Dino ID + Treatment

[martin.a]

It is scary, thats a lot of phosphate being consumed. Interesting that it stopped eating nitrate but continues with phosphate.

Sump looks totally normal, I have some detritus build up, but no signs of algae or dinos. Not even on the live rock in one of the chambers. I'm sure this would be a different story if it was lit though.

Hang in there, we will see clean sand once again!

You have mentioned they are visual nuisance in your case. They were like this for me for over a week. (This is also why I assumed they were diatoms.)
Then, my sandbed started bubbling, which again I originally missed due to having very dirty glass (I was very busy, OK) and then it was boom, and it went from a 'visual nuisance' to dying snails practically overnight. Interestingly, my bright sump stayed clean all that time. I have live rock and good 7-9 kg of sand in the sump. Maybe a tiny bit of darkening at one spot on the sand. Nothing comparable to what has happened in the display.

I decided to follow Jonas suggestion and go with 3 days of blackout as I was away past 2 days, and going dark was the safer solution. UV on all the time. Today the tank looks almost pristine. Sand is white, rocks are much cleaner, GSP - my only coral stays closed, BTA looks rather upset but clearly alive, Decora goby seems less active, but got excited with food, snails are much better, peppermint shrimps and cope/amphi pods are more than fine. Today is the 3rd day of blackout. A new culture of diatoms is ready. Silica already dosed, Hanna silica checker should arrive today. Ready for tomorrow. The game is on.

 

[mcarroll]

[...]Mostly because I have it, as opposed to Neophos, but also a bit because Brightwell doesn't disclose what they put into Neophos.[...]

NeoPhos is fine for what it is, but it's VERY low concentration since it's intended for nutrient reduction in ULNS systems. Flourish Phosphate is better for a commercial product, but what you have is also pretty ideal.

It is scary, thats a lot of phosphate being consumed. Interesting that it stopped eating nitrate but continues with phosphate.

Makes me wonder about ammonia and other N sources besides NO3. Too bad there's no way to test a wider range of N than just ammonia OR just nitrite OR just nitrate. That's only three forms out of....potentially LOTS of other forms!

But if you can test ammonia and nitrite, I'd be slightly curious if anything showed up. (Might not due to all the dosing you've been doing....this would have been a better point for me to make about 20 posts ago. LOL)

 

[JonasRoman]

You have mentioned they are visual nuisance in your case. They were like this for me for over a week. (This is also why I assumed they were diatoms.)
Then, my sandbed started bubbling, which again I originally missed due to having very dirty glass (I was very busy, OK) and then it was boom, and it went from a 'visual nuisance' to dying snails practically overnight. Interestingly, my bright sump stayed clean all that time. I have live rock and good 7-9 kg of sand in the sump. Maybe a tiny bit of darkening at one spot on the sand. Nothing comparable to what has happened in the display.

I decided to follow Jonas suggestion and go with 3 days of blackout as I was away past 2 days, and going dark was the safer solution. UV on all the time. Today the tank looks almost pristine. Sand is white, rocks are much cleaner, GSP - my only coral stays closed, BTA looks rather upset but clearly alive, Decora goby seems less active, but got excited with food, snails are much better, peppermint shrimps and cope/amphi pods are more than fine. Today is the 3rd day of blackout. A new culture of diatoms is ready. Silica already dosed, Hanna silica checker should arrive today. Ready for tomorrow. The game is on.

Happy that it seems to work for you so far. Remember that UVC must be in displaytank and of proper size, because now, when the black out made dinos goes up in water column, the UV have to kill them. Maybe not focus so much in dosing living things like copepods until UV is tuned of, some of them maybe just will die? (but not a big deal) . After my black out 3 days I continued with UV another 3 days. After that I dosed some beneficial bacteria, copepods etc to restore the balance. But not so sure thats important (a lot of those creatures have probably survived), but doesnt hurt.

Will follow you:-)

Jonas

 

[martin.a]

Happy that it seems to work for you so far. Remember that UVC must be in displaytank and of proper size, because now, when the black out made dinos goes up in water column, the UV have to kill them. Maybe not focus so much in dosing living things like copepods until UV is tuned of, some of them maybe just will die? (but not a big deal) . After my black out 3 days I continued with UV another 3 days. After that I dosed some beneficial bacteria, copepods etc to restore the balance. But not so sure thats important (a lot of those creatures have probably survived), but doesnt hurt.

Will follow you:-)

Jonas

UV treats all return water, Pods have well established populations before the drama started, they do not seem affected too much. Especially amphipods got bolder, if anything.

We will see how effective the blackout was in my case. I am not surprised that those dinos 'got lost', as they normally 'disappear' for the nights.

 

[martin.a]

@Mas0n, I hope you are OK with all my posts in your thread. IHMO, its more convenient to keep all the info together.
I only wanted to report that my tank stopped consuming nitrates and phosphates on 3rd day of blackout. It's not that surprising: No photosynthesis, plus the turf algae growing on the back wall started dying off. Tomorrow lights back on. With nitrates at 11 ppm and phosphates at 0.12 ppm I expect an explosion of nuisance algal/cyano growth. I will also dose phytoplankton. Silica should now be at ~1.2ppm (Hanna failed to deliver the silica checker...)

 

[Mas0n]

@Mas0n, I hope you are OK with all my posts in your thread. IHMO, its more convenient to keep all the info together.
I only wanted to report that my tank stopped consuming nitrates and phosphates in 3rd day of blackout. It's not that surprising: No photosynthesis, plus the turf algae growing on the back wall started dying off. Tomorrow lights back on. With nitrates at 11 ppm and phosphates at 0.12 ppm I expect an explosion of nuisance algal/cyano growth. I will also dose phytoplankton. Silica should now be at ~1.2ppm (Hanna failed to deliver the silica checker...)

Absolutely! Threads like this are great, could be a valuable resource for others at some point.

 

[Mas0n]

Today's Update:

Dosed 4ml of Nitribiotic early in the day, and ran the tank without a skimmer for 4 hours.

The glass is looking super ugly, but there is a lone snail doing a lot of work! Dude has some serious appetite.

I am working on building a UV sand sweeper. Not sure how effective they are but I guess I will find out soon! I found a free STL and ordered a cheap 13w UV on amazon. Just waiting on some Nylon hardware to arrive tomorrow and I will put this thing to work!

Nutrients:

No3 31.0
Po4 .06... Even after dosing 40ml Neophos yesterday... Maybe the addition of bacteria today consumed the extra I dosed.

Dosing 40ml Neophos again in a few. I am running low on this, and will likely switch to food grade sodium phosphate.

 

[EnterName]

Today's Update:

Dosed 4ml of Nitribiotic early in the day, and ran the tank without a skimmer for 4 hours.

The glass is looking super ugly, but there is a lone snail doing a lot of work! Dude has some serious appetite.

I am working on building a UV sand sweeper. Not sure how effective they are but I guess I will find out soon! I found a free STL and ordered a cheap 13w UV on amazon. Just waiting on some Nylon hardware to arrive tomorrow and I will put this thing to work!

Nutrients:

No3 31.0
Po4 .06... Even after dosing 40ml Neophos yesterday... Maybe the addition of bacteria today consumed the extra I dosed.

Dosing 40ml Neophos again in a few. I am running low on this, and will likely switch to food grade sodium phosphate.

How much ppm difference is to be expected in your tank when dosing 40mL?

I assume you are currently simply fighting the equilibrium reaction between bound/dissolved phosphate and calcium carbonate, and the phosphate consumption of your ongoing outbreak. I'm not sure bottled bacteria would have a large impact in a short time and some of these products might be phosphate bombs themselves.

 

[Mas0n]

How much ppm difference is to be expected in your tank when dosing 40mL?

I assume you are currently simply fighting the equilibrium reaction between bound/dissolved phosphate and calcium carbonate, and the phosphate consumption of your ongoing outbreak. I'm not sure bottled bacteria would have a large impact in a short time and some of these products might be phosphate bombs themselves.

The math on 40 ml works out to roughly a 0.1 ppm increase in my 120.

I started at 20 ml, which should have taken me from 0.05–0.06 up to .1~ppm. The tests didn't reflect that. Yesterday I doubled it to 40 ml so the dose would cover what the tank had already consumed and still add the extra .05 I was after. That did not show up either.

 

[JonasRoman]

I have red results and discussion. I interpet the article in this way:

1) Dino grows more unlimited in a vegetative way when both N and P exists.
"The P-defcient culture reached a plateau in 15 days with
maximum biomass 1.66× 105
cell mL–1, while control cells continued to divide until day 18"
dinofagellate blooms start and develop in favorable conditions, when
nutrients are abundant. At this period of time, dinofagellates reproduce vegetatively
2) Dino consumes quiet much N and P as long as both exists.
the control, nitrate and phosphate concentrations gradually decreased from 630 to 72 µM and from 37 to 2µM.
3) If P is totally depleted, N consumption stops, and also dino goes into a sexual reproduction phase (and cystic) as a strategy to survive when P is deficient. Dino now do not vegetatively growth.
nutrient defciency, especially N and
P limitations, are considered to be the most efective factors to induce sexual reproduction
5) If we dose P now, the dino leaves the sexual reproduction stage and go back to vegetative and start to thrive again.
addition of nutrients can stimulate meiosis and return to the initial vegetativ

@Mas0n, I hope you are OK with all my posts in your thread. IHMO, its more convenient to keep all the info together.
I only wanted to report that my tank stopped consuming nitrates and phosphates on 3rd day of blackout. It's not that surprising: No photosynthesis, plus the turf algae growing on the back wall started dying off. Tomorrow lights back on. With nitrates at 11 ppm and phosphates at 0.12 ppm I expect an explosion of nuisance algal/cyano growth. I will also dose phytoplankton. Silica should now be at ~1.2ppm (Hanna failed to deliver the silica checker...)

its actually more that dino reelase N and P when die (at leeast if you see an increase in N and P) more than other algue stop consuming, as dino dynamic is so much faster that the other algue/corals. I quantified than in a easy home study. I do not think you will get a explosion of algue. I am little concerned as you had the UV only in return water, thats is normaly not sufficient to kill all dino in water column, so we will see what happens now when light is on again. Hope the best:_)

 

[Mas0n]

Didn't get a chance to UV sweep today! Unfortunately, I spent the day with family, outside, not moping around looking at my brown tank.

No change in tank appearance.

Nutrients:

NO3 29.5ppm
PO4 .07ppm

Heading in the right direction with phosphate!

Dosed 40ml Neophos.

 

[Mas0n]

Did my first round of UV Sweeping today during peak photoperiod! I will repeat this daily and updated with results.

Nutrients:
NO3 27.4
PO4 .05

I believe today's PO4 result is a more accurate result. I have been testing PO4 and vigorously shaking the cuvette, which introduces air bubbles into the sample. I played around with shaking the cuvette, and then testing quickly, my results were all over the place.

To combat this, I built an automatic Cuvette shaker with an ESP32, servo, and mini display. It has a 120s timer that gently tumbles the cuvette 180 degrees. I also added a vigorous function for my NO3 tests, wrist saver! Lol.

Dosed an additional 40ml Neophos.

 

[Mas0n]

Second UV Sweep done, not seeing any changes yet. Going to keep going and make a slide later this week to see if anything has improved.

Nutrients:
NO3 28.1
PO4 .07

Dosed 60ml Neophos.

 

[JonasRoman]

very hesitating to that UV sweep works. Why do you not use the proven method like having a pump, proper flow and proper watt in displaytank? We know by experience and tests that kill 100% what is supoosed to kill. And by turnover of tankvolume 4 times per hour make it impossible to dino to regrowth. Everything is about to get all catch in the UV. By a sweep i do nto think you catch them all, and then they will come back. reason why I say you must combine UV with black out for several days is to ecure that all dino finally goes into the UV, and they will do that the longer the black out period is. Even when I had the dino that traditionaly not leave sand, this worked, as with totally dark I think all dino will sooner or later leave sand and go into water column. Also, I had no succes when i had too weak UV, and/or too weak pump. My final purchase was the semipro UV from TMC, 55W, combined with 2000 l/h pump (tank size 500l). (I know I am alittle repetitive here, but thats because I see you still struggle with the dino)

 

[Mas0n]

very hesitating to that UV sweep works. Why do you not use the proven method like having a pump, proper flow and proper watt in displaytank? We know by experience and tests that kill 100% what is supoosed to kill. And by turnover of tankvolume 4 times per hour make it impossible to dino to regrowth. Everything is about to get all catch in the UV. By a sweep i do nto think you catch them all, and then they will come back. reason why I say you must combine UV with black out for several days is to ecure that all dino finally goes into the UV, and they will do that the longer the black out period is. Even when I had the dino that traditionaly not leave sand, this worked, as with totally dark I think all dino will sooner or later leave sand and go into water column. Also, I had no succes when i had too weak UV, and/or too weak pump. My final purchase was the semipro UV from TMC, 55W, combined with 2000 l/h pump (tank size 500l). (I know I am alittle repetitive here, but thats because I see you still struggle with the dino)

I agree, it seems like a gimmick and I am skeptical. But it’s low cost and worth a shot.

I am looking at an inline or sump UV still, I have not ruled it out.

 

[martin.a]

I agree, it seems like a gimmick and I am skeptical. But it’s low cost and worth a shot.

I am looking at an inline or sump UV still, I have not ruled it out.

I may be getting promising results with blasting them out of the the sand and the rocks. It's no more complicated than with cyano. The logic being that once dislodged and water-borne they get UV treatment. I use Aqua 57W UV for 1.5m tank, 640L total volume.
Every now and than, when time allows, I vacuum the sand. Blasting is much easier and quicker and doesn't require fresh water. But I am confident that vacuuming is better.

 

[Mas0n]

I agree, it seems like a gimmick and I am skeptical. But it’s low cost and worth a shot.

I am looking at an inline or sump UV still, I have not ruled it out.

I may be getting promising results with blasting them out of the the sand and the rocks. It's no more complicated than with cyano. The logic being that once dislodged and water-borne they get UV treatment. I use Aqua 57W UV for 1.5m tank, 640L total volume.
Every now and than, when time allows, I vacuum the sand. Blasting is much easier and quicker and doesn't require fresh water. But I am confident that vacuuming is better.

Interesting! My rocks are now covered and I don’t want to blast them with tbe UV sweeper. That may the same approach I take.

How’s the battle currently?

 

[Mas0n]

Third UV sweep done! I think I am noticing some improvements where I used the UV. Time will tell for sure.

Tank Pics:

Nutrients:
NO3 28.4
PO4 .06

Not bad, still low on phosphate but at least things are stable. Dosed 60ml Neophos.

Finished my automatic cuvette shaker. This thing is great. PO4 is a 180 flip, then stall, and the NO3 mode is constant fast shaking with no stall.

 

[martin.a]

Update from me, sorry for being away. Our beloved super-cat passed away. It completely threw me and the whole family out of balance.

Short version: The dino war rages on and has become a war of attrition. But the dinos are back in their trenches, and so life in the tank goes on.

TL;DR:
The 3-day blackout definitely put the dinos on the back foot. But it did the same to all photosynthetic organisms. A fourth day of darkness would probably have helped with the dinos, but the BTA started deteriorating badly. This is the BTA that attempted the infamous "anemone smoothie" a few weeks ago and has still not fully recovered. Green algae and phytoplankton got hit very hard too. On the other hand, the snails resumed their normal activities and seem to be behaving normally. Amphipods, copepods, shrimps, and fish went through it without any visible issues.

Since the lights came back on, the dinos have been trying to regain territory. During the first 3 days, I was vacuuming the sand and replacing approximately 25 L of water daily. After that, I switched to blowing the sand and rocks with a turkey baster, leaving the elimination to the UV. I do it at the end of the light period, when there are the most dinos around. I was worried that the resulting clouds of dinos might be toxic, but they don't seem to be. Only the BTA dislikes the experience, but it recovers almost immediately after I am done.

UV: My Aqua 57W is plumbed in-line with the return pump, sterilising all recirculating water. Estimated flow is 1,200–1,500 L/h. (The whole system contains approximately 600–640 L of water.) Extra flow in the tank is provided by 2× GMP-40s running at 70%.

Nutrients: During and immediately after the blackout, macronutrient consumption dropped. Then phosphate consumption increased for a short period, but last night's measurement showed phosphate at 0.43 ppm. This was surprising, as it had been 0.04 ppm the day before and I had dosed only 0.06 ppm. Nitrate stays between 10-12 ppm now without much supplementation. Alkalinity consumption has increased, and I hope this means the coralline algae have started growing again.

I got 10 Nassarius snails and a sand-sifting starfish on secondment from my other tank to help with... sand sifting. The Nassarius went in first and, initially, went into spasms whenever they touched the brown dino patches. Now they travel across the sandbed without any perceptible stress. (At that point, I introduced the starfish.) I have a hypothesis that maybe the dinos I have release more toxins when nutrients bottom out.

Daily routine:
- Dose 0.01 ppm ammonia in the morning, plus nitrate, phosphate, and alkalinity as needed.
- Dose 300 mL of phytoplankton: Tetra, Nanno, and Chaetoceros (diatom). Skimmer and UV stay off for 30 minutes after dosing.
- Blow the sand and rocks in the evening, making sure all visible dinos are disturbed.

 

[martin.a]

Third UV sweep done! I think I am noticing some improvements where I used the UV. Time will tell for sure.

Tank Pics:

Nutrients:
NO3 28.4
PO4 .06

Not bad, still low on phosphate but at least things are stable. Dosed 60ml Neophos.

Finished my automatic cuvette shaker. This thing is great. PO4 is a 180 flip, then stall, and the NO3 mode is constant fast shaking with no stall.

I believe, we need to be patient and keep the tank stable at params which do not favor dinos, and the dinos will be pushed out.

I am really interested in your cuvette shaker! Could you share? Do I hear a stepper?!