Arid Users thread

[Ecvernon]

The reactor is doing well at pulling out nutrients. The new problem is now Dino's have appeared. I've never tested 0 on PO4 or NO3.


Dino's are starting to grow everywhere now. My SPS were actually starting to get better color and encrust quickly, now this. I've been reading the Dino thread and I hope I can get ahead of this

 

[CDavmd]

Oh that just sucks. Did you do the test mentioned in the Dino thread.

I had amphidinium Dino’s in my old system after my nutrients bottomed out. It was a long struggle to finally get them under control.

I finally succeeded by siphoning out my sand, adding UV, and dosing silicate.

You need to make sure it’s Dino and which species. Do you have a microscope?

Once you confirm and ID them you can be more specific in their treatment.

How old is your system? Did you start with dead rocks?

 

[Ecvernon]

Oh that just sucks. Did you do the test mentioned in the Dino thread.

I had amphidinium Dino’s in my old system after my nutrients bottomed out. It was a long struggle to finally get them under control.

I finally succeeded by siphoning out my sand, adding UV, and dosing silicate.

You need to make sure it’s Dino and which species. Do you have a microscope?

Once you confirm and ID them you can be more specific in their treatment.

How old is your system? Did you start with dead rocks?

I did not do the test as im convinced it's Dino's for sure. I have a microscope arriving tommorow so that I can ID the type.

After I make an ID i'll figure out what my course of action will be.
I was down to 2ppm NO3 and 0.03 PO4 when they started to appear.

I've dosed NO3 and started to feed more and now I'm holding at 5ppm NO3 and 0.064 ppm of PO4.

My system is a 150 gallon mixed reef with about 30 fish. It was started with dry rock and sand about 1 year 9 months ago. I've always had high nitrates but no algea growth and it worked because I had mostly LPS.

Currently the Dino's are not killing anything yet. It's annoying some SPS frags but they are still hanging in there. Snails and copepods are ok. It's more ugly than anything at the moment.

Wish me luck lol

 

[CDavmd]

Are you using a Hanna phosphate checker. Given the error margin, 0.03 might be closer to zero than indicated. I’ve learned to keep my level at .1. That way even with the error margin I am still in a safe zone.

I keep my nitrates at about 10. My corals look much better than when I was dosing carbon and at low nutrient levels. Eve at these levels I have very little algae.

Yes the picture suggests Dino’s but I’ve been fooled and it can be cyano too looking like that.

Good luck and stay the course

 

[Ecvernon]

I am using the Hanna ULR. Honestly I forgot about the margin, and that makes a lot of sense.

I would be so happy if it's cyano! Lol

Thanks for the info!

 

[stacksoner]

BRS did a chaeto experiment using various lights and fed their chaeto portions 1 cube of food a day. Not a single one of the 20 fuges they setup died or looked nearly as bad every pic Ive seen submitted by Pax Bellum users

 

[Mike810]

I was having bad luck growing in the reactor until I upped the flow to around 600gph or so in my C30. Now it grows like crazy.

 

[roberthu526]

I was having bad luck growing in the reactor until I upped the flow to around 600gph or so in my C30. Now it grows like crazy.

I have similar experience. My nitrate is between 8 and 12 while phosphate is around 0.15 via Hanna ULR. The chaeto wouldn’t grow in the C36 reactor until I dialed flow from the Vectra M1 all the way to 100%. Now I harvest a full reactor of chaeto every two to three weeks.