Cali Kid Corals

Reefer 170 reborn

Love FTS!

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Eugene said:
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).
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I went with outcompeting dinos with the clean method. Bacteria built from NoPox will outcompete dinos. Once that was under control, I started feeding heavy (fish food, reef chili). As long as I can keep my bacteria population up my dinos won't come back. Easy as adjusting nopox dosage on my dosing pump. Just 2ml / day in my Reefer 170 keeps them away. I tried dropping it to 1.5ml and within three days, dinos popped up again. 2ml seems to be the sweet spot.

Nothing growing is nice for me. I can spot feed my SPS and dose Aminos (acropower, might be snake oil though), and they grow fine with that + light. My Anemones do fine under my light only with the occasional food bit that they catch.

I've heard from a few others that they went this route as well. The upside is I have almost no other nuisance algae at all, don't need to maintain a sump/fuge/algae reactor. Water changes aren't really needed for NO3/PO4 export, just for replenishing trace elements most likely (not testing for that) and maybe some other build up of other things I'm not testing for.
 
kinetic said:
I went with outcompeting dinos with the clean method. Bacteria built from NoPox will outcompete dinos. Once that was under control, I started feeding heavy (fish food, reef chili). As long as I can keep my bacteria population up my dinos won't come back. Easy as adjusting nopox dosage on my dosing pump. Just 2ml / day in my Reefer 170 keeps them away. I tried dropping it to 1.5ml and within three days, dinos popped up again. 2ml seems to be the sweet spot.

Nothing growing is nice for me. I can spot feed my SPS and dose Aminos (acropower, might be snake oil though), and they grow fine with that + light. My Anemones do fine under my light only with the occasional food bit that they catch.

I've heard from a few others that they went this route as well. The upside is I have almost no other nuisance algae at all, don't need to maintain a sump/fuge/algae reactor. Water changes aren't really needed for NO3/PO4 export, just for replenishing trace elements most likely (not testing for that) and maybe some other build up of other things I'm not testing for.
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I pulled half of my sand out, added UV filter and dosed some dino-x. Looks like the dinos are not growing as fast as before and I've got some nutrients back - today's readings where NO3 - 5ppm, PO4 - 0.04. I'm not doing anything at all now besides dino-x - will see what will happens. I might left tank bare-bottom for a little while and see if it'll help. Hope to get some coraline growth back - it stopped once dinos appeared.
 
Nice photos! Care to share what equipment you used and settings for iso/f stop and other methods you used for above shots?


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Used macro lens handheld on Fuji xt-10. Nothing special - high ISO (6400 I think) , custom WB, F 5/6 - 7. Really hard to make macro without tripod, also think I needed to put polarizer to cut reflection but don't have one in the lens size.
 
Latest update of my battle with dino - after 2 weeks dosing dino-x, running uv sterilizer and removing sand I finally saw dino recessed - looks like it happened in one-two days after 8 dose of dino-x. Some corals stressed - leather didn’t opened for last 3 days, acans are not happy but I moved it around when removed sand. Shrimp looks stressed - that might be result of dino toxins released to the water. I thought she is gone already but this morning she looks alive hiding in the crevice. I’ve put some charcoal to the filter sock - hope it will remove toxins from the water.
Last sample under microscope looked like mostly GHA with some random dino cells. Will monitor it closely - might do some large water change.


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He - now I have everything covered with nice hair algae and skimmer pump stopped. Looks like an "dirty method to me" - No3 jumped to 16-20ppm, PO4 - is good 0.03.
 
Its been awhile since I posted progres - last couple months I’ve removed almost all sand and dinos almost gone. I still see some slight brown tint on the sand leftovers but overall tank looks happy. There were couple casualties of my dino battle - cali tort colony lost all tissue and my toadstool doesn’t open for almost three month. Here is latest crappy photo:
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Wlachnit said:
love your rockwork. Are you going to keep it barebottom?
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Not sure - it covers with coraline in days and looks too empty. Also I think sand reflects light and add more PAR to the tank.
I need to either add more corals to the bottom to cover most or try sand again. But I afraid of dinos coming back since it was sand-only.
Interesting that my ALK/CA dosing dropped from 20ml/day to 7-9 after I removed the sand.
 
Another month without dino - what a pleasure! I still closely monitor nutrients and dose 0.01-0.02 ppm phosphates sometimes once it drops to zero. I don't see any dinos anymore - even on the sand leftovers behind the rocks. Still thinking how to fill empty space of the bare bottom - I've got couple chalice frags from frag swap but not sure about placement - I don't see any PE at night assume it's not very happy. And for sure another FTS:

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Eugene said:
Not sure - it covers with coraline in days and looks too empty. Also I think sand reflects light and add more PAR to the tank.
I need to either add more corals to the bottom to cover most or try sand again. But I afraid of dinos coming back since it was sand-only.
Interesting that my ALK/CA dosing dropped from 20ml/day to 7-9 after I removed the sand.
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Well...The sand would have had some buffering capacity since it’s a bicarbonate based sand made up of pulverized coral. So not too surprising
 
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