https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/211722/I've had good results with cyano and coral snow. What do you mean it's chalk?
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https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/211722/I've had good results with cyano and coral snow. What do you mean it's chalk?
You're welcome[emoji6]There are already huge amounts of suggestions, but I have a unique one to this thread.
First though, I’d agree with what Dr. RHF said, all of it.
The only thing I would like to add is mechanical filtration. @glennf DSR method advocates the use of what he calls a powerfilter. It really just a higher pressure pump with filter wool on the pumps intake, over a screen. I use quilt batting material and just cut a square once a week and wrap it around the pvc I cut slots into. Then rubber band it on and turn the pump back on. I run that pump into my UV, just because it needed flow and I didn’t want that low a flow rate to the tank. I have zero algae issues now, in part I think because of this.
@glennf , what do you think about my UV in line with the pump all recirculating within the sump? Ok if the pump is big enough for the bio load?You're welcome[emoji6]
www.DSRreefing.com/powerfilter
It seems fine, why waste energy if you can use the same pump to feed the UV unit.@glennf , what do you think about my UV in line with the pump all recirculating within the sump? Ok if the pump is big enough for the bio load?
I've had about a 2 month battle with Dinos where I tried everything, and I finally got a handle on them recently.
I believe the formula to win is actually quite simple:
Get your Nitrates to 5-10PPM. Get your phosphates to >0.1 PPM (shoot for 0.1 to 0.2). Dose nitrates with stump remover. Dose phosphates with seachem flourish or the like. Hold nitrates and phosphates at those levels for a couple weeks and your dino bloom will end. It can be difficult to get your levels this high. I literally had to dose the equivalent of 1 PPM of phosphate per day for multiple days to start to get phosphates to register. To figure out how much to dose, just test your water everyday right before the lights come on. Then dose X of nitrates and Y of phosphates (start small and ramp up from there --- there are calculators online which should give you good initial doses). Keep ramping up the doses until nitrates at 5-10 and phosphates are >0.1. Depending on your tank's chemistry that might mean more of one or the other. Then once your levels are correct, keep doing maintenance doses everyday to maintain the nitrates and phosphates at the proper levels.
The goal here is two fold:
First, you want to convince the dinos to stop blooming and starting going back to being normal dino cells. With high levels of nutrients, the dinos go back to being normal. With low nutrient levels, they bloom. Once you get the higher nutrient levels in the tank, the dinos should stop blooming.
Second, things that are "good" competition against dinos, like algae, have trouble outcompeting bacteria for nutrients. This is why carbon dosing works so well. So you need to pump up the nutrient levels in your tank so algae can start getting a foothold and outcompeting the bacteria.
So pump the nutrient levels up and hold them there for days/weeks.
At this point, hopefully your bloom will stop and you'll have tons of algae everywhere. The algae is a bit of a nuisance, but it is much better than the dinos. At this point, your goal will now be to find a balance between nutrient addition (mostly feeding and potentially dosing), and nutrient export (chaeto in a refugium, ATS, water changes, whatever), that keeps your nitrate and phosphate levels above 0. This will prevent the dinos from blooming again. I'd say the standard targets would be a nitrate level of 5 and phosphates of 0.03. These levels are actually quite easy to manage in a healthy tank.
Then the long term goal is to make it so your DT isn't full of unsightly algae. This probably means a big cleanup crew and slowly ramping up the nutrient export to match your feeding levels.
The thing about dinos is that if you have a healthy reef aquarium with non-zero nutrient levels, the dinos are easily outcompeted by a number of other things and they won't bloom. Put a small rock with a dino bloom into a large and healthy reef tank, and the dinos will all be gone in a week. It isn't the presence of the dinos that is the problem, it is whether the water chemistry of the tank is healthy or not.
But once a bloom starts, the dinos create water chemistry that is really really good for them and really really bad for everybody else. So even if you selectively kill most of the Dinos (blackouts, H2O2, UV sterilizer or whatever), the remaining ones can and probably will come back with a fury. You have to completely alter the water chemistry *away* from what the dinos like and back towards a healthy reef tank, at which point you wont even need to selectively kill the dinos, they'll stop blooming and go back to being a very small and insignificant part of your tank's microbiology.
This. I did the same thing and I am very glad I did. Tank is doing great now.I had horrible dinos, tried everything. In the end I tore down the tank ditched all LR, sand, etc, scrubbed the entire system and all equipment and started over with new lr and sand. At that point dinos had killed all of my coral and I only had a few fish so I was able to get by till the tank cycled again. Granted I only had a 40 gallon, so that might be a lot more realistic to do than a 400 gallon. My tank has been smooth sailing ever since. Good luck I definitely know the struggle.
Thanks everyone for the words of encouragement and suggestions. I can't respond to them all but I read each of them and they were very uplifting.
I had a big problem with dino's and went round and round with them till I came across Vibrant. I Don't speak easily about any products but this one stop the Dinos. I started with a slightly larger does then they recommend for a "dirty" tank (maybe 25% more) and that did them in. Now a down side to this was it also did in my chaetomorpha and I still use but at a very low dose and chaetomorpha will still not grow in the tank (It breaks down the chaetomorpha and it falls apart into small pieces). So before you toss in the towel give this a try