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[TheNative192]

That’s awesome! I have a Red Sea desktop cube tank set up with corals and fish that’s been doing ok but I got a second hand tank since I wanted another tank lol and got a good deal on it. I just ordered a stand and will likely be taking my time with it. Love reading about what others do with their tank!

 

[RaisingTinyHobbits]

The roller coaster continues! Honestly, I'm not entirely sure where I left off in the tanks journey so I'm sorrynifnI repeat myself. We finished the 76 day fallow and seemed to have beat the dinos. I ordered a Firefish, Wheeler's Shrimp Goby, a Randall's striped Pistol Shrimp and some Cerith Snails from Dr. Reef's. They sent an extra firefish that didn't make it and an extra pistol shrimp that did.
Everything was going well for a couple of weeks and then the Wheeler's Goby disappeared. I saw him once in a tunnel with one of the pistol Shrimp, but haven't seen him since in over a month. Then the dinos came back even worse. I turned the lights off and started Mack's protocol again. At this point the Firefish disappeared as well. So, now I'm starting to feel a bit like a fish murderer. I added a Bubble Magus Mini Q, more copepods, and phyto dosing and it cleared up the dinos again.
Meantime, I've been quarantining another hermit crab, some snails, a conch, and a Fire Shrimp in the QT tank with some corals. I moved the first batch of corals, crab, conch, and Fire Shrimp over to the display and the second batch finishes up on Christmas day. I also found a different way of setting up my lights than the sliders that showed they were set way, way higher than the 1 watt per gallon average so I pulled them down and hopefully that works out.
However, this morning I woke up to signs of dinos again, the only thing I can think of is my Phyto may not be good anymore since it seems to set the Dinos back the most. We'll keep on keeping on and hopefully one day the dino cycle will be broken.
Next steps are to acquire a few fish from Petco and quarantine them myself instead of trying to ship some in the cold. I'm also considering looking into a Phyto Culture Kit, since everyone is on a shipping hold until the new year so I can't get ahold of any new phyto and don't really want to be stuck in this position again.

 

[monday]

Following!

 

[TheNative192]

The roller coaster continues! Honestly, I'm not entirely sure where I left off in the tanks journey so I'm sorrynifnI repeat myself. We finished the 76 day fallow and seemed to have beat the dinos. I ordered a Firefish, Wheeler's Shrimp Goby, a Randall's striped Pistol Shrimp and some Cerith Snails from Dr. Reef's. They sent an extra firefish that didn't make it and an extra pistol shrimp that did.
Everything was going well for a couple of weeks and then the Wheeler's Goby disappeared. I saw him once in a tunnel with one of the pistol Shrimp, but haven't seen him since in over a month. Then the dinos came back even worse. I turned the lights off and started Mack's protocol again. At this point the Firefish disappeared as well. So, now I'm starting to feel a bit like a fish murderer. I added a Bubble Magus Mini Q, more copepods, and phyto dosing and it cleared up the dinos again.
Meantime, I've been quarantining another hermit crab, some snails, a conch, and a Fire Shrimp in the QT tank with some corals. I moved the first batch of corals, crab, conch, and Fire Shrimp over to the display and the second batch finishes up on Christmas day. I also found a different way of setting up my lights than the sliders that showed they were set way, way higher than the 1 watt per gallon average so I pulled them down and hopefully that works out.
However, this morning I woke up to signs of dinos again, the only thing I can think of is my Phyto may not be good anymore since it seems to set the Dinos back the most. We'll keep on keeping on and hopefully one day the dino cycle will be broken.
Next steps are to acquire a few fish from Petco and quarantine them myself instead of trying to ship some in the cold. I'm also considering looking into a Phyto Culture Kit, since everyone is on a shipping hold until the new year so I can't get ahold of any new phyto and don't really want to be stuck in this position again.

So Dinos can be brought about by having 0 nutrients but it can also occur in my personal experience if the ratio between nitrates and phosphates are out of balance. Usually you want a minimum of 50x1 ratio and with my last phyto batch I noticed that it raised my phosphates a ton and led to a bit of Dinos. I actually dosed silicates heavily and knocked them out as well as fixing my phosphate to nitrate ratio by dosing lanthian chloride (or phosphate-e) but I would say definitely make sure your phosphates are not too high (which can be brought about by dosing dead phyto like in my case)

I honestly would not even dose phyto until the tank is more stable as the copepods will feed on algae and other items and if you do not have any predators in the tank they will still populate it.

 

[RaisingTinyHobbits]

The roller coaster continues! Honestly, I'm not entirely sure where I left off in the tanks journey so I'm sorrynifnI repeat myself. We finished the 76 day fallow and seemed to have beat the dinos. I ordered a Firefish, Wheeler's Shrimp Goby, a Randall's striped Pistol Shrimp and some Cerith Snails from Dr. Reef's. They sent an extra firefish that didn't make it and an extra pistol shrimp that did.
Everything was going well for a couple of weeks and then the Wheeler's Goby disappeared. I saw him once in a tunnel with one of the pistol Shrimp, but haven't seen him since in over a month. Then the dinos came back even worse. I turned the lights off and started Mack's protocol again. At this point the Firefish disappeared as well. So, now I'm starting to feel a bit like a fish murderer. I added a Bubble Magus Mini Q, more copepods, and phyto dosing and it cleared up the dinos again.
Meantime, I've been quarantining another hermit crab, some snails, a conch, and a Fire Shrimp in the QT tank with some corals. I moved the first batch of corals, crab, conch, and Fire Shrimp over to the display and the second batch finishes up on Christmas day. I also found a different way of setting up my lights than the sliders that showed they were set way, way higher than the 1 watt per gallon average so I pulled them down and hopefully that works out.
However, this morning I woke up to signs of dinos again, the only thing I can think of is my Phyto may not be good anymore since it seems to set the Dinos back the most. We'll keep on keeping on and hopefully one day the dino cycle will be broken.
Next steps are to acquire a few fish from Petco and quarantine them myself instead of trying to ship some in the cold. I'm also considering looking into a Phyto Culture Kit, since everyone is on a shipping hold until the new year so I can't get ahold of any new phyto and don't really want to be stuck in this position again.

So Dinos can be brought about by having 0 nutrients but it can also occur in my personal experience if the ratio between nitrates and phosphates are out of balance. Usually you want a minimum of 50x1 ratio and with my last phyto batch I noticed that it raised my phosphates a ton and led to a bit of Dinos. I actually dosed silicates heavily and knocked them out as well as fixing my phosphate to nitrate ratio by dosing lanthian chloride (or phosphate-e) but I would say definitely make sure your phosphates are not too high (which can be brought about by dosing dead phyto like in my case)

I honestly would not even dose phyto until the tank is more stable as the copepods will feed on algae and other items and if you do not have any predators in the tank they will still populate it.

Thank you! I love hearing everyone's experiences! I tend to err on the too low phosphate side so I end up dosing to bring it back up occasionally, but the dead phyto definitely could be the culprit!

 

[SonOfaGoat]

I've been through the dino journey myself just last year. I had to defeat it twice before I claimed victory. It was a good 8-9 month process. I've heard 0 nutrients, which is true, but also I've seen it with high nutrients as well. The biggest contributor I think is new tanks, lack of biodiversity of microorganisms.


Heres what worked for me.

1. if youre using treated tap water, switch to RODI. Hold off on water changes.

2. Raise temperature up to 82 degrees.

3. Dose Microlift Special blend. Follow the bottles recommendation. This stuff smells like a fermented dirty diaper, but it works fabulously.

4. Shorten the light schedule and turn down their intensity. I was running around 25% with my corals for a bit. They didn't grow, but they survived.

5. Add a piece of aged liverock. I think this is one of the most important steps in this process. We learned we need to qt everything and have a sterile tank. We'll it's good to keep disease out but reefs survive on biodiversity. You need the good and a little of the "annoying" bad.

During the worst of it I was vacuuming the dinos in a 5mm sock. Once you start getting ahead of it, ease off. You want to keep all those pods, worms, and tiny organisms living in the sand.

You can also try a 4-5 day blackout. That will get a jumpstart on the dino numbers as you look to outcompete them with diversity.

You'll notice that as the dinos recede your coralline algae will start to cover rock and equipment in your tank.

Dosing silicate does help but I found it irritated my corals even further, and i lost all my clove polyps. That was though my initial way i treated dinos the first time. Adding the liverock and microlift was the turning point for me. This is how I beat it the second time and have kept them away, but the tank has truly started to mature and explode in life.