Dino, maybe a touch of Cyano - advice on continued treatment

[Eclyps19]

Tank is 30g, roughly 7 months old. About 4 weeks ago I had a significant bloom of what I believed to be cyano. I had a previous cyano outbreak in my coral QT, and had successfully treated that with Chemi-clean. I treated my DT with Chemi-clean but there was absolutely no impact. That's when I started looking at it more closely and noticed all of the bubbles. I also realized that I hadn't needed to clean my glass for a while... At that point I began treating as if I had dinos.

I tried siphoning up the snot every day for about a week. I got a lot of it up every time, but it would always be back about 24 hours later.

I tried dosing ~5ml H2O2 each morning/night for about a week. No real effect on anything.

I wasn't testing my nitrates and phosphates regularly - I would previously test every 2-3 weeks and would always have 5ppm NO3, undetectable NO4. I tested after I noticed the bubbles and found undetectable levels of both NO3 and NO4. I started dosing Flourish Nitrate and Flourish Phosphate to try to raise my nutrients to > 5ppm NO3 and ~0.02ppm NO4. My NO3 seems to stick around for a while, but my NO4 gets sucked up very quickly and I find that I have to dose it daily. Since I started dosing about a week and a half ago, I've seen much more hair algae growth. I'm taking this as a good sign, as that will hopefully outcompete the dinos.

After I started dosing, I also stopped my Automatic Water Change of ~1g per day. The only water changes have occurred when sucking out large amounts of gunk.

I also purchased a UV sterilizer that I've had running for roughly 10 days. The UV has been on 24/7 to try to kill anything floating in the water column. Unsure if this has had a big impact. It's the mid-sized Innovative Marine Aqua Shield (https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/auqa-shield-uv-sterilizer-midsize-innovative-marine.html), and only 11 Watts. I also started running my activated carbon more frequently in case the UV was killing them in large quantities and releasing toxins.

About 5 days ago I siphoned out almost all of the sandbed, hoping to clear out the bulk of any dinos that were living in that. I just put fresh sand in today, and I'm already seeing significant growth on it.

Now what I'm seeing looks very similar to the dinos, however I see *very* few bubbles in the snot film compared to what it looked like a few weeks ago. The rocks are very clearly growing more algae than anything else, and blowing them off with a baster generally clears away much more dustiness and no brown/red flakes or strings. I've also noticed a bit of buildup on the glass, which hasn't really needed a cleaning for the better part of 2-3 weeks.

I'm wondering if all the action that I've taken over the past month has halted the spread of dinos and let cyano start to take over. If so, I'm overjoyed because I know that I can cure cyano.

If this is the case, I'm curious as to what your next steps would be. Based on the photos, do you think that it's cyano? If it is, would you let that continue to grow before trying to cure that? How do I prevent the dinos from coming back if I do start curing the cyano? Should the algae take care of that? If I run my carbon more frequently, will that be stripping the NO3/NO4 that I've been dosing? Should I do anything different with my skimming? If it's still just dinos, what further actions can I take?

Thanks for any advice. Below are photos.

New growth from today after replacing sand:

Video from today:

Video from about two weeks ago when it was *really* bad:

 

[flchamp89]

I've never gone to the microscope but with all you've done it would be what I'd recommend. Based on my knowledge it looks like Dinos.

 

[brandon429]

For sure you could beat that in our sand rinse thread. Here it is. Free tank reset work before and after your tank doesn’t recycle. Take and drain off top water into a brute, reuse.

Take tank apart, rinse out bed in tap water. Rinse rocks saltwater, no invader. Put water back. If it comes back redo, but with clean water, suspected dinoflagellates invasion but very early on, can be rip cleaned out. Any doubts about rinsing wouldn’t apply to a thread this large which is instructing multiple applications being done, we are past the test stage five years ago.
The part about killing bac and causing a cycle is first page material, the reason for the thread is proof it’s wonderful, not harmful.

Highly predictable results on your tank.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

Other methods can work well too, ours is so removal-based it’s clearly hard to beat. One reason I like this method is it doesn’t subject your tank to a big sustained chemistry experiment, it’s tank surgery. Yout can run the sand rinse method on a running normal tank, to extend its lifespan. That’s done in the thread, my nano is 14 yrs old and gets drained for half an hour, to participate.

To work in the sand rinse thread is to cause the condition of agelessness to an aquarium. It’s tank back flushing. required, anywhere fine catchpoints exist like sandbed surface area or extra live rock. The cost of the added surface area is cleaning work, or self clean design if applicable.
It’s not that your bed is aged,

It’s that a potential tank wrecker has rode in

the method we use to transfer tanks, and redo old tanks into new, is coincidentally what you want to do nine days ago here. Export the mass quickly, thoroughly. Rinse where it hides / bed
..

Tanks with new live rock not yet cured into total coralline, fanworms, coral etc often have dino issues early on, dino work threads show it’s due to lack of microbial competition to naturally occurring Dinos in a new rock curing tank. Places like Algen or similar places sell refugium charging kits, bottled pods, which are the exact competitors for dinos as stated by Paul B and others, you can add those to quickly affect expression in your tank. Do it after a rip clean not to replace one

One way you'll know you are working with a questionable method is the fix date will be left open ended. our fix date=at the end of your rip clean.

The method can be applied to full running tanks that are not in distress, ergo applying it to yours cannot harm. pages have details...
B

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

It looks like dinos but they usually clump together in the brighter spots not a shaded spot like under your pump. It's probably cyano mixed with dinos. I recommend letting it get a little bigger so that it will make manual removal easier.

Nanos are so small that it is practical to remove everything and clean it along with a 100% water change. Once you get beyond 10 gallons it becomes very impractical very quick. For a 30 gallon like yours, I'd advise against it. Dinos in a nano are an entirely different beast.

I have a 30 gallon myself and beat dinos without cleaning the sand or rocks. I did however perform manual removal with a baster once or twice a week. I dosed nutrients to get them to at least 0.1 ppm PO4 and 1 ppm NO3. PO4 took forever to keep up it seemed. Like 3 months but I had them really bad. The were 90% gone at that point. Took another 3 months to get them 100% gone. Sand bed also seems to be cleared up. I did run GAC for the toxins and changed it weekly. I've been completely dino free for 10 months now.

Stop skimming and stop GFO/Phosphate removers. They will remove the stuff you are trying to add. Once you see nutrients being maintained consistently, then restart those things if they get beyond the target values. Cyano and green hair algae are a good sign. They mark the end of dinos. After your nutrients are maintained, then treat cyano. Do run GAC to help with the dino toxins. Use herbivores for the other algae.

 

[Eclyps19]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Much appreciated.