Man, this tank is killing me. I've gone through so many different phases of it and I'm seemingly making little to no progress.
First, I did the normal cycle. Then I got a small bit of Dino, nothing drastic. I added a UV sterilizer. Then I got some GHA, Cyano, and it got really bad. I was very much over-feeding. I decided to use chemiclean to get rid of the cyano and it worked great! ...until Dinos came back with a vengeance. I've been fighting them for a good 3mo with a nasty bout of GHA. Based on advice in the dino thread I used fluconazole to treat the gha then I took mitigation steps against the dino. The dino has finally been suppressed (never gone) but now the tank is breaking out in Cyano really bad again! It's been a year and this is driving me nuts. The last thing I want to do right now is use chemiclean and cause another dino outbreak...cyano is bad but dino is way worse. Dino wiped out all of my corals except for a ric mushroom. I've been keeping things really stable as far as alk/ca/mg/no3/po4/ph. I've since tried to reduce nutrients further-
I used to overfeed and have since started using cubes exclusively. I fed 3 cubes/day all through dino. Since I've seen cyano popping up I started skimming more aggressively and feeding only 2 cubes a day - I also refreshed my T5 bulbs as they were 1yr old. I have 3 tangs so I do feed them nori and I've cut down on that too. I used to feed 1 sheet/day and now I'm down to 1/4 sheet every 2 days. The fish are getting quite aggressive with feeding because when I do feed, it lasts about 30s-1m in the water and it's under that 2m sweet spot. At this point I'm not really sure what to do. I know cyano is a bacteria and I can use chemicals to remove it but I really fear going back to dino land. Maybe my tank is over stocked? I don't think so, but who knows?
4" purple
3" yellow
4.5" naso
2" mandarin
1" clown
2" blue face angel
3" potters angel
3" blue throat trigger
4" copperbanded butterfly
3" leopard wrasse
lots of hermits/snails
233g tank, 50g sump, filter roller, skimmer, refugium w/chaeto
params-
Sg 35ppt / 78*
no3 7-9ppm (non comp) - w/no2 compensation 5ppm / no2 ~.025
po4 0.13 (trying dang hard to reduce this)
ca 500
mg 1450
Alk 7.4 (+/- .15)
Ph 7.8-8.15
Things I do regularly trying to keep dino and cyano at bay-
blow off rocks (bi-daily), vacuum sandbed (every 2 wks), dose microbacter7/mb clean w UV/Skimmer off for 4 hours (bi-daily).
Thoughts?
First, I did the normal cycle. Then I got a small bit of Dino, nothing drastic. I added a UV sterilizer. Then I got some GHA, Cyano, and it got really bad. I was very much over-feeding. I decided to use chemiclean to get rid of the cyano and it worked great! ...until Dinos came back with a vengeance. I've been fighting them for a good 3mo with a nasty bout of GHA. Based on advice in the dino thread I used fluconazole to treat the gha then I took mitigation steps against the dino. The dino has finally been suppressed (never gone) but now the tank is breaking out in Cyano really bad again! It's been a year and this is driving me nuts. The last thing I want to do right now is use chemiclean and cause another dino outbreak...cyano is bad but dino is way worse. Dino wiped out all of my corals except for a ric mushroom. I've been keeping things really stable as far as alk/ca/mg/no3/po4/ph. I've since tried to reduce nutrients further-
I used to overfeed and have since started using cubes exclusively. I fed 3 cubes/day all through dino. Since I've seen cyano popping up I started skimming more aggressively and feeding only 2 cubes a day - I also refreshed my T5 bulbs as they were 1yr old. I have 3 tangs so I do feed them nori and I've cut down on that too. I used to feed 1 sheet/day and now I'm down to 1/4 sheet every 2 days. The fish are getting quite aggressive with feeding because when I do feed, it lasts about 30s-1m in the water and it's under that 2m sweet spot. At this point I'm not really sure what to do. I know cyano is a bacteria and I can use chemicals to remove it but I really fear going back to dino land. Maybe my tank is over stocked? I don't think so, but who knows?
4" purple
3" yellow
4.5" naso
2" mandarin
1" clown
2" blue face angel
3" potters angel
3" blue throat trigger
4" copperbanded butterfly
3" leopard wrasse
lots of hermits/snails
233g tank, 50g sump, filter roller, skimmer, refugium w/chaeto
params-
Sg 35ppt / 78*
no3 7-9ppm (non comp) - w/no2 compensation 5ppm / no2 ~.025
po4 0.13 (trying dang hard to reduce this)
ca 500
mg 1450
Alk 7.4 (+/- .15)
Ph 7.8-8.15
Things I do regularly trying to keep dino and cyano at bay-
blow off rocks (bi-daily), vacuum sandbed (every 2 wks), dose microbacter7/mb clean w UV/Skimmer off for 4 hours (bi-daily).
Thoughts?