High phosphates after beating dinos

[aggrofish]

I got tired of battling Dinos and dosed Dino-x to kill them or break the tank down. I only dosed a conservative amount three times and haven’t seen a trace of Dino’s for a few weeks. The problem is GHA has taken over the tank (started while I had Dino’s and dosing neophos daily) and I’m having issues lowering phosphates. I’m guessing there may be a bit bound to the rock after 6 months of dosing phosphate.

I’m considering dosing flux RX to get a handle on the GHA. Ive used it one time before and I believe it bottomed out my nutrients which caused the Dino’s. So the question is this: does flucanozole lower nutrients or raise them from algae die off? To be honest I can’t remember.

Tank: 91 total system. Been running about 15 months. Moved locations about 9 months ago which has been a mess since. This tank has gone through many weird little cycles. At one point good snails were breeding in the tank and that slowed down. Then came vermeil snails everywhere. After that the tank exploded with pods and then literally thousands of mini brittle stars. I believe the Dino -x killed the brittle stars because I don’t see legs sticking out of the rocks anymore.
po4: .21
NO3: 20
DKH: 9
MG1440
Cal 440
sal 35
temp 82
PH 8.3

very lightly stocked since Dino’s killed most of my corals, but I recently Got some frags to grow out. Corals that survived, mushrooms, acans, torches, zoas, and my BTA are doing good. The only fish are two clowns, a sailfin, a goby and his buddy the pistol shrimp, and a royal gamma. I feed reef frenzy / mysis / brine and occasionally pellets for the cleanup crew.

I do a water change of 10 gallons weekly w/ 0 TDS RODI. Running skimmer 24/7 lights on 8hrs w/ only 10% white. I run a UV and carbon in media bags at the bottom of filter cups. I do not have a reactor or I’d run GFO. I’m really just trying to get this this thing back on track. What would you suggest?

 

[Lavey29]

Your parameters are fine. 10 to 1 nitrates to phosphate is good. You can walk the phosphate down slowly with a bag of phosguard in your sump if you want. Stop dumping chemicals in the tank and killing biodiversity. I had a GHA jungle and 3 tuxedo urchins and 2 turbos stripped the tank clean in 3 weeks along with manual removal and bumping my magnesium to 1500. Your numbers are good just fine tune them slightly. Add PNS probio which is a natural bacteria supplement. Also lowers nitrates and phosphate slowly.

 

[aggrofish]

I’d rather not go nuclear, but the GHA is starting to smother coral. I keep having to take out the torches and scrub the GHA off the base which irritates them. I cannot lower PO4 from water changes alone. I’ll look into the bacteria. I’m not sure MB7 that I dose really does anything

 

[Lavey29]

What is your cleaner crew? How old is the tank. Have you tried phosguard in your sump? What do you dose for coral nutrition which may also feed GHA and raise phosphate?

 

[aggrofish]

Standard turbos, astarea, conches, hermits, trochus, nassarius, nerite, etc. couple emeralds for bubble algae, peppermint shrimp for aptasia. No urchins or stars. Lots of pods This tank has been up for about 15 months. I moved live rock over from a smaller 45g that had been up for a couple years along with the livestock. I added about 40 Lbs of dry Marco. GHA def grows more on the dry rock as the old rock is pretty coated with coralline. I used to use phosgaurd in the old AIO. In fact I was just looking at it on Amazon. Right now I’m running chemipure elite and xport PO4 to try and lower.

 

[Lavey29]

Standard turbos, astarea, conches, hermits, trochus, nassarius, nerite, etc. couple emeralds for bubble algae, peppermint shrimp for aptasia. No urchins or stars. Lots of pods This tank has been up for about 15 months. I moved live rock over from a smaller 45g that had been up for a couple years along with the livestock. I added about 40 Lbs of dry Marco. GHA def grows more on the dry rock as the old rock is pretty coated with coralline. I used to use phosgaurd in the old AIO. In fact I was just looking at it on Amazon. Right now I’m running chemipure elite and xport PO4 to try and lower.

Ok very similar to my set up. Phosguard is good because it walks it down slowly so no sudden changes. Raising magnesium to 1500 causes GHA to turn white on the ends and makes it easy for your cleaner crew to get it. Get a couple tuxedo urchins.

 

[aggrofish]

Ok very similar to my set up. Phosguard is good because it walks it down slowly so no sudden changes. Raising magnesium to 1500 causes GHA to turn white on the ends and makes it easy for your cleaner crew to get it. Get a couple tuxedo urchins.

Can’t hurt to dose magnesium, thanks

 

[Acros]

Flux rx will take you right back to dinos. It is a good product, but only established aquariums can handle it without resulting in a dino bloom.

I had similar (>0.2) phosphates coming out of my dino outbreak and was advised against using GFO. However, I dose TM All For Reef, which has a slight carbon dosing effect. Which helped bring down phosphates under 0.05 in a month.

Here is a pic in Jan 22 coming out of the dino outbreak:

This is a couple of weeks back.

That being said, if you have no more dinos in the tank, I do no see a problem with GFO or Phosguard.

 

[sixty_reefer]

I got tired of battling Dinos and dosed Dino-x to kill them or break the tank down. I only dosed a conservative amount three times and haven’t seen a trace of Dino’s for a few weeks. The problem is GHA has taken over the tank (started while I had Dino’s and dosing neophos daily) and I’m having issues lowering phosphates. I’m guessing there may be a bit bound to the rock after 6 months of dosing phosphate.

I’m considering dosing flux RX to get a handle on the GHA. Ive used it one time before and I believe it bottomed out my nutrients which caused the Dino’s. So the question is this: does flucanozole lower nutrients or raise them from algae die off? To be honest I can’t remember.

Tank: 91 total system. Been running about 15 months. Moved locations about 9 months ago which has been a mess since. This tank has gone through many weird little cycles. At one point good snails were breeding in the tank and that slowed down. Then came vermeil snails everywhere. After that the tank exploded with pods and then literally thousands of mini brittle stars. I believe the Dino -x killed the brittle stars because I don’t see legs sticking out of the rocks anymore.
po4: .21
NO3: 20
DKH: 9
MG1440
Cal 440
sal 35
temp 82
PH 8.3

very lightly stocked since Dino’s killed most of my corals, but I recently Got some frags to grow out. Corals that survived, mushrooms, acans, torches, zoas, and my BTA are doing good. The only fish are two clowns, a sailfin, a goby and his buddy the pistol shrimp, and a royal gamma. I feed reef frenzy / mysis / brine and occasionally pellets for the cleanup crew.

I do a water change of 10 gallons weekly w/ 0 TDS RODI. Running skimmer 24/7 lights on 8hrs w/ only 10% white. I run a UV and carbon in media bags at the bottom of filter cups. I do not have a reactor or I’d run GFO. I’m really just trying to get this this thing back on track. What would you suggest?

What were your parameters wile dealing with dinos

 

[aggrofish]

What were your parameters wile dealing with dinos

Same except nutrients. Started with them bottoming out. I got them up through dosing. PO4 was .05 -.08 and nitrate was always low. Got that’ around 3-5

 

[sixty_reefer]

Same except nutrients. Started with them bottoming out. I got them up through dosing. PO4 was .05 -.08 and nitrate was always low. Got that’ around 3-5

I wouldn’t worry with your parameters for a wile then? Just let it rebalance for a wile to fully recover from the dinoflagellates before doing more changes

 

[aggrofish]

I wouldn’t worry with your parameters for a wile then? Just let it rebalance for a wile to fully recover from the dinoflagellates before doing more changes

The GHA is just annoying to look at. This tank is in my conference room at my office which makes it an eyesore. I'm curious how bound PO4 works because it just doesnt seem to go down. I'm not trying to get overly aggressive, just slowly lower it to levels where GHA doesn't thrive.

 

[sixty_reefer]

The GHA is just annoying to look at. This tank is in my conference room at my office which makes it an eyesore. I'm curious how bound PO4 works because it just doesnt seem to go down. I'm not trying to get overly aggressive, just slowly lower it to levels where GHA doesn't thrive.

Imo your tank has good parameters to keep the algae under control, all you need now is some herbivores to clean the algae.

ill give you my anecdotal understanding of what happened to your tank since you have used flux rx

After any product is used to kill a vast amount of algae inside a system you will notice a vast decrease in nutrients, this happens because as algaes die off they will release a vast amount of organic carbon into the water column along with some small amount of N and P, that organic carbon will be utilised by heterotrophic bacteria to reduce no3 and po4, in your case you mustn’t not had enough nutrients in your tank in comparison with the amount of organic carbon that was released, once your nutrients bottom out, your heterotrophic bacteria started to starve as they need no3 and po4 to thrive, in this conditions where heterotrophic bacteria becomes weak it gives space for dinoflagellates to start to colonise areas of the tank were heterotrophic bacteria used to dominate, another thing that happens wend parameters bottom out is that the nutrient Carbon starts to build up and as organic carbon build up dissolved carbon becomes more available that is one of the main things that feeds pest algae in a unstable system, the best thing you had happening so far was the increase in nutrient after Dino-x that somehow it removed the excessive carbon available.

imo you just need to keep them stable and find some herbivores to kill the algae, phosphates is the nutrient less used by marine algaes and not the reason for them to thrive in my personal openion.

 

[aggrofish]

Imo your tank has good parameters to keep the algae under control, all you need now is some herbivores to clean the algae.

ill give you my anecdotal understanding of what happened to your tank since you have used flux rx

After any product is used to kill a vast amount of algae inside a system you will notice a vast decrease in nutrients, this happens because as algaes die off they will release a vast amount of organic carbon into the water column along with some small amount of N and P, that organic carbon will be utilised by heterotrophic bacteria to reduce no3 and po4, in your case you mustn’t not had enough nutrients in your tank in comparison with the amount of organic carbon that was released, once your nutrients bottom out, your heterotrophic bacteria started to starve as they need no3 and po4 to thrive, in this conditions where heterotrophic bacteria becomes weak it gives space for dinoflagellates to start to colonise areas of the tank were heterotrophic bacteria used to dominate, another thing that happens wend parameters bottom out is that the nutrient Carbon starts to build up and as organic carbon build up dissolved carbon becomes more available that is one of the main things that feeds pest algae in a unstable system, the best thing you had happening so far was the increase in nutrient after Dino-x that somehow it removed the excessive carbon available.

imo you just need to keep them stable and find some herbivores to kill the algae, phosphates is the nutrient less used by marine algaes and not the reason for them to thrive in my personal openion.

Well, your understanding is far better than mine. I do know that when I used Flucanozole my nutrients we're pretty low to begin with with PO4 around .03-.05 and barely detectable nitrates. That was probably my mistake and I had neophos and neonitro on hand to not let nutrients hit zero. It takes a bit more than the recommended dose to get to the level you want. white sand and algae free rocks didnt last long and one day the tank was infested with dinos.

I would have assumed that nutrients would go up with the algae die off, but you gave a good explanation as to why they went down.

I guess for now, I'll put on some gloves and continue to manually remove instead of causing more issues for myself.

 

[Reckless]

Along with the manually removing the GHA add Tuxedo Urchins or any urchin to assist you. They are great at removing GHA and in IME bubble algae. you should also increase the amount of water you change every week until you PO4 and NO3 numbers start to drop. I would say 10% water changes are more for routine maintenance, 20-25% water changes for fixing small issues and 50-100% for major issues.

 

[aggrofish]

So my GHA which I think is Derbesia is totally out of control and growing between the heads of my torches. Nutrients did come down through water changes and chemipure elite. It’s been running .07/.08 and if I skim semi wet it lowers it by about .03.

Has anyone ever dosed NO3/PO4 while using fluconazole? Would that even work to not let nutrients bottom out? I have to do something about this algae or I’m just going to remove the corals and anemone and put them in another tank I have and break this thing down.

 

[nano reef]

I got tired of battling Dinos and dosed Dino-x to kill them or break the tank down. I only dosed a conservative amount three times and haven’t seen a trace of Dino’s for a few weeks. The problem is GHA has taken over the tank (started while I had Dino’s and dosing neophos daily) and I’m having issues lowering phosphates. I’m guessing there may be a bit bound to the rock after 6 months of dosing phosphate.

I’m considering dosing flux RX to get a handle on the GHA. Ive used it one time before and I believe it bottomed out my nutrients which caused the Dino’s. So the question is this: does flucanozole lower nutrients or raise them from algae die off? To be honest I can’t remember.

Tank: 91 total system. Been running about 15 months. Moved locations about 9 months ago which has been a mess since. This tank has gone through many weird little cycles. At one point good snails were breeding in the tank and that slowed down. Then came vermeil snails everywhere. After that the tank exploded with pods and then literally thousands of mini brittle stars. I believe the Dino -x killed the brittle stars because I don’t see legs sticking out of the rocks anymore.
po4: .21
NO3: 20
DKH: 9
MG1440
Cal 440
sal 35
temp 82
PH 8.3

very lightly stocked since Dino’s killed most of my corals, but I recently Got some frags to grow out. Corals that survived, mushrooms, acans, torches, zoas, and my BTA are doing good. The only fish are two clowns, a sailfin, a goby and his buddy the pistol shrimp, and a royal gamma. I feed reef frenzy / mysis / brine and occasionally pellets for the cleanup crew.

I do a water change of 10 gallons weekly w/ 0 TDS RODI. Running skimmer 24/7 lights on 8hrs w/ only 10% white. I run a UV and carbon in media bags at the bottom of filter cups. I do not have a reactor or I’d run GFO. I’m really just trying to get this this thing back on track. What would you suggest?

You could put gfo in the bottom of the filter cup in a bag. Thats what I do but in a sock. It works so well that I have dinos from 0 phosphates!