10 gal IM nuvo carbon question

ahiggins · Jul 24, 2019

Hey all! I am having a Dino outbreak, I’m thinking it’s because my nitrates and phosphates have dropped low recently.
I’ve been blowing them off every night and the strings get caught in my floss and I toss it the next day. One sapphire damsel, no coral yet. I have a skimmer that I had been breaking in but I currently have it off. I’m noticing the brown tint to my water since blowing off daily.
I’m waiting on algaebarns phyto and 5k pods.
I want to put some sort of purifying pack in my filter caddy but i keep reading that all the purigens and chemipure things work in conjunction with ridding nitrates and phosphates. My thought it just to get some carbon pellets (sandwiched between floss in the caddy) to purify water and rid the toxins of die off.
I’m trying my best to keep chemicals out of the water-dinox and peroxide. I don’t have an infestation, it’s just a handful of spots on the sand and rock.
1-how does my plan sound?
2-do you have any recommendations on pellet carbon?

GoVols · Aug 6, 2019

Well,
Any updates on the pods and or pod juice?

Your right about bottoming out your phos and nitrates firing up dinos.

ahiggins · Aug 6, 2019

Oh, yea

I ended up buying rox carbon on BRS suggestion, worked well between two filter pads because the area is way too small to get a sock in.
For the dinos it was pretty simple solution. I did keep blowing them off and did a 24 hr black out then did a 30% water change. They’ve been gone a week and now I have diatoms which I’m much happier with lol
I bought a ppb phos meter from Hanna and it’s reading 9-11 since the big water change. Nitrates are still at 10. I have some monophos (the name is much longer) on the way and will start dosing little by little to get it up. Being a new aquarium and dry everything I thought I would like the challenge lol if I do it again I’m definitely going to ramp up the tank differently.
I’m glad the blackout worked but if it didn’t I was going to try a bunch of stuff until something worked. To be honest, I got zero feedback from any of the sites I’m on and it was a little disheartening.