HELP. New to reef keeping

[mrblister912]

I’m new to the reek world and I have a 15 gallon hello reef tank it is about 7 months old I thought I was out the ugly stage and I may be aggravated for no reason but I’m getting a lot of what I think is dianos but I’m unsure. I did recently dump in some copepods I have 2 clowns and a peppermint shrimp. 2 GSPs and a BTA and a zoa. My GSPs won’t come back out any help is appreciated

 

[Tinnerito]

I’m new to the reek world and I have a 15 gallon hello reef tank it is about 7 months old I thought I was out the ugly stage and I may be aggravated for no reason but I’m getting a lot of what I think is dianos but I’m unsure. I did recently dump in some copepods I have 2 clowns and a peppermint shrimp. 2 GSPs and a BTA and a zoa. My GSPs won’t come back out any help is appreciated

Definitely dinos, but nitrates look fine. They also appear to high phosphates which I would do a water change and try to lower it 0.1 or lower. How often do you feed your tank?

 

[tzabor10]

Alkalinity is quite high. As is calcium. What are you dosing? Is the sand starting to clump up?

 

[mrblister912]

I’m new to the reek world and I have a 15 gallon hello reef tank it is about 7 months old I thought I was out the ugly stage and I may be aggravated for no reason but I’m getting a lot of what I think is dianos but I’m unsure. I did recently dump in some copepods I have 2 clowns and a peppermint shrimp. 2 GSPs and a BTA and a zoa. My GSPs won’t come back out any help is appreciated

Definitely dinos, but nitrates look fine. They also appear to high phosphates which I would do a water change and try to lower it 0.1 or lower. How often do you feed your tank?

Once a day. Mostly frozen shrimp sometimes pellets. I just changed to even a smaller cube of shrimp to see if that helps. I was wondering if it was the bottle of copepods I dumped into the tank.

 

[mrblister912]

Alkalinity is quite high. As is calcium. What are you dosing? Is the sand starting to clump up?

I’m not noticing any clumping. I sometimes put in some ati conditioner when I do a water change. I just done a 2 gallon water change yesterday before I took these parameters today

 

[mrblister912]

Alkalinity is quite high. As is calcium. What are you dosing? Is the sand starting to clump up?

How do you lower alka?

 

[Tinnerito]

Once a day. Mostly frozen shrimp sometimes pellets. I just changed to even a smaller cube of shrimp to see if that helps. I was wondering if it was the bottle of copepods I dumped into the tank.

You might want to decrease the amount. A lot of reefers I know feed only twice a week to keep nutrients at bay. I feed once every other day and that works fine for me but everyday can be bad for the water in my experience.

 

[mrblister912]

Once a day. Mostly frozen shrimp sometimes pellets. I just changed to even a smaller cube of shrimp to see if that helps. I was wondering if it was the bottle of copepods I dumped into the tank.

You might want to decrease the amount. A lot of reefers I know feed only twice a week to keep nutrients at bay. I feed once every other day and that works fine for me but everyday can be bad for the water in my experience.

Thank you for the advice. I will do that

 

[tzabor10]

How do you lower alka?

Normally alkalinity drops as stony corals uptake it and calcium. But you don’t have any.
Water changes would be my recommendation. But maybe the water you are using has high kH and Ca. What salt do you use?
What test kit do you use?

 

[mrblister912]

I’m using the salifert for alka right now. I’m working on getting some Hanna’s

 

[mrblister912]

How do you lower alka?

Normally alkalinity drops as stony corals uptake it and calcium. But you don’t have any.
Water changes would be my recommendation. But maybe the water you are using has high kH and Ca. What salt do you use?
What test kit do you use?

I use fritz. Pro reef salt mix. But I’m also using just RO water. Not rodi

 

[puckstopshere]

I fought dinos at around 4 months in my 14 gallon. I threw a bunch of things at the wall and beat them pretty quickly, maybe 2-3 weeks of work. I’ll list my key takeaways but can’t point to any one thing as a silver bullet.

1. Having a microscope is helpful for this hobby because it helps the community diagnose what kind of dinos you have. I had SCA.
2. I have an IM tank and bought the IM UV desktop gadget. I put this in the first chamber of the overflow, covered with filter floss, which I changed every morning. Kept this going for a month after I stopped seeing obvious dinos with less and less diligence on the floss as time went on, then back to filter socks.
3. Dosed Microbacter Clean and used Life Source weekly. Now I dose Microbacter 7 weekly as part of regular maintenance and Life Source monthly.
4. Did minimal water changes to keep nutrients up but still changed some water for stability.
5. Dosed SpongeExcel, got plenty of algae.
6. Majorly ramped up my clean up crew. I had 4 blue leg hermits, I added 5 more. I added the smallest turbo snail I could find and the smallest tiger conch I could get. Already had 4 trochus snails (which have spawned so my tank is even more stocked now!) and 2 nassarius snails. I plan to swap the turbo snail for another baby at my LFS if/when it gets too big for the tank. I absolutely love the tiger conch, it has made a night and day difference to the upper sand bed.
7. I did not do a blackout or change my light schedule at all. I did all the above and in a few days there was a noticeable change. In a few weeks it was gone.
8. My GSP also closed early on during the dino bloom. I did a hydrogen peroxide dip and it came back after a few days.

Other notes:
-You’re not going to see the clean up crew eat the dinos directly, but I think all the added activity on the rocks and sand helps to keep the dinos in the water where the UV picks them off. Meanwhile other bacteria you’ve added and the algae growing from the silica can build up on surfaces.
-I feed twice a day. I run rowaphos, carbon, and a bubble magus skimmer. Nitrates in the 20s and I work to keep phos below .2. I’d like phos lower to be closer to the consensus, but everything seems to be healthy at these levels so I don’t panic.

My tank is 10 months old and I’m no expert, but it is all getting easier. Good luck, you can beat dinos!

 

[puckstopshere]

How do you lower alka?

Normally alkalinity drops as stony corals uptake it and calcium. But you don’t have any.
Water changes would be my recommendation. But maybe the water you are using has high kH and Ca. What salt do you use?
What test kit do you use?

I use fritz. Pro reef salt mix. But I’m also using just RO water. Not rodi

I also use Fritz. It alone should not push your alk into the 12s. Test your RO water for alk to see what you’re working with as a baseline. If the RO is high you have two options as I see them:

1. Get a RODI system. The RoBuddie is ~$70 and is doing the trick for me.
2. Mix your salt with distilled water bought from the store. Or maybe mix the RO and distilled until you reach a level you’re happy with.

Either way, you want to start doing water changes with water that is at, or slightly lower than (for the short term), your target alk level, and it’ll come down with time.

Importantly, your alk isn’t causing your dinos. High alk is just an incidental finding in your post. You should bring alk down but that’s a separate issue.

 

[BryanM]

You might want to decrease the amount. A lot of reefers I know feed only twice a week to keep nutrients at bay. I feed once every other day and that works fine for me but everyday can be bad for the water in my experience.

I really disagree with this, and I know others will as well.

Starving the tank to try and control algae is not the way, even if this is a low load tank.

Fish in the wild eat all day long. I feed 3x a day.

One needs to address their nutrient export game and feed appropriately.

 

[Tinnerito]

I really disagree with this, and I know others will as well.

Starving the tank to try and control algae is not the way, even if this is a low load tank.

Fish in the wild eat all day long. I feed 3x a day.

One needs to address their nutrient export game and feed appropriately.

I believe that it simply varies from one tank to another. Giving recommendations, agreements and disagreements is all we can do but theres not a "right way" to do anything if you know what I mean. Because obviously some things work for people better than others. Fish in the wild eat all day long, only if they could, but realistically they go days, if not weeks without food depending on the species and the location. You can feed more often but that assumes that your tank can handle the load, which not all systems do, and that goes for ocean ecosystems as well.

 

[BryanM]

I believe that it simply varies from one tank to another. Giving recommendations, agreements and disagreements is all we can do but theres not a "right way" to do anything if you know what I mean. Because obviously some things work for people better than others. Fish in the wild eat all day long, only if they could, but realistically they go days, if not weeks without food depending on the species and the location. You can feed more often but that assumes that your tank can handle the load, which not all systems do, and that goes for ocean ecosystems as well.

I agree with this really.

What I really have an issue with is limiting feeding trying to control nutrients. I cannot really envision a reef tank with even just one fish in it that only gets fed 2x a week.

There's countless people trying to control algae by limiting nitrates and phosphates, and there's a lot of us that do not believe this works, or is even a good thing.

 

[Reef Jedi]

I really disagree with this, and I know others will as well.

Starving the tank to try and control algae is not the way, even if this is a low load tank.

Fish in the wild eat all day long. I feed 3x a day.

One needs to address their nutrient export game and feed appropriately.

I also agree with this, I feed 4 times a day enough to be consumed with in 2 minutes. Fish have a very fast metabolism and need constant grazing. A hungry fish is a healthy fish but don’t starve the fish.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I don't think it is dino's, but hard to tell. I 'm thinking more detritus settling and buildup. Do you have any powerheads in the tank besides the return?

One full cube to 2 fish is too much, try to cut the cube into halves or even quarters. I feed very small amounts 3 or 4 times a day.

 

[Dr 5hakalu]

I’m new to the reek world and I have a 15 gallon hello reef tank it is about 7 months old I thought I was out the ugly stage and I may be aggravated for no reason but I’m getting a lot of what I think is dianos but I’m unsure. I did recently dump in some copepods I have 2 clowns and a peppermint shrimp. 2 GSPs and a BTA and a zoa. My GSPs won’t come back out any help is appreciated

What’s that app you use?