Massive nitrate and phosphate spike help

reefer505

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I have been dealing with dinoflagellates so I stopped dosing vodka and after a few months I started dosing neo nitro to raise nitrates to 8ppm. Less then 4 cap fulls added to my 240gallon tank. After 2 months all of a sudden my tank tested at 67 nitrates so I sent a test to triton and it came back at 101 nitrates! Phosphates up to .68! I still have dinoflagellates (Amphibinum) and crystophytes. One thing I did do was swap out my sump. In the process I pulled all my old sand (2lbs) and mineral mud (6lbs) from my old sump and replaced it with 10lbs of new live sand. I'm debating weather to start carbon dosing again to lower the nitrates. My thought process is nitrates this high is worse than Amphibinum. Any insight or ideas are welcome
 
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reefer505

reefer505

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I should add I'm running a bubble mag curve 7 skimmer and a refugium with the the live sand 10-15lbs of live rock lots of chaeto and sea lettuce with the fuge light running 24/7
 
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DrMMI

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I should add I'm running a bubble mag curve 7 skimmer and a refugium with the the live sand 10-15lbs of live rock lots of chaeto and sea lettuce with the fuge light running 24/7
I was trying to raise nitrates to battle dinos too. My reefbot was giving me the wrong results and I kept pouring a ton of nitrate into my tank. Finally manually tested and my nitrates were over 100! I did 30% water changes every day for a week to bring them down to around 10. Now I'm finding a few spots of dinos coming back. Vaccuming the sand every two weeks is helping to keep it at bay for now. I'm thinking of doing another course of elegant corals dino treatment since that worked so well for me until I did those huge water changes. I'm no expert, but I think dosing carbon is more fuel for dinos than water changes would be.
 
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reefer505

reefer505

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I'm afraid to do big water changes because my tank isn't used to it. I actually dont usually even change my socks just to have some sort of nitrates and phosphate. This is the first time in 4 years I've seen nitrates in my tank. I know carbon dosing is like fuel for some types of dinos but. Can't find much info on Amphibinum. I have also been dosing oceanmagik from algae barn but only 30ml per day in my 240 to out compete dinos. I'm considering adding a rock full of hair algae to see if that will suck it up real quick
 

DrMMI

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I'm afraid to do big water changes because my tank isn't used to it. I actually dont usually even change my socks just to have some sort of nitrates and phosphate. This is the first time in 4 years I've seen nitrates in my tank. I know carbon dosing is like fuel for some types of dinos but. Can't find much info on Amphibinum. I have also been dosing oceanmagik from algae barn but only 30ml per day in my 240 to out compete dinos. I'm considering adding a rock full of hair algae to see if that will suck it up real quick
In addition to elegant corals method, I added a bunch of established live rock from an 8 yr old tank covered in gha so I think that helped a lot too. I've been dosing oceanmagik daily for the last 3 months and adding 4 jars of copepods every month to my 260g. Not sure if that's helping or not but I figure it can't hurt at this point.
 
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reefer505

reefer505

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I have a 90 gallon full of hair algae (my experiment tank) I'll move some of that rock in there tomorrow. I think there's some great plugs full of hair algae too
 

ckalupa

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I am puzzled? Why would one want to introduce hair algae? At those levels one is likely to see this GHA grow on its own and introducing could be a growth explosion waiting to happen. Then you will be fighting that? Might you consider chaeto in a reactor instead to battle the high levels? Nothing good ever comes from an explosion of green hair algae. It’s a dog to remove and deal with later. And if you don’t remove it the nutrient spikes as it dies off if you use chemicals to remedy the GHa. Find the problem is better IMO.
 
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reefer505

reefer505

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I'm already running refugiums with chaeto and sea lettuce. Hair algae is the best algae for consumption. Add long as I isolate the what rocks, it should keep it from spreading. I just hope it can help before my teams devour it
 

taricha

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My thought process is nitrates this high is worse than Amphidinum. Any insight or ideas are welcome
Quite right.
If the dinos don't show signs of toxins, (amphidinium usually doesn't) then they really are of less concern than unhealthy water conditions. How "unhealthy" is high nitrate? opinions vary. But I wouldn't let amphidinium dinos keep you from getting water parameters back in what you and your corals feel is a more reasonable direction.
Maybe you'll grow more dinos, but then you can suck them out.
 

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