Battling Prorocentrum

[cdstanley0123]

Hi all,

I’m having a bit of a nightmare at the moment.

My tank is 5 months old, due to a less than desirable phosphate test kit, I’ve been running phosphates at zero for most of that time. 6 weeks ago I developed the dreaded Dinos (prorocentrum, to be exact)

I started heavily dosing phosphates for a month and testing every morning, I’ve had detectable phosphates on the test kit for the past week or so.

I’m now dosing water glass to start a diatom bloom and hopefully win my dino battles

I have a number of corals including Zoas, discosoma mushrooms, GSP, a few torches and a octospawn. The corals seem to be doing fine, excluding one zoa frag that was originally on the sandbed that hasn’t opened for number of weeks.

The big question is do I vacuum the sandbed? Or let the tank get really ugly and wait for the diatoms to take over from the silicate dosing?

I’ve read mixed reviews.

Parameters are;

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 10-15 (was around 30, but over the course of a month with water changes it’s reduced)
phosphate 0.03 (dosing every day to increase by the same amount, but was bottomed out for a number of months)
Magnesium 1340
Calcium 380

I have a 20g cube, I’m not running a skimmer, i have 2 small clowns, 6 cerith snails, 4 nas and 2 turbos.

I’m dosing Microbacter 7 daily and water glass every day too.

I know this may be a long battle, but I’m starting to give up hope of getting my tank back to normal.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks
Chris

 

[UnnamedReef]

I had a similar fight with Prorocentrum that was infesting my rocks and sand bed a couple years ago. I was able to baste it off the rocks easily and vacuum it through a 1 micron sock. After doing that for a few weeks and keeping my nutrients above 0 it was relegated to just the sand bed. I used the UV sweeper that a lot of folks do (do some searches on here and you will find more specific instructions) and it worked great. It's not a permanent solution but it allows you to selectively kill sand bed based dinos. A few weeks of using this and keeping nutrients in check turned the tide for me.

Sand Bed UV Sweeper

Introducing the UV Sweeper – the ultimate tool for maintaining a pristine sand bed. This innovative device will effectively help control dinoflagellates and diatoms while preserving the delicate organisms beneath the surface. The UV Sweeper is at the core of a process to help shift the...

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