Dinos vs 3 days blackout + UV light+ kH boost. I keep you posted

[KonradTO]

Hi all,
After a really bad cyano outbreak (almost gone on the sand, still some on rocks) I started to see dinos (ostreopsis) increase. At the beginning I had some strings on few caulerpa leaves, until yesterday when they were covering every single macro and most rocks.
In the meanwhile I noticed that pH and kH values were different from what I expected. My sera tests are not very good in the saltwater parameters range (pH 7.5 and 8.0 have almost the same color). kH was testing 10 with one vial and 7 with another vial at 5ml mark.
So yesterday I finally decided to act. I brought some water to my LFS and he tested:
kH: 7,8
salinity: 33ppm
I also checked pH at work with a lab grade meter and was 7.6-7.7. I am not sure the calibration buffers were ok.
In any case I decided to:
- increase slowly my kH to 11-12 with sodium carbonate in hope to raise pH as well
- Take the tank lid off for few days (I have a 32,5g AIO tank with no sump and acrylic lid)
- Blackout everything for 3 days and covered the tank sides with towels
- Add a 13w UV light in the filter section
- keep N at around 10ppm and P at around 0.1-0.4 ppm
- Change filter floss every day and blow often dinos remainings off rocks and plants
- I also cut all the portions of macros with dinos on them and siphoned as much as I could

I will update here regularly on how the situation goes.

DAY 0

 

[blaxsun]

So it's mainly an algae tank then?

 

[KonradTO]

So it's mainly an algae tank then?

Yes for now I just have macros and fish. I am going to add corals soon if I am Dino free

 

[KonradTO]

First update:
After a bit less than 3 days (I couldn't wait to see) I checked the tank. Just some blue lights on for now.
The tank seems mostly Dino free! All the rocks do not show any filaments and macros seems clean as well.
It remain to be seen if they will form filaments again tomorrow when the white lights turn on again.
I will write on this thread regularly to share how this goes in the long term

 

[KonradTO]

After 3 days of blackout and uv there are no dinos left.
Now let's see how long it will last, my biggest problem is to dose properly N and P giving how difficult to interpret my tests (Sera) are. I considered Hanna checker but it's a lot of money atm for me so I will try with what I have for now. Also I put the lid back on, I will monitor how pH goes a bit more frequently in the next few weeks.

 

[homer1475]

If I had to guess, you will have dino's back in short order.

Blackouts never work for dino's, they seem to disappear, then reappear as soon as the lights come back on.

 

[KonradTO]

If I had to guess, you will have dino's back in short order.

Blackouts never work for dino's, they seem to disappear, then reappear as soon as the lights come back on.

Yeah well my hope is they went planktonic and got killed mostly by the uv light.. We will see, if they reappear my only strategy left is to use dino-x

 

[Duncan62]

Hi all,
After a really bad cyano outbreak (almost gone on the sand, still some on rocks) I started to see dinos (ostreopsis) increase. At the beginning I had some strings on few caulerpa leaves, until yesterday when they were covering every single macro and most rocks.
In the meanwhile I noticed that pH and kH values were different from what I expected. My sera tests are not very good in the saltwater parameters range (pH 7.5 and 8.0 have almost the same color). kH was testing 10 with one vial and 7 with another vial at 5ml mark.
So yesterday I finally decided to act. I brought some water to my LFS and he tested:
kH: 7,8
salinity: 33ppm
I also checked pH at work with a lab grade meter and was 7.6-7.7. I am not sure the calibration buffers were ok.
In any case I decided to:
- increase slowly my kH to 11-12 with sodium carbonate in hope to raise pH as well
- Take the tank lid off for few days (I have a 32,5g AIO tank with no sump and acrylic lid)
- Blackout everything for 3 days and covered the tank sides with towels
- Add a 13w UV light in the filter section
- keep N at around 10ppm and P at around 0.1-0.4 ppm
- Change filter floss every day and blow often dinos remainings off rocks and plants
- I also cut all the portions of macros with dinos on them and siphoned as much as I could

I will update here regularly on how the situation goes.

DAY 0

Hi all,
After a really bad cyano outbreak (almost gone on the sand, still some on rocks) I started to see dinos (ostreopsis) increase. At the beginning I had some strings on few caulerpa leaves, until yesterday when they were covering every single macro and most rocks.
In the meanwhile I noticed that pH and kH values were different from what I expected. My sera tests are not very good in the saltwater parameters range (pH 7.5 and 8.0 have almost the same color). kH was testing 10 with one vial and 7 with another vial at 5ml mark.
So yesterday I finally decided to act. I brought some water to my LFS and he tested:
kH: 7,8
salinity: 33ppm
I also checked pH at work with a lab grade meter and was 7.6-7.7. I am not sure the calibration buffers were ok.
In any case I decided to:
- increase slowly my kH to 11-12 with sodium carbonate in hope to raise pH as well
- Take the tank lid off for few days (I have a 32,5g AIO tank with no sump and acrylic lid)
- Blackout everything for 3 days and covered the tank sides with towels
- Add a 13w UV light in the filter section
- keep N at around 10ppm and P at around 0.1-0.4 ppm
- Change filter floss every day and blow often dinos remainings off rocks and plants
- I also cut all the portions of macros with dinos on them and siphoned as much as I could

I will update here regularly on how the situation goes.

DAY 0

Skip the black out. Feed your animals and they will feed plants and so on. Run the uv at. Night. Stir the sand at lights out. Keep you bennificial bacteria fed and dinos can't flourish. Be patient. They won't go away over night. I think I've seen your tank before. Macro and plants look better. Maybe you need more bioload.

 

[Duncan62]

Yeah well my hope is they went planktonic and got killed mostly by the uv light.. We will see, if they reappear my only strategy left is to use dino-x

No chemicals. Time and balance cures most of these problems.

 

[KonradTO]

Skip the black out. Feed your animals and they will feed plants and so on. Run the uv at. Night. Stir the sand at lights out. Keep you bennificial bacteria fed and dinos can't flourish. Be patient. They won't go away over night. I think I've seen your tank before. Macro and plants look better. Maybe you need more bioload.

Yes I opened another couple of threads about keeping macro from bleaching. Then started dosing + added some fish, cyano appeared, I increased flow and cyano disappeared but dino exploded. Now dinos are gone and macros look much better.
Finding the balance with nutrients and macro is much more difficult than I expected to be honest. When I decided to have a mixed macro+corals tank I thought it would have made easier to control nutrient in this way but apparently it added another variable to keep an eye on. I am seriously thinking to get a sump and keep the macros in there so I can exactly regulate how much I harvest of them. Now every time I touch the macros a lot of small fragments of C. brachypus get dispersed everywhere and are starting to grow on my rocks.

 

[KonradTO]

No chemicals. Time and balance cures most of these problems.

Yeah I also would rather solve it in other ways. But as far as I understood ostreopsis is toxic to fish and microfauna, I don't want my fish to die because of it..

 

[Duncan62]

Yeah I also would rather solve it in other ways. But as far as I understood ostreopsis is toxic to fish and microfauna, I don't want my fish to die because of it..

It will hurt urchins. I know this from a sad fact. I'm sure algea pickers might be harmed but most fish will be of. I've never lost a fish to it. It will hurt your amphipod population. I'm my experience the only way to battle dinos is naturally. Feed your fish. Stir sand and blow it off rocks. Run uv at night. It might take a while but the other organisms will populate and the dinos will be controlled. Before long your tank will look great.

 

[KonradTO]

Short update:
One week after the post, I am still Dino free. The tank looks great, also cyano on the sand disappeared!

 

[Duncan62]

Short update:
One week after the post, I am still Dino free. The tank looks great, also cyano on the sand disappeared!

Love the green. When your tank is ready a couple big hammers will look good.

 

[KonradTO]

One more week, so far so good. I turned off the uv light to see if it is necessary from now on. My NO3 and PO4 are more stable at decent values now. I think dinos and cyano were consuming most of nutrients when the tank was riddled with them, now that they are under check it seems easier to maintain.

 

[Duncan62]

One more week, so far so good. I turned off the uv light to see if it is necessary from now on. My NO3 and PO4 are more stable at decent values now. I think dinos and cyano were consuming most of nutrients when the tank was riddled with them, now that they are under check it seems easier to maintain.

How's the macro growth? Might be time for corals. Gsp or zoas. Looks great.

 

[KonradTO]

How's the macro growth? Might be time for corals. Gsp or zoas. Looks great.

I trimmed more than 50% of the Caulerpa brachypus because was getting everywere, but it's still growing fast as the other caulerpa species. The red algae (I think halymenia) is not growing at all on the other hand but recovered and all the bleached parts turned red again.
Yes I am ordering the led next week and then I will get some corals finally
I was thinking about covering the back wall with cyphastrea and starting with some LPS and soft corals.. Clavularia, euphyllia, and maybe some ricordea

 

[Duncan62]

I trimmed more than 50% of the Caulerpa brachypus because was getting everywere, but it's still growing fast as the other caulerpa species. The red algae (I think halymenia) is not growing at all on the other hand but recovered and all the bleached parts turned red again.
Yes I am ordering the led next week and then I will get some corals finally
I was thinking about covering the back wall with cyphastrea and starting with some LPS and soft corals.. Clavularia, euphyllia, and maybe some ricordea

Nice choices. Euphylia are favorites of mine.

 

[KonradTO]

Short update. I left the tank untouched for 8-9 days as I was on holiday. A tiny bit of cyano appeared on the sand again (the purple color on the rocks never left but it seems not a problem at this point). No dinos in sight for now despite I left the UV off for a while.

As you can see I finally got the led fixture (Viparspectra 165w)..IT´S A BEAST!
I also ordered the first corals, I will start my build thread at this point when I have some spare time.
Last word on this: it seems that the combination of increased kH+blackout+UV manage to keep Dinos under control.
I will keep you posted regularly on the Dino side under this thread.

 

[saltyhog]

I bet you had ostreopsis. I've seen UV reduce it to almost undetectable over night.

Congratulations! Keep those nutrients up and balanced, hopefully it won't be back!