ScottR
Surfing....
My 40g is going on a year old. I’ve always had tiny splotches of cyano here and there. They’d blow away and I’d never see them again. Then I started the Red Sea energy A+B program with carbon dosing. Then the cyano took off...
I’d blow the cyano off the rocks and glass and of course it’d come back. I ordered chemiclean and sure enough, cyano was gone in a couple of days. Then the dinos came.
My theory as to why I got dinos is because the cyano had smothered all life on my rock. Coralline seemed to have disappeared. Typical ugly algae gone. So dinos had the green light to take over. They had the typical stringy jelly-type strands with bubbles attached. They blew off easily only to come back minutes later.
I first noticed my zoas were all closed up in all corners of my tank. This was a sign something was wrong before I noticed that dinos were in play. So I checked parameters. Everything was where I typically keep them; most notably, NO3 was at 25 and PO4 at .006. It is widely accepted to increase nitrates and phosphates in hopes of helping other organisms and algae take hold and outcompete dinos. Therefore, I didn’t try to move the needle as far as parameters.
I decided to add some bacteria and food for bacteria slowly. I would use a pipette to try to feed directly to the rock. I also increased flow, did only one minor water change and let all film algae on glass grow. After 2 weeks of dinos, my zoas magically opened up as beautiful as ever. I peeked in and no bubbles. No stringy stuff. Dinos were gone. And a big sigh of relief from me. Hopefully this helps someone in a similar situation. I believe patience and persistence is key without going to extremes to nuke your tank and pull out rock in hopes of ridding it.
I’d blow the cyano off the rocks and glass and of course it’d come back. I ordered chemiclean and sure enough, cyano was gone in a couple of days. Then the dinos came.
My theory as to why I got dinos is because the cyano had smothered all life on my rock. Coralline seemed to have disappeared. Typical ugly algae gone. So dinos had the green light to take over. They had the typical stringy jelly-type strands with bubbles attached. They blew off easily only to come back minutes later.
I first noticed my zoas were all closed up in all corners of my tank. This was a sign something was wrong before I noticed that dinos were in play. So I checked parameters. Everything was where I typically keep them; most notably, NO3 was at 25 and PO4 at .006. It is widely accepted to increase nitrates and phosphates in hopes of helping other organisms and algae take hold and outcompete dinos. Therefore, I didn’t try to move the needle as far as parameters.
I decided to add some bacteria and food for bacteria slowly. I would use a pipette to try to feed directly to the rock. I also increased flow, did only one minor water change and let all film algae on glass grow. After 2 weeks of dinos, my zoas magically opened up as beautiful as ever. I peeked in and no bubbles. No stringy stuff. Dinos were gone. And a big sigh of relief from me. Hopefully this helps someone in a similar situation. I believe patience and persistence is key without going to extremes to nuke your tank and pull out rock in hopes of ridding it.
