Nutrient dosing

[asome_one]

Hi there,
I'm currently trying my hand at beating dinos in my 15gal. Tank has been running about 2 years. I have always had dinos and struggled. This is my first real attempt at dealing with them correctly. I believe they are ostreopsis. I have microscoped them in the past. Their activity seems to match the descriptions with long strands, lots of bubbles, and not minding high flow. Anyway, prior to all my reading I was doing near 80% water changes weekly, along with siphoning the substrate, toothbrushes the rocks, and scraping anything I could. This went on for about 2 months I was dosing neophos daily, about 1ml, with no results on testing for phosphate.

Following the rabbit hole that is information on beating Dinos on r2r I have learned my water change regimen was quite stupid and probably compounding my issues. I don't have many corals as they have never been able to grow out due to the dinos. I made a few changes in the past few days and wanted to make sure they sounded effective and appropriate.
Stopped all water changes.
1-2 day floss changes.
1.5ml neophos
1ml neonitro
1ml microbacter7
2-3ml phytoplankton

I have not seen much of any change in my phosphate or nitrate. I have a nyos test kit but have not been able to obtain a hanna phos kit yet. On my nyos kit I have not been able to notice any color change in the water of the test kits leading me to believe my phosphate is possibly above 0 but below .10 My nitrates have been sitting at or below .1
Since I started all this extra dosing I have not seen much of any reduction in the dyno's. It still covers all my rocks, substrate, and corals. What I have seen is a large increase in cyano. I have tried my best not to mess with anything in the tank but I am concerned that I'm missing something.

As microbacter7 and phyto both are supposed to eat up nitrate and phos, should I be dosing heavier to allow myself to see results on my tests?

 

[Rp8]

What are your parameter?

 

[asome_one]

What are your parameter?

My nitrate is under .1 my phosphate is likely above 0 but below .1

 

[asome_one]

Just obtained my hanna phosphate ULR i have a phos of .02. My nitrate is in the 0.1 to 0 range. I'll be stepping up my nitrate dosing to 2ml to see how things fare.
I am happy to report that with my above dosing I have seen a significant reduction in my dino populations. With everything in the microbacter7 and phyto eating up nutrients I assume I still have some balancing to do. However, I'm happy to see a change, even if its just being replaced by another annoyance. At least with cyano, I am less concerned about turkey basting it off.

 

[asome_one]

Update: Dino is minimally present. Still some strands here and there but not anywhere near as much of an issue as it was prior. I've been dosing 2ml neonitro and 2ml neophos along with .5ml microbacter7
Cyano has exploded. Nitrates - 2.0 consistent. I have been testing my phosphate twice a day and noticed that I bottom out about 12 hours after dosing. So, I now dose 2ml twice a day. I assume until I can get consistent phosphate readings around .02-.04 I will continue to see cyano.
Regardless, I've continued to see my zoas that have been struggling for months improve over the past weeks.
As a reef expo is coming to town in April...I would really enjoy being rid of cyano and dino by then. Gotta have a clean tank so I can cram in a bunch of new frags.

 

[Lavey29]

Your doses are way to small. You want nitrates at 10 and phosphate. 05 to .1. Cut lights to 6 hours blue and uv only no whites. Increase flow to cyano on the sand. Weekly water changes siphon cyano out.

 

[ElementReefer]

I have dosed straight Neo in the past as well, but it was always a temporary fix to my 0 nitrate and phosphate. They always crashed back down to 0 when I stopped dosing. Fed more. Nothing. Got more fish. Nothing.

I got sick of that and changed tactics, working with the theory that I actually had too much biological filtration. I was going for a lower flow, lower light LPS setup, but I think all I had made was a 55 gallon bacteria and algae reactor.

Ditched the canister filter. Aggressively siphoned the whole sand bed. Dramatically increased flow, by like 400%. This stabilized my nitrates at about 2 ppm. Started dumping Reef Roids straight into tank daily until phosphates hit 0.1.

All coral now looking better than they ever have.

 

[ElementReefer]

Oh! I got cyano when I did all that too. They like to take advantage of changing nutrient conditions. I siphoned it all out every day and my Cerith snails ate the leftovers. Went back and forth like that every day until the cyano gave up.

 

[asome_one]

Your doses are way to small. You want nitrates at 10 and phosphate. 05 to .1. Cut lights to 6 hours blue and uv only no whites. Increase flow to cyano on the sand. Weekly water changes siphon cyano out.

Sorry, why increase nitrates and phosphates so much? I keep reading it's tank specific but to attempt to shoot for .02-.04 phos and low nitrates. Not bottomed out but on the low end of single digits.
Is it because it's a small tank and it's harder to bottom out when they're elevated like that?

 

[asome_one]

Well second update of the day. I bought all for reef and a salifert KH test kit. I never bothered to mess with my KH/DKH because....I was lazy. Well following my readings on the need for dosing and such I got "All for Reef" and a test kit. I assumed it was probably fine as I don't have that many corals, do regular water changes, and use reef crystals.
Sooooo.....a KH of 1.9 so DKH of .678 I retested 3 times. jesus. Well I guess I'll be reading about KH/DKH

 

[Lavey29]

Sorry, why increase nitrates and phosphates so much? I keep reading it's tank specific but to attempt to shoot for .02-.04 phos and low nitrates. Not bottomed out but on the low end of single digits.
Is it because it's a small tank and it's harder to bottom out when they're elevated like that?

So by your own post you have been battling dinos for 2 years. Your nutrient levels are quite low and probably bottomed out given the error factor for test kits and you are asking why you should raise your nutrient levels to what is generally considered good ranges at 10 nitrates and .05 to .1 phosphate?

Perhaps if you tried this 2 years ago things would be much different for you now. Very experienced reefers will sometimes run ULNS but that is because they have complete stability in their tanks with advanced monitoring and dosing capabilities.

Ultra low nutrients for the novice reefer like most of us equals dying corals and dinos.