I added some high capacity GFO over the weekend. Phosphate is down to .71 ppm.
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hanna Low Range Silica is great.Seems there isn't a good silicate test kit on the market.
Our problem Dinos are 30-50 microns, "green water" events are caused by ~5 micron algae, bacteria blooms, smaller than that. Manufacturer recommendations aren't written for dinos (except ones that say "for parasites...").Dinos are algae. I don't want to kill plankton and sterilize the water
Quoting what the UV manufacturer has written.hanna Low Range Silica is great.
Our problem Dinos are 30-50 microns, "green water" events are caused by ~5 micron algae, bacteria blooms, smaller than that. Manufacturer recommendations aren't written for dinos (except ones that say "for parasites...").
I don't get that statement at the bottom. What do they think is surviving trips through the UV unharmed? copepod nauplii? very skeptical.
Well... Hair algae is starting to show up. I suppose that's a good thing. Hopefully it will begin to outcompete the dinos. All the tangs are taking care of most of it in the display. Also got the UV hooked up today.I will problably pull the trigger on a flow sensor for the Profilux so I can be more precise with my dwell time in the not to distant future.
INteresting. I thought the point was to get nusciance algae growing to outcompete the dinos for nutrients? Is that not the strategy for beating these things?hair algae seems to merely provide and anchor for dinos when my tank was overrun.
INteresting. I thought the point was to get nusciance algae growing to outcompete the dinos for nutrients? Is that not the strategy for beating these things?
I'd also like to add a few notes about how I think I got here...
This is the biggest tank I've ever setup at 210 gallons. My last tank was a 120. At the onset I wasn't planning to do water changes. I neglected them forever on my 120 and the tank ran great.
I started this tank with dry rock and dry sand. Previous tanks were all real live rock. My favorite was pukani. All previous tanks all started with dry sand as I never bought into the "bacteria in a bag" thing in an effort to speed up a cycle. Back then that's what it was about. We didn't have to worry so much about bio diversity. To get the cycle started on this build I used ammonia nitrate and Fritz bacteria in a bottle.
Not sure how, but my nitrates got VERY high. I used both Salifert and Red Sea Pro test kits. Both read somewhere in the 75-100 range. Since I wasn't doing water changes I tried using Cheato. It apparently also doesn't like super high nitrates and it died. At some point I decided to try carbon dosing. I ramped up slowly till I was adding like 50-60ml per day spread out over several doses. Once my nitrates hit 10 I stopped.
I eventually started seeing ugly brown patches on my sand. Although dinos were in the back of my mind I just assumed Cyano. I figured there was no way with as high as my nutrients had been that dinos would start that fast.
I went through 2 doses of Chemiclean to eradicate cyano before I decided to buy a microscope and validate it's actually dinos.
Trying hard not to be discouraged by the countless people I read about who've been battling this for months. I'll try to keep this thread updated with my progress.
It's very odd indeed. I've been in this hobby over 20 years. This is my 5th personal tank and I've helped others setup multiple. This is the first time I've ever had this many issues. I keep trying to go back and think what I've done differently here compared to other tanks. Besides technology changes like the type of movement pumps and the type of LED lighting it's all pretty consistent other than this fake live rock...My situation is almost identical to yours. Same bigger tank all dry to start out. I did have cyano and used chemiclean. The chemiclean worked but about a month after the treatment I got dinos. I've never used a quick fix and i've been doing this for a long time. I will never do it again. I have two horizontal algae scrubbers in my surge tanks that double as a fuge. I noticed the dinos love the high flow of the algae scrubber. My scrubbers are bit undersized for the stocking I have and I couldn't think of another way to increase the capacity. I saw PaulB on this forum had and "algae tray" on the back of his tank. I decided to implement one like his since it was an empty space. It cost me about $30 although I had a couple small harbour freight 160 gal pumps hanging around. It's been running about a week and the dinos are really starting to grow in the new device and I'm seeing way less in the display tank. I'm hoping the turf algae will start taking over in the new scrubber but if I can get the dinos to grow there and not the display I'll be pretty happy. No additives or quick fixes. I feel the chemiclean made my situation worse in the long run.
im going through but found that whatever is inmy tank is consuming a TON of phosphates, im currently dosing 50ml of neophos and still stays at 0 but gonna switch to the dry since it gets expensive. I found that adding phyto feast is actually making mines worse though.I added some high capacity GFO over the weekend. Phosphate is down to .71 ppm.
The 1 micron filter sock siphon did worked great for me but they slowly come back.I'll be curious to see if you can knock them down without UV. Someone around here also said they used 1 micron filter socks to trap dinos. Another used a diatom filter. The concept being Remove, versus Irradiate.
Your lighting modifications should inhibit the dino reproduction... but these might also limit the ability to grow competitive film algae. I don't know.
Stick with it; keep us informed.
A couple?We have similar back stories and similar beliefs. I hope your methods work. But I’ll throw one more suggestion your way if it you need it: You could buy a couple of jebao 55 watt sterilizers and run them in series and give that a shot. You’d know in a few days and it could be hooked up temporarily just to see if it helps. Good luck either way.
I don’t want to wait that long lolKnock on wood... after about 1.5 years of battling dino I think they are finally gone.
Do you know what kind of dino you have? That's the first step.I don’t want to wait that long lol