I’m curious… and we can move over to your thread if need be, don’t wanna take up too much space here…
I skimmed through your build thread, just to try and get an idea of what you’ve got going on, but relatively few pics of the tank, except for the build out part, nice build. It looks like you’ve only had water in it since end of August, and you started with all dry rock, you’re not done with the ugly’s yet, I promise. One thing you could do to help with them is to get some live rock, or some rubble from an established tank to help increase your biome. I’ll list a few places down below where you can get some from if you don’t have a local person or lfs that you can get it from. Next, why with only one coral are you dosing AFR?, not saying it’s bad, but I don’t see a need for it in your tank yet since you don’t have a lot of consumption of alk, calc and trace minerals yet…and the other side of that is, why would you feel you need to stop because you hit another stage of the ugly’s?, it does not contribute anything other than the aforementioned supplements, alk, calc and trace elements.
Next, have you had your “dinos” positively identified with a microscope? I have a sneaky suspicion that what you may actually have is a type of cyano that closely resembles dinos, has a deep red color with bubbles and even strings up like dinos, I just went through this stage with my latest build, and still have some cyano on my sand bed that I’m dealing with… One way you can clean your sand without affecting your nutrients is to clip a filter sock to the inside of your sump, or in your water change bucket, and put the end of your siphon into the filter sock, and siphon away, if into a bucket, pour the water back into your tank, that way your not actually doing a water change, just siphoning out the nasty stuff. A pic under white lights of your tank would help with identifying.
Get some Reef Roids to raise your PO4, soak a 1/4 teaspoon in about 30ml of tank water for a few minutes and then add to your tank, bypass you filter roller if possible when you do this. Let it run without the filter and skimmer for a couple of hours. Do this 2 - 3 times a week, test PO4 after 24 hours. For Nitrates, the sodium nitrate works for me, I’ve not tried the ammonia, but I have friends that have/do and it works for them. There is a brand of ammonia you can get from Tractor Supply that can be used, Murray’s or Murphy’s, just make sure it has no extra additives or scents in it, but I can’t help with how much to dose.
Finally there is a wealth of knowledge that can be found in
@fishguy242 thread “my new baby” aka the cafe…it’s a very, very long read , and it’s not all reef related, we’ve had a lot of fun in there at times, but a lot of info is stored in there. There is a video on there of my latest build, posted it yesterday. I don’t have a build thread on R2R for my current build, but my old 120 build is still here.
Live Rock/Rubble Sources:
KP Aquatics
Tampa Bay Live Rock
Into Pacific Sea Farm (no live rock, but they have a Live Sand Activator kit and Wonder Mud, which does the same thing)
