How to keep the dinos away?!

[GothFishKeeper]

When I first put all the macros in this tank, a dino bloom quickly came about, and it was a mess. A LFS that I frequent told me to do a 48 hour total blackout, followed by 2 weeks of daily dosing of these three products:

And it very much worked, the progress a few weeks later can be seen in this post here:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/honest-thoughts-on-my-macroalgae-tank.1113039/
Then last week when I noticed some more dinos popping up along with major hair algae blooms, so I did another blackout. This time it didn’t seem to affect much at all and I’m very confused as to why. Here is a video from today showing how bad it’s gotten again:



As you can see I removed most of the fast growing red gracilaria and I put it in the refugium of my reef system after doing a FW dip on it. I did this in hopes that the nutrients will be able to rise because as fast as everything was growing, especially the gracilaria, the nutrients kept bottoming out in less than a day before I could even dose again.

I ordered some potentially slower growing macros to go in their place, but I wanna get rid of the dinos, hair algae, and cyano before I put them in. Should I do a longer blackout? I’m at a loss

 

[tmccaff]

How I got rid of dinos is this! Use a UV Sterilizer, do a water change but not actually remove water but use a small micron bag to a pump. Check both phosphates and Nitrates make sure not zero on either. Nitrates should be 16:1 ratio to phosphates. Don't do any water changes except what I suggest above.

If that don't work. You can remove rock one by one and scrub it off in a bucket. Mine was a lot worse.

It's caused by imbalance of nutrients as either nitrate or phosphates hit zero or both. Hope this helps. Uv works well with dinos!

 

[GothFishKeeper]

How I got rid of dinos is this! Use a UV Sterilizer, do a water change but not actually remove water but use a small micron bag to a pump. Check both phosphates and Nitrates make sure not zero on either. Nitrates should be 16:1 ratio to phosphates. Don't do any water changes except what I suggest above.

I assume the micron bag to the pump is to catch the dinos, but how can i be sure that none of them are attached to my macros still? I have a UV sterilizer in the first aio filtration chamber.

 

[Lavey29]

Blackouts are a bandaid temporary fix that does not address the underlying source of your problems so you will have continued algae problems.

 

[tmccaff]

Depends on species of dinos some move in water column and the micron bag will help with that. Yes, you don't want to do a water change per say. It be beneficial to first see what species you have. You can get a cheap microscope that will tell you what you have.

If UV isn't helping much most likely you have Amphidinium species.

 

[GothFishKeeper]

Blackouts are a bandaid temporary fix that does not address the underlying source of your problems so you will have continued algae problems.

I fully agree with this, but how do I address the underlying problems when I have a white light on the tank that’s meant to grow the macroalgae?

 

[tmccaff]

I fully agree with this, but how do I address the underlying problems when I have a white light on the tank that’s meant to grow the macroalgae?

You want Nitrate/ Phosphate higher to make competing algae to starve out dino's. What is your nitrate/phosphate level now? That is why doing a water change with dinos will make it worse. Looking at pics looks like your tank is too clean not a lot of algae. How is Nitrates introduced into tank, I am confused on your tank no fish? How you getting nitrates or phosphates?

 

[Peter Houde]

Talk about a planted aquarium