Amazing progress, but still having issues, (ID help and advice)

[taricha]

Edit: it's worth noting that they do not disappear at night like the Oc. dinos I installed the system to combat. Everything stays in its "stringy, snotty" form regardless of light.

the other alternative (aside from UV stopped working) is that it's chrysophytes instead of dinos. They look like that, but don't go into the water.

 

[Lavey29]

Cool, so all of us with multiple year old systems are supposed to just toss everything in our tanks and order gulf rock?

Ocean rock owner also encounter issues. It's not the cure all it's cracked up to be.

With all the harsh chemicals you have added over the past months you have decimated your biome. You have no good guys fighting in your tank so the bad guys will always win the battles.

 

[brandon429]

This is a perfect example of a need for a work thread manager.

Anyone know how to make this tank look oppositely of how it looks now, by a certain date? (That way we aren't waiting till end of April for hopeful compliance, then just a little longer until July, then a little longer all open ended wait)

This and two other dinos challenge tanks I'm tracking over the next several months to see how the systems do without rip cleans. We can then compare to systems that did them, and learn more about control options for nano reefs

 

[rennjidk]

This is a perfect example of a need for a work thread manager.

Anyone know how to make this tank look oppositely of how it looks now, by a certain date? (That way we aren't waiting till end of April for hopeful compliance, then just a little longer until July, then a little longer all open ended wait)

I used to get offended by snarky comments like these, but I've learned to lead by example. I guess we'll just wait and find out together, hopefully not July or later, as you said.

Happy Reefing!

 

[brandon429]

No intention to be snarky. opting out of one option, and into another for dinos control and charting the fix date is cut and dry science imo

It’s been a one year challenge so far, that's too long

Switch methods w fix if

 

[brandon429]

It is a material fact that 99.99% of invaded tank owners will keep it that way for months, even if an option exists to have it fixed by tomorrow and the link is sixty pages long of before and after jobs. That’s fascinating psychology no matter how we slice it. Being able to compare resolution timelines between opposing systems is crucial reefing science, if everyone was using the same way we’d have nothing to compare to.

 

[Bruttall]

All those chemicals I did that once then found what I believe is a better solution.

As one person pointed out, you have effectively destroyed your entire Biome with the chemicals. I have a 300g tank. I have Aptasia, asterina starfish, bubble algae, hair algae, some other algae I have not identified yet, and most likely 99 other things that have yet to become noticeable.

For the Aptasia I added some Berghia Nudibranch's, they went right to work, started eating it. I only added 3, I figure it'll take 6months for them to kill all the crap nems.

Bubble Algae = Emerald Mithrax Crab from Reefcleaners, they guarantee the crabs to eat bubble algae.

invasive starfish got a Harlequin Shrimp.

Hair Algae I got Tangs!

Once I started using natural methods to respond to developing situations in my tank I noticed a huge difference in how all my stuff not only looked, but grew. I will tell you this, I have not lost 3 or 4 pieces of coral over night since I stopped using the algae and bacteria killer chemicals. But I did lose several really nice pieces to a algae treatment a while back trying to get rid of cyano.

The biggest thing is to get your Nutrient export balanced with your tanks waste demands. I started what I thought was going to be a Refugium in my sump. added chaeto only to watch it melt and all kinds of funky algae started growing on the walls of that chamber, so I let that go and it seems to be absorbing the nitrates really well, I pretty consistantly test in the 20ppm to 30ppm range. I scrape that algae out about every 4 weeks.

Phos is my nemisis. Dosing about 40ml of brightwell Phos-e daily directly into the skimmer neck in 3ml increments is keeping it around .06 according to Hanna. I'm not trying to get a perfect .02 or .01 phos reading. I do not mind a bit of a "dirty" tank. My zoa's especially seem to like it.

 

[MickeyCT]

Welp, here we are 2 months later and I'm about ready to throw in the towel.

Everything was going great up until about a week ago. Rocks were clean and growing a lot of calcareous algae, my nutrients were steady at 7.5N and 0.03P. Then, seemingly out of no where, DINOS.

UV has been running on the system the entire time. It knocked out the other dinos in 24hrs when it was installed. I can only assume they've been replaced with the large cell variety.

There's also a good bit of GHA, which I'm fine with, but nothing will touch it because of the dinos.

I'm open to any and all suggestions, but I haven't seen temperature increases or silicate dosing as an effective treatment in the past.

I feel your pain. Are you saying your tank went from clean and nice to this in only a week?

I'm asking because I'm going through a rough time myself with my tank which is 19+ years old. I tried waiting things out and it just gets worse and worse. I was contemplating resorting to chemiclean and/or algaefix when I came across your thread. Now I'm not so sure. Yikes!

 

[rennjidk]

I feel your pain. Are you saying your tank went from clean and nice to this in only a week?

I'm asking because I'm going through a rough time myself with my tank which is 19+ years old. I tried waiting things out and it just gets worse and worse. I was contemplating resorting to chemiclean and/or algaefix when I came across your thread. Now I'm not so sure. Yikes!

Yes. Well, the original state was over the course of a year, then the reset with chemiclean and algaefix.

But yes, it was completely clean up until 2 weeks ago and dinos took over again.

I'd start with Sunny X's coral snow method. I'm seeing really good results with that so far. Im going to post an update later this week, but after just a couple of doses, I'm seeing a night and day difference.

 

[thedon986]

Interesting to read about the coral snow method. Sodium silicate has worked for me with sand dinos. I also think carbon dosing at night helped to boost other things, like algae in my refugium and other competitors. There is no lasting one day fix for sand dinos (or any in my opinion) except removing all sand. I will say my rock and sand from Tampa Bay Saltwater have made beating them back much easier than in the past. My flare ups are less than a month now. There is a lot to be said of a robust microbiome. In my last dry sand, dry rock tank I threw in the towel after 18 months of red sand and started over.

 

[rennjidk]

I honestly forgot about this thread. Sunny's limestone bound up everything and removed most of it. @taricha was 100% right about my UV failing prematurely. I replaced the bulb and every disappeared in 24hrs. No scraping single celled organisms off the rock work required, not that that's actually possible.