can complete with dinos and be controllable. All stories that I read about dinoflagellates - the only successful are "dirty" methods - add as much of nutrients, stop changing water and something that can out-compete dino ( most common way is dosing silica to grow diatoms in place of dinos). In my tank where is nothing that can grow fast enough - while I've had old filters and diatoms, dinos where controllable. Once diatoms gone - dinos took it's place. So my thoughts are add macro algae to take place of micro algae ( at least some part of it).

 

[xcaret]

Maybe you can get a small acrylic box from TAP Plastics and place it next to the skimmer with some macro algae; Is there a way for you to Tee from the overflow?
You can also use a small pump to pump into the box and it would overflow into the tank. Small LED spot light over that area and voila!!

I'm also thinking about putting some cheato in sump to compete with micro-algae. What do guys think - I'm planning to put either acrylic box or baffle left of skimmer. It's tight but looks doable.

 

[Eugene]

Maybe you can get a small acrylic box from TAP Plastics and place it next to the skimmer with some macro algae; Is there a way for you to Tee from the overflow?
You can also use a small pump to pump into the box and it would overflow into the tank. Small LED spot light over that area and voila!!

Thats exactly what I'm doing - I already have a tee from outflow line and have an acrylic to glue a box from TAP Plastics