Emergency

[dR3ws3r]

My snails have slowly been dying over time and I have been reluctant to refill my CUC because of the dinos. Seemed like a bad idea to add them, just for them to possibly die. The half dozen that I have seem to be ok. I have a peppermint shrimp that hides a lot, but I saw them yesterday and they were fine. He hides a lot. Not trying to shut down any thoughts or ideas, but trying to narrow this down. It is a little odd that the fish that have died do tend to live in the sand, or below the rock. not sure if that is coincidence or not. Still think the Royal Gramma is swimming iffy. I could put them in QT I guess.

 

[lmfbs]

My snails have slowly been dying over time and I have been reluctant to refill my CUC because of the dinos. Seemed like a bad idea to add them, just for them to possibly die. The half dozen that I have seem to be ok. I have a peppermint shrimp that hides a lot, but I saw them yesterday and they were fine. He hides a lot. Not trying to shut down any thoughts or ideas, but trying to narrow this down. It is a little odd that the fish that have died do tend to live in the sand, or below the rock. not sure if that is coincidence or not. Still think the Royal Gramma is swimming iffy. I could put them in QT I guess.

My money is on the dinos killing them. How sure are you about the type of dinos?

 

[dR3ws3r]

I am pretty sure. A few months ago I had Ostreopsis. I am sure of that. I saw them under a microscope and the tank had all the classic signs. Bubbles everywhere. I bought a UV sterilizer, and they were mostly knocked out in a few weeks. Things started to look better, but then the sand started getting covered in it. Went back to the microscope a few weeks ago and they had that classic beak that the small cell amphidinium have. Could they be large cell, or a mix ... sure. I posted a pic on Mack's reef (FB site), and they said large cell amphidinium. Regardless, UV was not working, and things were just getting worse and worse. But will daily dosing of microbacter 7, phyto and silicates the sand has mostly cleaned itself up. I did finally scrape the glass quite a bit, as the dinos were all over the sides and back. Could stirring them up be the problem ... maybe? I try to siphon as a scrape and filter through a 5 micron sock, but there is only so much you can suck up. Not sure what else to do ... just let the glass stay brown?

My money is on the dinos killing them. How sure are you about the type of dinos

 

[Msz3389]

What salt are using and sg?

 

[dR3ws3r]

I am using Tropic Marin Pro reef salt and my SG is around 1.025-1.026. The ICP results that I just got back had me spot on. I try to be pretty careful and use the Tropic Marin calibrated hydrometer and not just the milwaukee tester. Of all the things that could be wrong I would think salinity is the least likely suspect as it is the thing that I do really keep a good track of. I use the same salt in my QT tank and so far that hasn't been a problem.

 

[Msz3389]

Go with the lower version of tropic marine, the one I’m using and dose accordingly, it might be what’s fueling your Dino’s

 

[dR3ws3r]

Just did a 50 Gallon water change. I hope that helps.

 

[dR3ws3r]

My update, hopefully this isn't too long, but it probably will be :)

1. Overall I lost two fish, a diamond goby and an exquisite fire fish. I did not lose any inverts that I know of. A Peppermint shrimp, a pistol shrimp and various snails and conches all seem to be doing ok.
2. My Royal Gramma disappeared and had been swimming oddly during the event, but I finally found him this morning. I searched up and down for him for 2 days. Used a red light at night, checked all the rocks, couldn't see him, but viola he was swimming and eating this morning.
3. I have changed out about 50% of my water. I am not sure of all the consequences of that, and if anyone has some thoughts or recommendations about what to do in regard to that, please let me know. I have probably diluted a lot of my silicates and nutrients.
4. Most of my euphylia died. I had a 6 month old torch coral that just melted ... not even retract, just fell apart.
5. I have a trident and I noticed an increase in my alk. It went up about 0.7 dkh in 1-1/2 days.. I guess that could explain the coral deaths, but I wouldn't think that would really bother the fish too much. Please correct me if I am wrong. I do a very small Balling Part B dosage twice a day to keep my Alk around 8, and yesterday I noticed the Mobius app was reporting that my container was empty. It did not send a notification, so I don't really have an explanation for the alk increase. Even though I had refilled my container with Part B, I never thought to go to the app and reset the container volume. So i don't think it was dosing at all.
6. Most of the fish seem to be behaving normally and swimming and eating ... thank goodness.
7. So what is the cause of my accident? Will I ever really know? If I was to take my best guesses,

A. Was there foul food in the Frozen fish feeder, which caused the fish deaths, but not the inverts. Should I be rinsing that out more frequently?
B. Was there a sudden dose of Alk that I am not aware of, malfunction. Seems unlikely, although I could chalk up the coral death to this.
C. When I finally scraped the Dinos off the side and back of the tank, did I put a bunch of toxins into the tank that made the fish sick? Seems very possible. i was running activated carbon, but perhaps it was just too much stuff for the fish to handle.
D. I was dosing silicates, Microbacter 7, phyto and NeoNitro daily (All for my Dino problem). could I have overdosed? I am not sure that you can even overdose Microbacter 7, silicates or phyto. NeoNitro ... maybe, but I was following the directions pretty closely.

I am at a point where I would like to introduce more diversity in the tank to try to help avoid things like Dinos in the future. Maybe buy some live rock from TB Live rock. I have had constant turf algae and on-and-off dinos for over a year now. It takes all the fun out of the hobby. I can rarely sit back and look at the tank and admire it. I feel like my choice of using only "dead" marco rock from the start was a bad choice, even though I thought I was being eco-friendly. Even if the ability to scape shapes and structures is easier than with real live rock, the tradeoffs seem poor.

I am leery of adding new fish into the tank or going back to dosing, but don't want the Dinos to come swarming back. My sand bed has gotten clean. My glass on the other hand is building up a brown film with light bubbling amongst it. Making me feel like my Dino problem is not totally solved. I am even a little worried about scraping the glass, as I don't want to reintroduce a bunch of dinos into the water column.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on where to go from here?

Thanks in advance.