Dinos & high phosphates battle, 5months+, with a fix.

[BryanM]

So as some might know I've been fighting this battle for months. Early January this year... Its been horrible, frustrating, devastating, almost had me in years, and if this was a small tank I'd probably have either started it over from scratch or thrown in the towel.

Not going to try and go through all the details, suffice it to say I ended up with zero nitrates and phosphates, which started the problem.

Who knows how much all the different things I tried helped. Low lights, no lights, dose hydrogen peroxide, add beneficial bacteria, dose nitrates, dose phosphates, dosed lanthanum chloride thru a filter sock for 2-3 months, vacuumed 10 metric tons of sand it felt like. Definitely lost some items along the way, but 80%+ of the tank managed to get through this crisis and it probably hurt me more than it hurt it.

I share all this with you because I avoided adding a GFO reactor for a simple reason: Reactor sounded complicated, and I simply didn't want something new that was complicated.

For the record, it seems to me reactor = water pump, thru a canister that's filled with GFO. Boom, reactor. So I feel pretty silly, but I throw this post out there in case someone else comes across it with a similar mindset.

I think it was 5 days ago that I added the GFO reactor (from BRS, with the high capacity gfo media). At that time I was still testing .9 blinking on a hanna marine master tester.

Two days ago .71.
Yesterday .66

I also added a carbon reactor at the same time (separate canisters). I always thought my water also looked a little cloudy, and my wife confirmed last night that the water looks incredibly more clear today.

The tank is looking fantastic. The reddish brown algae/dino/whatever on the sand is gone. It seems to be being replaced with something else that is grey/darker, definitely not red.... And it is way slower to come around / increase over the sand bed.

So I am highly encouraged now, still have a ways to go, but decreasing .05 a day or so in phos is great. Nitrates have been around 8-10 for a couple months.

I'm a little afraid to turn off the gfo when I get around .15-.2, but that will have to be done, and I'll keep testing and see what that future holds.

Thanks to all who helped me along the way, and if this post helps anyone in the future, yay :)

 

[Rocks reef]

I am happy you found a way to combat your issue sir!

 

[psherman]

So as some might know I've been fighting this battle for months. Early January this year... Its been horrible, frustrating, devastating, almost had me in years, and if this was a small tank I'd probably have either started it over from scratch or thrown in the towel.

Not going to try and go through all the details, suffice it to say I ended up with zero nitrates and phosphates, which started the problem.

Who knows how much all the different things I tried helped. Low lights, no lights, dose hydrogen peroxide, add beneficial bacteria, dose nitrates, dose phosphates, dosed lanthanum chloride thru a filter sock for 2-3 months, vacuumed 10 metric tons of sand it felt like. Definitely lost some items along the way, but 80%+ of the tank managed to get through this crisis and it probably hurt me more than it hurt it.

I share all this with you because I avoided adding a GFO reactor for a simple reason: Reactor sounded complicated, and I simply didn't want something new that was complicated.

For the record, it seems to me reactor = water pump, thru a canister that's filled with GFO. Boom, reactor. So I feel pretty silly, but I throw this post out there in case someone else comes across it with a similar mindset.

I think it was 5 days ago that I added the GFO reactor (from BRS, with the high capacity gfo media). At that time I was still testing .9 blinking on a hanna marine master tester.

Two days ago .71.
Yesterday .66

I also added a carbon reactor at the same time (separate canisters). I always thought my water also looked a little cloudy, and my wife confirmed last night that the water looks incredibly more clear today.

The tank is looking fantastic. The reddish brown algae/dino/whatever on the sand is gone. It seems to be being replaced with something else that is grey/darker, definitely not red.... And it is way slower to come around / increase over the sand bed.

So I am highly encouraged now, still have a ways to go, but decreasing .05 a day or so in phos is great. Nitrates have been around 8-10 for a couple months.

I'm a little afraid to turn off the gfo when I get around .15-.2, but that will have to be done, and I'll keep testing and see what that future holds.

Thanks to all who helped me along the way, and if this post helps anyone in the future, yay :)

Hello BryanM!

I am very new to this site, though I've been reviewing posts for guidance for a couple of years now. We are 2.5yrs into the reef tank life (Redsea Reefer 350) and sadly, have been battling this dino/reddish brown stuff in our tank for months. A year ago, we used an algae scrubber (had really bad hair algae infestation) and since then, we acquired the dino problem from what I presume the lack of nutrients. We used liquid phytophos and dosed neonitrate. We've done the 3 day blackouts twice but each time, they've returned even sooner than before.

Our phosphates went crazy high, at about 3 or so just using the Salifert tests. We added the chemipure about 3 weeks ago. We tested and it's gone down to about 1.

The GFO reactor will be our next move to tackle this and hope with your detailed experience above, that we could also overcome our problem.

How's your tank been since then?

 

[BryanM]

Hello BryanM!

I am very new to this site, though I've been reviewing posts for guidance for a couple of years now. We are 2.5yrs into the reef tank life (Redsea Reefer 350) and sadly, have been battling this dino/reddish brown stuff in our tank for months. A year ago, we used an algae scrubber (had really bad hair algae infestation) and since then, we acquired the dino problem from what I presume the lack of nutrients. We used liquid phytophos and dosed neonitrate. We've done the 3 day blackouts twice but each time, they've returned even sooner than before.

Our phosphates went crazy high, at about 3 or so just using the Salifert tests. We added the chemipure about 3 weeks ago. We tested and it's gone down to about 1.

The GFO reactor will be our next move to tackle this and hope with your detailed experience above, that we could also overcome our problem.

How's your tank been since then?

Thank has been great. I cannot say for certain what worked, but I did have Dino’s that went into the water column at night, so uv was key. But no white lights and vacuuming a lot also probably helped a lot.