Brown stringy stuff growing over all my softies

[Cory]

Will a kids beginner microscope suffice? I dont wanna spend more than $40 on a microscope

You'll be disappointed because plastic optics are blurry. Get an amscope m150c its what I got and takes these images (better actually) ostreopsis dinos

 

[Keen4]

That’s what I got and it worked fine for me

I found one with a phone adapter- I'll share pics soon!

 

[Dom]

I bought RO/DI water from a lfs (a little sketchy) for a little while until i decided it’d be much cheeper to just make my own.

When I was young in the hobby, I would look at the success of the LFS tanks and think; "If I do what they do, I will have success."

I started out by using their Water, purchasing (4) 5 gallon jugs at a time. My thinking was "their fish, their water." So the success should carry over to my tank. I was wrong!

As I gained experience, I started investigating and found that the water they were selling me was out of their display system. They would siphon out what I purchased from the display system and put the new water back into their system. Of course, it was LOADED with nitrates (north of 180).

So making your own water is the way to go in my opinion.

But as I like to reply when local fish stores are mentioned in a post, they are in business to make money. They are not in business to see you successful in the hobby.

The best advice I can give you is to get your information here on Reef2Reef and then TELL the LFS what you want. I would vet the information they give you here to determine if they are reputable or just selling to you to make money.

Dom

 

[taylorn13]

When I was young in the hobby, I would look at the success of the LFS tanks and think; "If I do what they do, I will have success."

I started out by using their Water, purchasing (4) 5 gallon jugs at a time. My thinking was "their fish, their water." So the success should carry over to my tank. I was wrong!

As I gained experience, I started investigating and found that the water they were selling me was out of their display system. They would siphon out what I purchased from the display system and put the new water back into their system. Of course, it was LOADED with nitrates (north of 180).

So making your own water is the way to go in my opinion.

But as I like to reply when local fish stores are mentioned in a post, they are in business to make money. They are not in business to see you successful in the hobby.

The best advice I can give you is to get your information here on Reef2Reef and then TELL the LFS what you want. I would vet the information they give you here to determine if they are reputable or just selling to you to make money.

Dom

100% agree. I thought the same exact way first starting out (still am, but now a bit more experienced). I wanted to just buy water for the first few months and then eventually buy an rodi unit, but I thought that since they are successful at fish keeping, their water must be good. Boy was I wrong. Thought getting started on what I thought was “the right track” would allow me to gain a bit more experience before I headed down the road of doing everything myself. Wish I started doing that from the start. Hopefully somebody one here will see this before they make the same mistakes we did LOL. Thanks for sharing your advice!

 

[taylorn13]

Posted an update on my build thread, but just in case anybody sees this, the way I got rid of ostreopsis was:

• Changing filter sock everyday (you can wither clean it or just put a new on in)
• dosing hydrogen peroxide nightly (1ml per 10 gallons
•3-5 day blackout while running UV sterilizer during the whole blackout
• After blackout running UV sterilizer nightly
• dosing beneficial bacteria/adding live rock during the day
• Turning off white lights for a week and only using blue lights
• Slowly acclimating up to normal light schedule
• Keeping phosphates at 0.1ppm, then slowly moving back down to the 0.03-0.05ppm range
• Keeping nitrates no less than 10ppm
•Not changing water for a while (still have yet to do a water change, but will probably do one if my nitrates go above 20ppm or my calcium/magnesium begin to deplete


It is important to note that I did not use nopox, feed corals, or dose carbon this whole time as these things will only help the dino bloom. I have yet to have another dino bloom and I’ve been on my regular light schedule for 5 days now, I have not run my UV sterilizer for 3 days. I did see a bunch of brown stuff all over my sand, had a mini freak out, took a sample under the microscope only to find diatoms. I did not ID any dinos within the sample (yay). Hopefully this helps someone else struggling with ostreopsis dinoflagellates, but in my situation, this method helped me beat them entirely. If anything goes horribly wrong and they end up coming back, I will update, but consider no news good news that this is a tried and true method that works on eliminating ostreopsis dinoflagellates!!

 

[Keen4]

100% agree. I thought the same exact way first starting out (still am, but now a bit more experienced). I wanted to just buy water for the first few months and then eventually buy an rodi unit, but I thought that since they are successful at fish keeping, their water must be good. Boy was I wrong. Thought getting started on what I thought was “the right track” would allow me to gain a bit more experience before I headed down the road of doing everything myself. Wish I started doing that from the start. Hopefully somebody one here will see this before they make the same mistakes we did LOL. Thanks for sharing your advice!

Yup! 100% agree- my LFS even had a huge filtered system of ocean water he had collected often from the pacific. Told me I could start right away with live rock sand and his water with the Dr Tim’s. Eventually everything died that I started with from day one. I have only a few polyps of Zoas left over from that experience. Im
Very sure it was over husbandry and still learning about this hobby that killed my critters and fish. This hobby def teaches me patience.

 

[Trueruby]

Posted an update on my build thread, but just in case anybody sees this, the way I got rid of ostreopsis was:

• Changing filter sock everyday (you can wither clean it or just put a new on in)
• dosing hydrogen peroxide nightly (1ml per 10 gallons
•3-5 day blackout while running UV sterilizer during the whole blackout
• After blackout running UV sterilizer nightly
• dosing beneficial bacteria/adding live rock during the day
• Turning off white lights for a week and only using blue lights
• Slowly acclimating up to normal light schedule
• Keeping phosphates at 0.1ppm, then slowly moving back down to the 0.03-0.05ppm range
• Keeping nitrates no less than 10ppm
•Not changing water for a while (still have yet to do a water change, but will probably do one if my nitrates go above 20ppm or my calcium/magnesium begin to deplete


It is important to note that I did not use nopox, feed corals, or dose carbon this whole time as these things will only help the dino bloom. I have yet to have another dino bloom and I’ve been on my regular light schedule for 5 days now, I have not run my UV sterilizer for 3 days. I did see a bunch of brown stuff all over my sand, had a mini freak out, took a sample under the microscope only to find diatoms. I did not ID any dinos within the sample (yay). Hopefully this helps someone else struggling with ostreopsis dinoflagellates, but in my situation, this method helped me beat them entirely. If anything goes horribly wrong and they end up coming back, I will update, but consider no news good news that this is a tried and true method that works on eliminating ostreopsis dinoflagellates!!

Siphoning the dinos out to filter socks manually will also help the progress

 

[Keen4]

Ok here’s the best shot I could Get. Couldn’t get the color tho. Got a cool
One of the green algae too. I started dosing more bacteria from Stability Also running my UV and carbon. Got some new hermit crabs and a kick butt pin cushion sea urchin. Seems to be gone now- no more hair brown stringy stuff on my substrate. Did 2 weekly water changes and filter socks every few days now.

 

[taylorn13]

Ok here’s the best shot I could Get. Couldn’t get the color tho. Got a cool
One of the green algae too. I started dosing more bacteria from Stability Also running my UV and carbon. Got some new hermit crabs and a kick butt pin cushion sea urchin. Seems to be gone now- no more hair brown stringy stuff on my substrate. Did 2 weekly water changes and filter socks every few days now.

I don’t see any dinos from those images and it sounds like you probably kicked it. I left my UV on for a about a week and a half after I kicked it. Only ran it at night tho.