Dino Yo-Yo

[Overbrook]

2-year-old 32G BC, 2 clowns, 1 flame, some happily growing SPS (Steve's LEDs)

I let things get a bit out of balance when I added a Biobrick and started playing with zeo bak and zeo's carbon dosing product. Nitrate fell (HLR) and then some dino's appeared. I siphoned them daily, removed the brick, stopped water changing, and dosed some neo-nitro for 2 weeks without any luck. I then purchased and set up Aqua Ultraviolet 15w hang on UV. Worked great. Ran it for about a week then took it off.

After about a week of happiness, my old foes GHA and bubble algae suddenly appear. Then the dinos start to creep back. Nitrate 0.5 (HLR) Phos 0.04. I want to better understand what might have happened. How's this theory:

- Nutrients dropped - dino's appeared
- Dosing nitrate basically just fed the dino's for a while (tested nitrate never increased) and started to feed some GHA/Bubbles
- UV killed the dinos whose death increased my nutrients and made room for the GHA/Bubbles
- Available nutrients were rapidly consumed by GHA and bubble algae

Does that make some sense?

UV is back on and the dinos are visually gone. I'm back to water changing and will use some vibrant to get rid of the algae.....hopefully, I can avoid a yo-yo this time.

 

[Quietman]

Sounds about like what discovered. I had dinos disappear with the UV and then after a few weeks dialed back the flow and naturally, they returned. It's been months now since I've seen dinos. I got a little impatient when they returned and dosed DinoX along with the UV. Since all my fish and corals had already been stressed from the first go round with dinos combined with a potent algaecide like DinoX and I lost almost everything except my purple death palys (which I'd been happy to see go of course) and all fish but my blue green chromis.

So lessons learned here. Keep the UV on at the right flow period. I'm designing new tank and building in UV 24/7 because I think it's just that necessary as a preventative and corrective measure. Also, don't dose DinoX if your system is stressed already.