Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

Denisk · Nov 11, 2017

sfin52 said:
@techhnyne Keeping you No3 and po4 up. Black out and h202 are just bandaids. The uv will help certain types of dino.

@Denisk if you having 0 po4 you need to dose it. Seachem has a good. No3 is 0 than you will need to dose that as well. Leave the skimmer on. Put stop any phosphate remover like vodka and gfo. I wouldn't over feed to raise the numbers takes to long and may cause more issues. Skimmers don't remove Dino in beneficial ways. Also stop water changes the salt seams to have trace minerals that incourge growth.

Thank you! Will the tank at some point not need any dosing? I don’t know how my phosphate wouldn’t just rise naturally. It makes me concerned that the moment dosing stops, the Dino comes back.

rtparty · Nov 11, 2017

Denisk said:
That’s what I thought overfeeding would do hence why I felt it wasn’t the right option. The only thing about dosing nitrate and phosphate is that will I at any point stop dosing or will I just have to do for the course of the Reef?

You'll have to dose as long as needed. For some, that can be for the life of the tank. Thankfully it's cheap and a little goes a long way

Denisk · Nov 11, 2017

rtparty said:
You'll have to dose as long as needed. For some, that can be for the life of the tank. Thankfully it's cheap and a little goes a long way

Ok gotcha. Is it pretty easy to find a equilibrium in dosing? Like Can I set it up on a doser/ set it up and forget and check the phosphate every few days? Is this the seachem people recommend?

rtparty · Nov 11, 2017

Denisk said:
Ok gotcha. Is it pretty easy to find a equilibrium in dosing? Like Can I set it up on a doser/ set it up and forget and check the phosphate every few days? Is this the seachem people recommend?

That's the stuff. Get the bigger bottle. 500ml. I got mine as an add on item for like $8-10. I dose 2ml a day right now on my 50 cube, probably close to 60g with sump.

You could setup a doser for it but will have to monitor closely. As the tank matures, it will uptake more and more phosphate.

Denisk · Nov 11, 2017

rtparty said:
That's the stuff. Get the bigger bottle. 500ml. I got mine as an add on item for like $8-10. I dose 2ml a day right now on my 50 cube, probably close to 60g with sump.

You could setup a doser for it but will have to monitor closely. As the tank matures, it will uptake more and more phosphate.

Ok I just noticed that. Thanks so much! If you don’t mind me asking but what do you use for checking phosphate? If it’s Hanna checker, is one better than another.

sfin52 · Nov 11, 2017

Remember that in the wild the reefs produce a ton of algea. The reef also produce a ton of grazers as well. Have algea in the dt is not a bad thing. You are going to have to increase the cuc as you go along.

rtparty · Nov 11, 2017

Denisk said:
Ok I just noticed that. Thanks so much! If you don’t mind me asking but what do you use for checking phosphate? If it’s Hanna checker, is one better than another.

The Phosphorus ULR I believe. According to BRS's testing it was more accurate at the low end

reeferfoxx · Nov 12, 2017

Hey guys! Remember this tank!?

Look at it now!

Denisk · Nov 12, 2017

reeferfoxx said:
Hey guys! Remember this tank!?

Look at it now!

Looks like it really turned around. Is this your tank? If so, please do tell on your method.

Either way, great photos!

rtparty · Nov 12, 2017

@reeferfoxx

That looks amazing! Congrats

chefjpaul · Nov 12, 2017

reeferfoxx said:
Hey guys! Remember this tank!?

Look at it now!

WOW.
Share please.

reeferfoxx · Nov 12, 2017

Denisk said:
Looks like it really turned around. Is this your tank? If so, please do tell on your method.

Thanks! Of course it's my tank?

rtparty said:
@reeferfoxx

That looks amazing! Congrats

Thank you!

What I did was absolutely nothing. I had decided to reboot the tank. To rip it down and start over. With that decision I stopped dosing ca, alk, no3, and po4. Stopped dosing everything altogether. I also stopped testing parameters and stopped doing water changes. Well, the lack of water changes began a couple months before that but yeah.. So, I removed gac and only kept the skimmer and a little 9w UV running.

After about 30 days of 'doing nothing' fish health started to go downhill. So I did a small 15% water change to help with water quality. Maybe a couple hours after that water change, the hair algae started to fall off the rocks. This intrigued me. So i took a tooth brush to the rocks and started scrubbing. Two weeks went by and I noticed that the hair algae wasnt growing back. As a reward to the tank for progressing in a positive manor, I started testing the water. keep in mind, I hadn't tested or dosed in a month or so. Parameters came up at Ca 400, Alk 6.6dkh, Mg 1400, N 0.50ppm, P 0.03ppm. Since then I dosed to get alk up to 7dkh. Even now I'm going 2 or 3 days between dosing. Alk has been floating between 6.6 and 7dkh.

So, yesterday I looked at the tank and noticed that the 'new' live rock i added a month and half ago was still covered in gha. Instead of scrubbing it, I just removed it. I never wanted in the tank and it didn't fit really either. This is what the tank looked like 6 days ago with the rock.

So, I scrapped the glass, turned the sand and did another 15% water change. After a little nip/tuck, some collagen injections, a brazilian butt lift and a nose job, I rejuvenated the tank back to it's original look.

BTW, the dinos aren't gone. Just a very small amount compared to before.

Denisk · Nov 12, 2017

reeferfoxx said:
Thanks! Of course it's my tank?

Thank you!

What I did was absolutely nothing. I had decided to reboot the tank. To rip it down and start over. With that decision I stopped dosing ca, alk, no3, and po4. Stopped dosing everything altogether. I also stopped testing parameters and stopped doing water changes. Well, the lack of water changes began a couple months before that but yeah.. So, I removed gac and only kept the skimmer and a little 9w UV running.

After about 30 days of 'doing nothing' fish health started to go downhill. So I did a small 15% water change to help with water quality. Maybe a couple hours after that water change, the hair algae started to fall off the rocks. This intrigued me. So i took a tooth brush to the rocks and started scrubbing. Two weeks went by and I noticed that the hair algae wasnt growing back. As a reward to the tank for progressing in a positive manor, I started testing the water. keep in mind, I hadn't tested or dosed in a month or so. Parameters came up at Ca 400, Alk 6.6dkh, Mg 1400, N 0.50ppm, P 0.03ppm. Since then I dosed to get alk up to 7dkh. Even now I'm going 2 or 3 days between dosing. Alk has been floating between 6.6 and 7dkh.

So, yesterday I looked at the tank and noticed that the 'new' live rock i added a month and half ago was still covered in gha. Instead of scrubbing it, I just removed it. I never wanted in the tank and it didn't fit really either. This is what the tank looked like 6 days ago with the rock.

So, I scrapped the glass, turned the sand and did another 15% water change. After a little nip/tuck, some collagen injections, a brazilian butt lift and a nose job, I rejuvenated the tank back to it's original look.

BTW, the dinos aren't gone. Just a very small amount compared to before.

Well I guess it really turned around and fairly quickly. Thanks for sharing what you did!

rtparty · Nov 12, 2017

@reeferfoxx

Do you think the added diversity from the new rock plus the UV may have been most or a lot of the success?

My tank is night and day different since the UV has been online. I have one patch of rust colored "stuff" in a back corner and that's it. I call it stuff because I haven't scoped it and it doesn't look like dinos. Looks much more like diatoms. No air bubbles, no stringy mess but it does depend on light. It's also the lowest flow spot in my tank.

sfin52 · Nov 12, 2017

No water changes, nitrates, phosphates, uv and adding biodiversity seems like you took the same route this thread talks about.

reeferfoxx · Nov 12, 2017

rtparty said:
@reeferfoxx

Do you think the added diversity from the new rock plus the UV may have been most or a lot of the success?

My tank is night and day different since the UV has been online. I have one patch of rust colored "stuff" in a back corner and that's it. I call it stuff because I haven't scoped it and it doesn't look like dinos. Looks much more like diatoms. No air bubbles, no stringy mess but it does depend on light. It's also the lowest flow spot in my tank.

It's very possible. The rock I purchased wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I was on the hunt for creature rich rock filled with pods, amphipods, vermitid snails, aiptasia, worms etc etc. I didn't care what came on the rock. I just wanted some major diversity. What I got was or what looked like pre-cured rock with some forams(bonus) and coralline. I didn't see any pests or pods on this rock and really it looked like old dead staghorn coral. I wasn't impressed.

What I think happened was, after giving up on the tank and letting it sit without carbon or water changes and didn't even bother blowing detritus around, the tank went into cure mode. The organics built up. The pH most likely dropped. Coral growth stopped and the dirtiness increased. I even stopped cleaning the skimmer. Fish health was getting bad. I think at one point I thought my clownfish had ich. After doing that water change(kind of like cycling or curing rock) everything started bouncing back. I still haven't cleaned the skimmer(hob skimmer) except the pump. I clean the pump so it operates of course. But the detritus build up in the skimmer was increasing and with that I started seeing pods and little worm like things and stuff moving around inside the skimmer. I haven't seen a pod in this tank since I added pods 3 or 4 months ago. I was excited to see them.

Once I started seeing these little changes, I started looking at other things like flow for instance. Flow was good, I guess, as the pumps were running at full 100%. But they weren't getting the detritus off the rocks. This ticked me off lol. So i went to youtube. Ran across a recent video of BRS's triton setup. They made a small comment about their flow adjustment and how they alternate flow every 30-45 minutes. This set off a light in my head. So i researched more. Came across another video by Mr. Saltwater about his MP40 schedule and how he runs various modes throughout the day. Mixing waves with reefcrest and constant modes. Though, I don't have any vortech pumps, I do have the ability to create different wave patterns with the Aqualink SL1 controllers. So, I setup different modes in correlation with my lighting schedule. Doing this required me to change out filter floss TWICE a day. This was a positive move on my part. However, i kind of enjoyed not doing anything to the tank lol. Eventually, changing floss turned from twice a day to once a day and then now every three days.

Other than that, i'm still not dosing but once every 2 to 3 days. I think next weekend I'll recalibrate the dosing pumps to get that back online and then go from there.

sfin52 said:
No water changes, nitrates, phosphates, uv and adding biodiversity seems like you took the same route this thread talks about.

I've been battling dinos since page 9 of this thread. What I did, now, isn't exactly the same. I stopped dosing N and P out of utter frustration.

sfin52 · Nov 12, 2017

But they increased. Prob from all build up. Stopping water changes helped to. That rock prob had more diversity than you think. The skimmer allowed micro organisms to grow out side of Dino zone. Than spread to the rest of the tank. The neglect of your tank allowed all kinds of stuff to grow. You went the natural way. Just took longer to get there but you did.

reeferfoxx · Nov 12, 2017

sfin52 said:
But they increased. Prob from all build up. Stopping water changes helped to. That rock prob had more diversity than you think. The skimmer allowed micro organisms to grow out side of Dino zone. Than spread to the rest of the tank. The neglect of your tank allowed all kinds of stuff to grow. You went the natural way. Just took longer to get there but you did.

Agreed. However, the Coolia wasn't the phosphate hog like other specie of dinos. It does like nitrates. Nitrates were something I couldn't keep up without promoting GHA growth. And from what I witnessed, coolia likes to cling to GHA. It was a weird change from the first dinos I encountered. Regardless, yes the natural route was a unintentional route that was taken lol.

If it helps anyone else, start up a small 10 gallon reef like I did to keep yourself occupied and leave your tank alone lol.