btmedic04
Well-Known Member
Gotta love the new tank uglies lol. The tank is a little over 6 weeks old and it's had several bacteria blooms which are finally clearing up. Surprisingly, the first flecks of coraline algae has begun at the top of the rock work, but we also have brown algae, a little bit of ulva, little bit of gha and some amphidinium dinos for good measure. Now some might be thinking holy crap, what do I do in this situation? I'll outline what my process is. Its worked very well in the past for me.
First, I needed to identify what's the biggest threat to my critters and long term viability. A tank as new as this is expected to have brown and green algaes come and go. Besides, that's free food for the clean up crew. The ulva has the potential to reach plague proportions, but that's going to take time and also is potentially free food for the clean up crew and any future algae blennies or tang. It's also a potential refugium macro if I decide to pluck some and place it in my sump at a later time. That leaves the dinos. These are toxic to critters, can strip po4 and no3 from your water column rapidly and coat and kill every test coral in there. This is the number 1 threat. Next up, I need to identify the cause of the dinos.
A few quick tests revealed nitrates hovering around 12, but phosphates were bottoming out to 0. That's the cause for the dinos. I'm now dosing 1.5ml of fish of hex po4 in the morning and 1.5ml in the evening to keep po4 around 0.09. Maintaining these levels will give other organisms a fighting chance to grow and compete with the dinos. Some other tools and tricks I've implemented is raising water temp to 82F, dosing brightwells sponge excel and microbacter 7 along with 4 jars of algaebarn ecopods . For some reason, elevated temperatures help push back amphidinium dinos in my experience, the sponge excel acts as a food source for diatoms and the microbacter 7 and ecopods adds more competitors to the tank. Lastly, I'm not doing water changes or scraping the glass. We want this tank to get dirty which I know goes against every person's desires for their reef. The reason for this is dinos can win in a 1v1 fight, but not a 1v7. After a few weeks of riding it out like this, the dinos should be defeated to the naked eye and I can then deal with the ulva, hair algae and diatoms by increasing my clean up crew. Remember, these things are free food for those guys.
I hope this might help someone who's stressed out about their ugly stage. They're part of the process and really makes you appreciate when your tank reaches maturity and let's you share those awesome pictures with here. In the
meantime, enjoy the journey and feel free to share your new tank uglies
First, I needed to identify what's the biggest threat to my critters and long term viability. A tank as new as this is expected to have brown and green algaes come and go. Besides, that's free food for the clean up crew. The ulva has the potential to reach plague proportions, but that's going to take time and also is potentially free food for the clean up crew and any future algae blennies or tang. It's also a potential refugium macro if I decide to pluck some and place it in my sump at a later time. That leaves the dinos. These are toxic to critters, can strip po4 and no3 from your water column rapidly and coat and kill every test coral in there. This is the number 1 threat. Next up, I need to identify the cause of the dinos.
A few quick tests revealed nitrates hovering around 12, but phosphates were bottoming out to 0. That's the cause for the dinos. I'm now dosing 1.5ml of fish of hex po4 in the morning and 1.5ml in the evening to keep po4 around 0.09. Maintaining these levels will give other organisms a fighting chance to grow and compete with the dinos. Some other tools and tricks I've implemented is raising water temp to 82F, dosing brightwells sponge excel and microbacter 7 along with 4 jars of algaebarn ecopods . For some reason, elevated temperatures help push back amphidinium dinos in my experience, the sponge excel acts as a food source for diatoms and the microbacter 7 and ecopods adds more competitors to the tank. Lastly, I'm not doing water changes or scraping the glass. We want this tank to get dirty which I know goes against every person's desires for their reef. The reason for this is dinos can win in a 1v1 fight, but not a 1v7. After a few weeks of riding it out like this, the dinos should be defeated to the naked eye and I can then deal with the ulva, hair algae and diatoms by increasing my clean up crew. Remember, these things are free food for those guys.
I hope this might help someone who's stressed out about their ugly stage. They're part of the process and really makes you appreciate when your tank reaches maturity and let's you share those awesome pictures with here. In the
meantime, enjoy the journey and feel free to share your new tank uglies
