JoJosReef
There's some lovely filth down here!
Ornamental macroalgae can be beautiful and very beneficial, but a word of caution: untended macros in a nano aquarium can cause wild nutrient swings or bottomed out your nutrients, completely. And as we all know, zero nutrients is an invitation for dinos. Here's my recent bout with them.
I have a 10 gallon AIO "clown prison" tank that is primarily softies and display macroalgae (pom pom Gracilaria and Codium). The Pom Pom is front and center and grows like crazy. The clowns just eat pellets and poop, so there's usually about 10-20ppm or so of NO3 and 0.1ppm of PO4 in this tank.
I let my tank maintenance slip a bit. Specifically, I didn't trim the macroalgae.
For a LONG time. By the time I got around to trimming it, the Pom Pom was already double or more the size of the bush above. It was covering most of the Zoa rock, almost touching the tank glass on either side and traveling up the rock.
After finally trimming it to a smaller bush (tossing a one gallon jug full), dinos appeared:
I went with my first line of defense: dose Fiji Mud to give the microbiome a boost.
It did not do the trick. Dinos were still covering the Pom Pom and beginning to cover my branching GSP and waving hand anthelias. Coincidentally, they didn't touch my Tampa Bay Saltwater sand or the Marshall Islands rock. At least not yet. I have a lot of faith in real ocean rocks and sand. Once they began covering the glass and starting to appear on the rock, I knew there was a bigger problem. I tested nitrates and it was flat zero. I immediately trimmed down the Pom Pom to a small shrub, started UV in the back chamber and began feeding heavily in addition to the Eheim autofeeder. The clowns didn't mind.
After about a week, the tank was looking better, but I am now keeping an eye on things, since dinos can pop up again in no time at all. Will probably dose more mud this week and check NO3 until it's back to normal levels.
Clearly, letting your macros grow to almost 20% of the tank volume in a nano can cause wild swings in your nutrients. However, chopping out half or more at once likely reduces nutrient consumption too drastically. Perhaps in this case, the sudden availability of more nutrients was like lighter fluid for dinos that were beginning to establish themselves in a nutrient-depleted system. Going forward, I will be pruning the macroalgae in my nano more regularly... at least until my maintenance slips again.
I have a 10 gallon AIO "clown prison" tank that is primarily softies and display macroalgae (pom pom Gracilaria and Codium). The Pom Pom is front and center and grows like crazy. The clowns just eat pellets and poop, so there's usually about 10-20ppm or so of NO3 and 0.1ppm of PO4 in this tank.
I let my tank maintenance slip a bit. Specifically, I didn't trim the macroalgae.
For a LONG time. By the time I got around to trimming it, the Pom Pom was already double or more the size of the bush above. It was covering most of the Zoa rock, almost touching the tank glass on either side and traveling up the rock.
After finally trimming it to a smaller bush (tossing a one gallon jug full), dinos appeared:
I went with my first line of defense: dose Fiji Mud to give the microbiome a boost.
It did not do the trick. Dinos were still covering the Pom Pom and beginning to cover my branching GSP and waving hand anthelias. Coincidentally, they didn't touch my Tampa Bay Saltwater sand or the Marshall Islands rock. At least not yet. I have a lot of faith in real ocean rocks and sand. Once they began covering the glass and starting to appear on the rock, I knew there was a bigger problem. I tested nitrates and it was flat zero. I immediately trimmed down the Pom Pom to a small shrub, started UV in the back chamber and began feeding heavily in addition to the Eheim autofeeder. The clowns didn't mind.
After about a week, the tank was looking better, but I am now keeping an eye on things, since dinos can pop up again in no time at all. Will probably dose more mud this week and check NO3 until it's back to normal levels.
Clearly, letting your macros grow to almost 20% of the tank volume in a nano can cause wild swings in your nutrients. However, chopping out half or more at once likely reduces nutrient consumption too drastically. Perhaps in this case, the sudden availability of more nutrients was like lighter fluid for dinos that were beginning to establish themselves in a nutrient-depleted system. Going forward, I will be pruning the macroalgae in my nano more regularly... at least until my maintenance slips again.
