Dinoflagellates caused by an abundance of untestable organic nutrients in our tanks.

[brandon429]

Great post

That’s what we do in the sand rinse thread, rip the bed out as it’s not the breakpoint in surface area for the system

Make the lr only system behave

Put back sterilized sand later. Please can you let me know of any updates we don’t get a lot of dinos challenges we’re usually just beating cyano in one pass.

The mere fact you are physically accessing the sandbed of an established $ system is the direct subject matter of our thread we’re hungry for examples there

Skip cycle biology must be used vs haphazard approach so that there is zero cycle or mini cycle, those orders of ops and variations of are what we like to track.

 

[brandon429]

Do you have a specific thread on your battle I can link to our sand rinse/ sand access thread

** you defined clearly above why we rinse in tap


It’s the only way you’ll rinse clean enough

It does not, not sterilize the sand. Tap water antimicrobial levels aren’t that strong, it inoculates bacteria into mixes it does not kill bacteria from them.

Cleaners kill bac
Boiling kills, meds kill

Tap rinsing is the best trick ever/spritzer of thiosulfate

 

[m0jjen]

I have a thread but its not updated. Ill keep postning my progress here

Worth mentioning is that i havent read the sand rinsing thread. My 2c anyhow is that its only worth pulling the sand in extream cases. I do fully believe that you can maintain a sandbed with proper feeding, critters, bacteria aswell and moderate vaccuming. If you are on top with all of them you can and will be able to maintain it without going to the extream and pulling it all out

 

[Chris Villalobos]

Still waiting on N-DOC results, but I have to report some weird PO4 consumption in my tank that must correspond with new sand additions I've been performing over a month now. Every time I syphon I been replacing and replenishing my sand. I've been getting rid of the old small particle aragonite and adding 'reef flakes'. Over a month I've replaced/added almost 20lbs of new sand. All my parameters had been normal until 4/2/19 when my PO4 started dropping. In the chart below you can see I've been dosing up to 0.2PPM PO4 each day and my tests are showing only 0.03PPM PO4. My tank is consuming 0.2PPM PO4 each day! My NO3 has stayed relatively stable through this event so it must be the aragonite binding PO4. It's just strange that it happened all the sudden. So my N-DOC may be compromised. I did get my ICP back though. I think the NaNO3 I had been dosing was contaminated with Fe and Pb. I recently bought some "Loudwolf" NaNO3 and it mixed up without any precipitate, we will see if that drops the Fe contamination.

ICP test results from 4/3/19 : https://www.triton-lab.de/en/showroom/aquarium/auswertung-b/icp-oes/87983/

Been awhile since I last posted.

I've been cyano and dino free since the last post. I don't know about other people's tanks but my current system still demands 0.2PPM Na3PO4 a day! That's right 0.2PPM Na3PO4 per day or else it dives to indeterminable amounts. I also dose 1.5PPm NaNO3. When I dose too much NaNO3 I do start to see some cyano.

Currently testing:
PO4: 0.03PPM to 0.07PPM
NO3: 1PPM to 3PPM

I have kept my fish feeding the same since I last posted, but gradually tapered off feeding all coral foods. My tank has is looking the best it has ever looked.

I'm inconclusive on an overabundance Organic Nitrogen causing Dino and Cyano. There is a possibility that whatever is consuming the mass quantity of PO4 in my tank is what also keeps the Dinos and Cyano at bay.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

Not the best pic but just shows the great growth I've been seeing in my corals. The Montipora Digitata is a weed! PC Rainbow is looking very nice too. There is a tiny bit of cyano on the sand. I'll have to check my NO3 levels. The also I've found that the larger bits of reef flakes don't tend to stay as white as finer grain sand.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

Here is my latest NDOC. As you can see my Nitrogen has finally dropped to an acceptable level. This is with dosing Nitrate and Phosphate each day. TNb is in line and coincidentally my Dino and Cyano problems are also.

NDOC Test

 

[Chris Villalobos]

Here is an NDOC when i was experiencing Dinos and Cyano.

NDOC Test January 2019

 

[bdare]

Here is an NDOC when i was experiencing Dinos and Cyano.

NDOC Test January 2019

Hey Chris,

This is VERY interesting. What did you do to reduce the total nitrogen? I was doing well in reducing dino with the dirty tank method but recently they have started making a comeback.

Thanks,
Ben