Reefer 350 journey! Picture heavy!

[Denisk]

So currently I’ve noticed my Chaeto stopped growing. When I originally started the refugium, I decided to run the lights 24:7 and the Chaeto pretty much exploded. Since it grew so much I decided to trim it back and turn the lights down to 12 hours a day opposite to the display lights. I turned them down to 12 hours a day since I was getting tons of different algae growth in the sump. Not that it’s bad since I see it’s pretty common to have different algae growth in the sump.

Im starting to wonder if changing the light schedule had anything to do with my Chaeto not growing. I decided today to ramp my lights back to 22 hours a day. Let’s see if that makes any difference.

I would love to hear if others have had this happen and what you did to fix or just remove the refugium.

 

[Denisk]

On a side note, I’m not a fan of wasting paper towels so Costco saves the day!

 

[Denisk]

Some shots I took of the sps today, decided to keep them unedited. I am happy seeing that all the sps are starting to encrust fairly well however I feel like they're lacking color.

 

[Denisk]

Current FTS.

 

[Denisk]

Decided to buy some extra filter socks and saw they come with a 4 inch diameter. The only problem was that I wasn’t going to pay 10 dollars a piece for the Red Sea one. I then noticed amazon had 8 or so for 30 or 40 bucks. How could I say no

The only problem was it didn’t fit I saw someone on YouTube who had the same situation and realized he cut the top plastic trim. Works like a charm!

Doesn’t fit do the outer plastic ring.

Cut the trim and it fit perfectly!!

 

[Denisk]

Also decided on to clean the skimmer/sump. I wish I took a before picture. Best investment was one of the homdepot wet dry vacuum attachments to the orange buckets.

 

[Denisk]

I must say in the last couple weeks the colors have significantly gotten better. Especially if you compare just from the last photos I posted. Growth rate is pretty good not like some of the sps guys on here. However I’m still waiting for some of these guys to encrust.

 

[Denisk]

Millie encrusting nicely!

Red hot setosa

Photobombed!!

Wrasses are probably the hardest fish to get a good picture of.

 

[Denisk]

Fts today.

 

[Denisk]

Got myself a little toy today! Thank you to @mcarroll and @saltyfilmfolks

 

[reeferfoxx]

What a gorgeous setup! Love the fish selection too! You are battling dinos now?

 

[Denisk]

What a gorgeous setup! Love the fish selection too! You are battling dinos now?

Thanks for all the awesome complaints! Unfortunately yeah I am I actually have noticed that a lot of people have been having them and the one thing in common that they have is either zero phosphates and or it’s undetectable.

Currently I’m feeding normally but I turned off my skimmer and they have gone away significantly. I then decided to turn it back on and bake, they’re back. Today I decided to put my skimmer on a timer and just run it for 12 hours on and 12 hours off.

 

[Denisk]

Cyano and Dino prior to skimmer and refugium taken offline.

After:
Much cleaner sand and the sps are gaining more color back.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Yep. Nutrients are beneficial to new tanks. Doing less is more. Good luck with the battle!

 

[Denisk]

Yep. Nutrients are beneficial to new tanks. Doing less is more. Good luck with the battle!

Thank you!!

 

[Denisk]

The Dino’s as you can see got to a really bad point. Lost two acros and the birdsnest had a bad case of stn.

Before photos:

It did however get better and I will be posting additional after photos today as to how I got it looking beautiful.

 

[Denisk]

These were just quick photos taken with my phone today. As you can see the Dino’s are pretty much gone and the water is crystal clear.

 

[CoralWealth]

veery nice setup.

What are your parameters? How far off is your T5 from the water line and how long do you run it?

Glad you beat the dinos, how did you do that?

 

[Denisk]

veery nice setup.

What are your parameters? How far off is your T5 from the water line and how long do you run it?

Glad you beat the dinos, how did you do that?

Parameters at the moment:
Ca- 400
Kh - 10.2
Mg- 1400
N03- 6ppm
P04- .25

T5’s are about 12 inches off the water and I run them from 1 pm to 9pm. Currently I’m running them at full intensity for 4 full hours. The rest of the time it’s just a blue plus and purple plus.

I don’t know if I necessarily beat Dino’s just yet but it was probably the worst thing I have yet to encounter in the hobby and I have enctoured a lot throughout the years. Everyone told me that I needed to raise my nitrates and phosphates and that ended up causing them to blow up even more. I think it had to do with that their was no algae in my tank to outcompete the Dino. So hence why the Dino only grew more and more. Got to the point that it was growing on almost all my sps. I thought it was the end of my tank.... but then I saw people mention to get a uv sterilizer (big thank you to @zachxlutz for telling me about your personal experience with it and just going over in detail on how to fix the issue). I bought a 38 dollar 13 watt SunSun (thank goodness for amazon prime) because it literally changed my tank over a course of three days. I still have a little bit but it was no where as close. I did stop dosing nitrates and phosphates because once the Dino’s were being killed by the uv sterilizer, there was nothing taking in the p04 and no3 hence why my nitrate rised a bit to much to my liking. I prefer to be around 4ppm. My KH also went up due to the fact that my sps weren’t taking in any 2 part because the Dino’s were literally caused stn on them. But some have already regrew their tips are on the right track. I really couldn’t be happy and I hope that others can read this have an awesome results like I did

 

[zachxlutz]

I don’t know if I necessarily beat Dino’s just yet but it was probably the worst thing I have yet to encounter in the hobby and I have enctoured a lot throughout the years. Everyone told me that I needed to raise my nitrates and phosphates and that ended up causing them to blow up even more. I think it had to do with that their was no algae in my tank to outcompete the Dino. So hence why the Dino only grew more and more. Got to the point that it was growing on almost all my sps. I thought it was the end of my tank.... but then I saw people mention to get a uv sterilizer (big thank you to @zachxlutz for telling me about your personal experience with it and just going over in detail on how to fix the issue). I bought a 38 dollar 13 watt SunSun (thank goodness for amazon prime) because it literally changed my tank over a course of three days. I still have a little bit but it was no where as close. I did stop dosing nitrates and phosphates because once the Dino’s were being killed by the uv sterilizer, there was nothing taking in the p04 and no3 hence why my nitrate rised a bit to much to my liking. I prefer to be around 4ppm. My KH also went up due to the fact that my sps weren’t taking in any 2 part because the Dino’s were literally caused stn on them. But some have already regrew their tips are on the right track. I really couldn’t be happy and I hope that others can read this have an awesome results like I did

Awesome! I'm super glad to hear this! It sounds like we were in very similar situations. My alkalinity consumption was next to none during my dino outbreak and once I put the UV online, almost immediately I had to stop dosing such high amounts of KNO3/PO4 and start bringing my alk/cal dosing back online. It sounds like you're well on the way to reefing happiness again.