dino outbreak a week before vacation.

[Fishbike13]

In another thread i posted, a few members helped me determine that i have a dino outbreak due to bottomed out nutrients.
Since then i have scrubbed the rocks (that lasted all of 3 days), began dosing Brightwells NeoNitro, and NeoPhos, and done a 5g water change.

Tank: 20 long DT, 20 long sump (~35g total volume)
i want to say around 20lbs rock, and i recently removed the large volume of seachem matrix that was in the sump.
Lights- 2 Aquaknight A029
Livestock: 2 (1 inch) oscellaris clowns, 1 royal gramma, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 astrea snails, 3 nasarrius snails, handful of dwarf ceriths
Corals: small 3 head frag of frogspawn, 2 small red mushrooms.

Im having a hard time getting nitrates up over 4ppm using the neonitro, so i may have to switch to a more concentrated solution of KNO3, but my question is this, I am going away for a week, in about a week. What should i do about keeping nutrients up while im gone without a dosing pump? Should i just spike NO3 up to 20 before i leave? Remove the 8lbs of rock in the sump?

My testing has shown that the tank consumes 1ppm NO3 per day, phosphate has been even tougher to keep elevated.

Going to black out the tank for the next 3 days while i work on keeping nutrients up.

I just dont want to come back to a dead tank because it went toxic. TIA

 

[dwest]

In another thread i posted, a few members helped me determine that i have a dino outbreak due to bottomed out nutrients.
Since then i have scrubbed the rocks (that lasted all of 3 days), began dosing Brightwells NeoNitro, and NeoPhos, and done a 5g water change.

Tank: 20 long DT, 20 long sump (~35g total volume)
i want to say around 20lbs rock, and i recently removed the large volume of seachem matrix that was in the sump.
Lights- 2 Aquaknight A029
Livestock: 2 (1 inch) oscellaris clowns, 1 royal gramma, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 astrea snails, 3 nasarrius snails, handful of dwarf ceriths
Corals: small 3 head frag of frogspawn, 2 small red mushrooms.

Im having a hard time getting nitrates up over 4ppm using the neonitro, so i may have to switch to a more concentrated solution of KNO3, but my question is this, I am going away for a week, in about a week. What should i do about keeping nutrients up while im gone without a dosing pump? Should i just spike NO3 up to 20 before i leave? Remove the 8lbs of rock in the sump?

My testing has shown that the tank consumes 1ppm NO3 per day, phosphate has been even tougher to keep elevated.

Going to black out the tank for the next 3 days while i work on keeping nutrients up.

I just dont want to come back to a dead tank because it went toxic. TIA

You can dose more nitrates now. Add some extra each day until you leave. Certainly I wouldn’t worry about 10-15 ppm nitrates. I would make sure to run GAC until your dinos are gone. Replace weekly for now will help. Try to enjoy your vacation!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Do a 4 day blackout - No lights other than ambient room light. During day add liquid bacteria and at night when dark, 1 m/l of hydrogen Peroxide per 10 gals. Loosen up dino with turkey baster and either siphon up or net it and discard.
Day 4=5 should be literally gone. DO not feed coral food or add NoPox during this time. On vacation, run blues only until you return from your trip

 

[Fishbike13]

You can dose more nitrates now. Add some extra each day until you leave. Certainly I wouldn’t worry about 10-15 ppm nitrates. I would make sure to run GAC until your dinos are gone. Replace weekly for now will help. Try to enjoy your vacation!

So as long as i keep them elevated it just turns into a waiting game after the blackout?

I also dont know what im going to do long term to keep my nutrients up

Do a 4 day blackout - No lights other than ambient room light. During day add liquid bacteria and at night when dark, 1 m/l of hydrogen Peroxide per 10 gals. Loosen up dino with turkey baster and either siphon up or net it and discard.
Day 4=5 should be literally gone. DO not feed coral food or add NoPox during this time. On vacation, run blues only until you return from your trip

What liquid bacteria should i add? I thought the biofilter working too well was the cause of this problem to begin with? And i turned the lights off today, will turn the blues back on weds. Corals do not get anything other than what falls off the pe mysis and NLS pellets that i feed the fish. No dosing in the tank other than the neonitro and neophos currently.

 

[vetteguy53081]

So as long as i keep them elevated it just turns into a waiting game after the blackout?

I also dont know what im going to do long term to keep my nutrients up

What liquid bacteria should i add? I thought the biofilter working too well was the cause of this problem to begin with? And i turned the lights off today, will turn the blues back on weds. Corals do not get anything other than what falls off the pe mysis and NLS pellets that i feed the fish. No dosing in the tank other than the neonitro and neophos currently.

Bacter 7 works well

 

[Fishbike13]

So the reccomendation going forward is to leave the lights off for 3-4 days, manually remove what i can of the dynos, dose microbacter7 while keeping the nutrients elevated with the Neonitro and Neophos, and run a small bag of carbon in the sump changing it out weekly. Continue doing so until everything stabilizes and dinos are gone. I think i can handle that all.
Thanks for the help so far, and as always, open to any more suggestions.

I do have one question though, why is my relatively young tank (10 months old) having such a hard time retaining nutrients? I dont run a skimmer, i do a partial water change maybe once a month, i dont have a large coral population, and i feed what i thought was pretty heavily (1/3 cube of mysis daily, and a small pinch of pellets which equates to 2-3 pellets per fish.) It seems immature tanks dealing with high nutrients is much more common, so what do i need to fix going forward? What do you more experienced reefers see wrong with what im doing?

 

[Cbones1979]

I’m having the same issue. I feel like my tank has enough nutrients with my fish/coral/cuc load but apparently not

 

[Fishbike13]

I’m having the same issue. I feel like my tank has enough nutrients with my fish/coral/cuc load but apparently not

Well seeing as i can be a bit impatient, i will follow the reccomendations posted here at least until i get back from vacation (so around 2 weeks) and see what kind of progress can be made. I will keep this thread updated with any new info i can find.

 

[Saltyreef]

I left for vacation 2 weeks ago during a full dino outbreak that was getting worse after it reared its ugly head over a month ago. Raising nutrients did very little, uv dif very little. I reduced my photo period to 7 hours with 1 hour being peak and by my return from vacation on day 7 they were all gone

Increasing photo period by an hour each day now they arent blooming anymore.

 

[ScottB]

Well seeing as i can be a bit impatient, i will follow the reccomendations posted here at least until i get back from vacation (so around 2 weeks) and see what kind of progress can be made. I will keep this thread updated with any new info i can find.

Do a 4 day blackout - No lights other than ambient room light. During day add liquid bacteria and at night when dark, 1 m/l of hydrogen Peroxide per 10 gals. Loosen up dino with turkey baster and either siphon up or net it and discard.
Day 4=5 should be literally gone. DO not feed coral food or add NoPox during this time. On vacation, run blues only until you return from your trip

Can I ask which dino species you have used this method for effectively? I ask because a version of this method -- otherwise known as the Elegance Coral method -- seems to have produced about as many good results as bad ones in the main dino thread. The method makes no distinction between dino species and protocol. Anecdotal math to be sure, but I have been through a hundred or two pages of it here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/d...-tired-of-battling-altogether.293318/page-434

If I had amphidinium (large cell), I'd be inclined to give this method a try. But as for the other 4 common aquarium species (ostreopsis, procentrum, small cell amphidinium, coolia), the mcarroll/taricha/dwest method is anecdotally at least a proven cure.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I had small cell but was everywhere and started to get stringy/slimy and I beat it in 6 days

 

[ScottB]

So the reccomendation going forward is to leave the lights off for 3-4 days, manually remove what i can of the dynos, dose microbacter7 while keeping the nutrients elevated with the Neonitro and Neophos, and run a small bag of carbon in the sump changing it out weekly. Continue doing so until everything stabilizes and dinos are gone. I think i can handle that all.
Thanks for the help so far, and as always, open to any more suggestions.

I do have one question though, why is my relatively young tank (10 months old) having such a hard time retaining nutrients? I dont run a skimmer, i do a partial water change maybe once a month, i dont have a large coral population, and i feed what i thought was pretty heavily (1/3 cube of mysis daily, and a small pinch of pellets which equates to 2-3 pellets per fish.) It seems immature tanks dealing with high nutrients is much more common, so what do i need to fix going forward? What do you more experienced reefers see wrong with what im doing?

Do you have an ID on the dinos? You mentioned a fear of toxin build up, but not all are toxic. Are they in the sand almost exclusively?

 

[Fishbike13]

Do you have an ID on the dinos? You mentioned a fear of toxin build up, but not all are toxic. Are they in the sand almost exclusively?

They are all over. A little bit in the sand, and some on the rocks. I have not gotten an ID on the species, but this is what it looks like currently.

It looks kind of green in the pictures, but is very brown to they eye. These pictures are also pre scrubbing, after i scrubbed the rock, it was starting to grow back by the end of the day. Also very stringy coming out of the sand. I may take a gander at microscopes on amazon tonight while im at work.

The purple rocks are the caribsea life rock- they were purple from new.

 

[Cbones1979]

I had small cell but was everywhere and started to get stringy/slimy and I beat it in 6 days

How

 

[vetteguy53081]

How

How what ?

 

[Cbones1979]

How what ?

Beat it in 6 days

 

[Cbones1979]

Do a 4 day blackout - No lights other than ambient room light. During day add liquid bacteria and at night when dark, 1 m/l of hydrogen Peroxide per 10 gals. Loosen up dino with turkey baster and either siphon up or net it and discard.
Day 4=5 should be literally gone. DO not feed coral food or add NoPox during this time. On vacation, run blues only until you return from your trip

What liquid bacteria would you suggest?

 

[vetteguy53081]

What liquid bacteria would you suggest?

I used bacter 7

 

[Cbones1979]

I used bacter 7

So if my issue is nearly no nutrients is the plan using Bacter 7 and h2o2 trying to wipe all nutrients and dinos out?
I’m going back and forth between increasing nutrients to get other algae to grow and just nuking dinos altogether

 

[vetteguy53081]

So if my issue is nearly no nutrients is the plan using Bacter 7 and h2o2 trying to wipe all nutrients and dinos out?
I’m going back and forth between increasing nutrients to get other algae to grow and just nuking dinos altogether

You don't want to wipe out nutrients nor do you want to add NoPox or coral food which is fuel for Dino