Removing sand to get rid of amphidinium dinos

[k log(omega)]

1. Most of my amphidinium stayed on the sand but it was in the rocks too in a lesser amount.

2. I removed sand weekly with water changes. I never removed all of it as I can’t get behind all the rocks. But 80-90% got removed.

3. I replaced a bit of the sand, maybe 10% or so. But stopped. The event was almost 4 years ago and haven’t added back any sand in 2 or 3 years.

4. I kept UV going for 6 months or so after dinos were gone. Then stopped that too.

I‘ll add my latest FTS

wow that is a nice looking reef you have there!

I just tried what the other person said about removing and washing the top layer then replacing it since I’m running a smaller tank (50 gallon lagoon) but if that doesn’t work after a few tries i might just pull the sand fully. I feel like diatoms and other algae will naturally take over if it moves into my rocks.

I did take some microscope samples as I was cleaning today and found very little dino in the sand that was left in the tank, and absolutely none in the sand I rinsed. We’ll see how this goes

 

[Timfish]

I did. Gave the rock a vinegar bath, i think i might have “cooked” it for a few weeks in a plastic tub with some bacteria, then added to the tank with more bacteria. tank is almost 3 years old, although i moved it to my new house about a year ago. been having dino/cyanobacteria problems since summer when i think i over bubble scrubbed the tank for literally no reason at all and probably destroyed my nutrients. surprisingly after the move the tank was the best it had ever been for a while until i decided to try a bunch of new changes this summer lol

I'd say the algae problem is a secondary issue and focus on restablishing healthy microbial stuff for corals. I wouldn't necessarily replace the sand but I would be gently removing the surface layer with the dinos/cyano and rinsing well in aquarium water (dump the water after) and return the sand. I'd add some new live sand especially if you decide to just toss the sand you siphon out with the algae, there's a lot of important biology that goes on in sand. If you could get some clean water from a friends system that is doing well that would help add some benefical stuff. SOme New live rock would help also. Add some herbivores if you don't have any, large hermits like thin stripe hermits are much better algae eaters than small one but urchins and sallylightfoots are also good for helping with algae in a system.

Have you seen this article?

Establishing a Healthy Microbiome in a New Aquarium Using Live Rock

Studying the effects of live rock in a newly established aquarium shows that high-quality live rock promotes the rapid establishment of an effective biological filter and a microbial community similar to those found in mature reef tanks.

www.reef2reef.com

 

[k log(omega)]

I'd say the algae problem is a secondary issue and focus on restablishing healthy microbial stuff for corals. I wouldn't necessarily replace the sand but I would be gently removing the surface layer with the dinos/cyano and rinsing well in aquarium water (dump the water after) and return the sand. I'd add some new live sand especially if you decide to just toss the sand you siphon out with the algae, there's a lot of important biology that goes on in sand. If you could get some clean water from a friends system that is doing well that would help add some benefical stuff. SOme New live rock would help also. Add some herbivores if you don't have any, large hermits like thin stripe hermits are much better algae eaters than small one but urchins and sallylightfoots are also good for helping with algae in a system.

Have you seen this article?

Establishing a Healthy Microbiome in a New Aquarium Using Live Rock

Studying the effects of live rock in a newly established aquarium shows that high-quality live rock promotes the rapid establishment of an effective biological filter and a microbial community similar to those found in mature reef tanks.

www.reef2reef.com

I totally agree that fixing the microbiome is most important right now. I'm trying to do that with some bottle bacteria and phytoplankton etc. and some live rock/live sand additions would definitely help. I tried to take out the top layer of sand where most of the dino is and rinse it and put it back in yesterday, so we'll see how that goes. The number of dinos I see in a microscope sample of the sand now is exponentially decreased. My reasons for not adding any live rock or live sand to help combat this yet are
1) tank (sand especially) was pretty overtaken by dinos. I'd worry that they would outcompete any other microbio I add and it would be pretty futile.
2) I don't really have a good trustworthy source of live stuff right now. I'm not trying to introduce other pests like flatworms or something worse that's going to be another pain to get rid of. Do you know where I could possibly order a SMALL piece of rock or something? Tank is only 50 gallons.
This is also why I haven't added any herbivores. I added some snails not too long ago, and they died, which is what led me to believe I had dinos and later confirmed in microscope. I want to reduce the dino numbers significantly by adding bottled bacteria, phyto, and inducing other algal blooms before I add any new organisms. I'll check out the article, looks interesting. This is the first tank i've started with dry rock and also the first one i had this dino issue in, so I'm definitely a firm believer of live rock is best - when you have a trustworthy source, which I do not haha

 

[Timfish]

I totally agree that fixing the microbiome is most important right now. . . .

It doesn't hurt adding some bottled stuff but keep in mind only about 2% of the microbial stuff on reefs can be cultured. You can try GulfLiveRock.com or KPAquatics.com or TBsaltwater.com for small amounts of maricultured liverock. You can also try Aquabiomics.com for thier certified live sand and live rubble. I would definitley add stuff sooner thanlater so there is more to compete with the dinos/cyano.

As far as rinsing sand I've run into two contradictory scenerios over the years. First is rinsing the sand siphoned out with fresh water or H2O2 then returning it "usually" reduces teh amount of regrowth. But on occasion it gets worse when rinsed with freshwater or H2O2. Rinsing sand with aquarium water usually doesn't help much but on occasion I've seena dramatic reduction in regrwoth. So it kind depends on what else is in the sand with the nuisance algae. So don't hesitate to try a different procedure if one doesn't work right away.

 

[k log(omega)]

It doesn't hurt adding some bottled stuff but keep in mind only about 2% of the microbial stuff on reefs can be cultured. You can try GulfLiveRock.com or KPAquatics.com or TBsaltwater.com for small amounts of maricultured liverock. You can also try Aquabiomics.com for thier certified live sand and live rubble. I would definitley add stuff sooner thanlater so there is more to compete with the dinos/cyano.

As far as rinsing sand I've run into two contradictory scenerios over the years. First is rinsing the sand siphoned out with fresh water or H2O2 then returning it "usually" reduces teh amount of regrowth. But on occasion it gets worse when rinsed with freshwater or H2O2. Rinsing sand with aquarium water usually doesn't help much but on occasion I've seena dramatic reduction in regrwoth. So it kind depends on what else is in the sand with the nuisance algae. So don't hesitate to try a different procedure if one doesn't work right away.

thank you! i’ve been eyeing that live sand and rubble on aquabiomics for a while now, might be time to pull the trigger. i think if i can manually reduce the numbers of dinos enough, adding some live stuff should keep them in check. the cyanobacteria i’m not really worried about, doesn’t seem to kill anything and i’ve beaten it many times before with natural remedies.

i was also worried about the rinse making things worse, mainly due to removing the bio within the sand, but it was pretty overtaken by dino so not much would have been able to populate it. i actually think that’s why my dino problem started, i added extra dead sand to top off my very shallow sand bed, and i think it was free real estate for whatever reproduced the fastest in a low nutrient system. to combat this bio removal, i rinsed the sand thoroughly in tap water, then RODI, then saltwater. The rinse water was nasty red brown from all the dinos coming out. I checked a lot of microscope samples to make sure they were all out. Then i let it sit in a bucket of saltwater with a heater and air stone for a while and dosed a bunch of bacteria and phytoplankton. I also scraped some of the nice film of diatoms and green algae from my glass, took it out and mixed it with the rinsed sand, all in hopes to occupy it so that the dinos have to work harder to get in. i think this method should reduce their numbers significantly, and i’ll plan to incorporate some live rock and sand to my rinsed sand before re adding very soon

 

[k log(omega)]

@slingfox update: so the method definitely worked for the short term. i saw barely any dino under the microscope this morning, a slightly more later in the day which is to be expected. also saw a bunch of diatoms, pods, and cilates mixed in there. other than a couple tiny spots behind rocks, the sand is totally white. corals and my couple surviving snails still look pretty grumpy, but i have a hermit i thought was an empty shell until i noticed he moved to a rock across the tank overnight, and i saw one of my emerald crabs out munching diatoms off my rock

i’m thinking i’ll leave it alone for a few days and see how it goes. i expect i’ll have to rinse it again but we shall see. i want to do what others are saying - add live rock and live sand, but the last thing i wanna do is add live stuff and have the organisms killed by dino toxins and the live rock/sand covered with dino. thoughts?

 

[k log(omega)]

Hi @taricha,

You helped answer some of my questions on another post I made, but this one here is more recent so i figured i'd ask you in here. to sum it up:

so i've been doing the silica dosing and probably overdosing silica but my fish seem okay and diatoms and other algae are growing. the issue i was having was the diatoms not really growing as much in the sand, they mostly stick to the glass. they are there, but it was still mostly dinos. i should add i have mostly prorocentrum and large cell amphidinium.

i ended up vacuuming out the top layer of sand where most of the dinos were, verifying that the leftover sand had barely any under the microscope (and i really had to look for this). I think since they are so small, it's going to be hard if not impossible to remove every single one, but the procedure i did was similar to a mohs surgery a doctor would perform when removing cancer: remove infected area, check margins of leftover area, remove more if needed lol

i took this removed sand and rinsed the absolute heck out of it in tapwater, saw a bunch of nasty red brown runoff, then with RO water to remove the tapwater, then saltwater just for good measure. i then placed the sand in a bucket with a shallow amount of saltwater and mixed a bunch of silica into it in hopes some would stick to the sand (wish i had a way to measure if this worked), dosed bacteria, and phytoplankton. i then put a heater and airstone in there and let it sit for a while. i also scraped off my glass while my pumps were off in the tank before adding additional water, and took as much of the diatoms from the glass as i could and mixed it into the removed sand. i'd be willing to bet some dinos came with this.

however, after about 72 hours, I don't really have any visible dino mats growing, except a couple small pots behind rocks that I probably missed. when i take sand samples under the microscope i still see dinos, but since rinsing the sand i see waaay more ciliates, diatoms, pods, etc in my microscope samples. I have been continuing dosing bacteria, phyto, silicates, and keeping my phosphate and nitrate levels up/stable.

i expected to see a quicker resurgence of the dino growth. i ordered some live rock from gulf live rocks, and live sand activator from indo pacific sea farms, and I planned to do the above procedure again, but also removing and scrubbing my live rock as it has a ton of cyanobacteria that also contains some dino and diatoms. i'm wondering, since the procedure did seem to knock back the dinos and allow more beneficial growth, do you think it would be worth it to repeat, or do you think i should just add the live rock/sand and continue dosing silicates and wait? just want to get some opinions on this.

i also know that dinos are probably always present to some degree, but how much is normal/acceptable? if they are not blooming/forming mats, but still visible under a microscope, is that normal? unfortunately i have not looked at my sand under a scope until having dinos.

the attached videos are from a sample of my sand from this morning.

 

[taricha]

@kristianmat I'm always a fan of manual removal, repeated sessions will show progress as what is removed is slower and slower to return.
Replacement of dinos by diatoms is slow and gradual. The idea is that as long as diatoms have Si available, they are marginally faster growers than dinos.
So gradually, as you export - stuff will grow back (more slowly because you exported a lot of goodies.) And what grows back will be slightly more diatoms than it was before. Dinos grow back too - but diatoms have growth advantages - it just takes a while.
I like that video - those euplotes ciliates are loving the sand right now apparently.

oh, "soaking" sand in water that you added some Si to is not helpful. Si is super water-soluble and will go with the water that's discarded, not "stick to" the sand in any significant way.

 

[k log(omega)]

@kristianmat I'm always a fan of manual removal, repeated sessions will show progress as what is removed is slower and slower to return.
Replacement of dinos by diatoms is slow and gradual. The idea is that as long as diatoms have Si available, they are marginally faster growers than dinos.
So gradually, as you export - stuff will grow back (more slowly because you exported a lot of goodies.) And what grows back will be slightly more diatoms than it was before. Dinos grow back too - but diatoms have growth advantages - it just takes a while.
I like that video - those euplotes ciliates are loving the sand right now apparently.

oh, "soaking" sand in water that you added some Si to is not helpful. Si is super water-soluble and will go with the water that's discarded, not "stick to" the sand in any significant way.

i’m thinking the part that really helped was “seeding” the rinsed sand with diatoms from my glass. i guess i have 2 main questions here:

at what point does the benefit from rinsing the dinos out become less due to loss of diatoms and other good stuff? i feel like those ciliates are doing great and honestly seem to outnumber the dinos, so maybe i’m at a point where i shouldn’t manually remove, and just let it go for a little?

and do you think there’s a benefit from taking rocks out and scrubbing, or would this just upset the system more?

 

[taricha]

at what point does the benefit from rinsing the dinos out become less due to loss of diatoms and other good stuff? i feel like those ciliates are doing great and honestly seem to outnumber the dinos, so maybe i’m at a point where i shouldn’t manually remove, and just let it go for a little?

It doesn't.
If you have two competitors for the same stuff, and the faster reproducer is the one you are interested in - then knocking the population back by 90% over and over just makes it easier for the faster grower and harder for the slower one. You'll never wipe out the population of diatoms by just removing patches of visible brown.

and do you think there’s a benefit from taking rocks out and scrubbing, or would this just upset the system more?

what's on the rocks that you'd scrub off? Unless they are overrun with bad stuff, then I woudn't scrub them clean - that's just lots of fresh real estate that you then need to let re-mature. If they were awful, I might though, Or I might just drop them in a dark circulating saltwater bucket. Keep the maturity - lose the photosynthetic junk.

 

[k log(omega)]

It doesn't.
If you have two competitors for the same stuff, and the faster reproducer is the one you are interested in - then knocking the population back by 90% over and over just makes it easier for the faster grower and harder for the slower one. You'll never wipe out the population of diatoms by just removing patches of visible brown.


what's on the rocks that you'd scrub off? Unless they are overrun with bad stuff, then I woudn't scrub them clean - that's just lots of fresh real estate that you then need to let re-mature. If they were awful, I might though, Or I might just drop them in a dark circulating saltwater bucket. Keep the maturity - lose the photosynthetic junk.

i like the dark bucket idea. they’re pretty overrun with cyano that has a decent layer of diatoms directly on it and some dinos tangled up in it. idea behind scrubbing was to get the dinos out and removing cyanobacteria to open up more real estate for diatoms.

i know it’s ugly but it’s mostly diatoms covering cyano mats on there (verified with microscope)
turned on the white lights for a sec to get some pics:

 

[REEFRIED!]

I am at the point where I want to remove my sand. I posted in the LCA thread about this also. I definitely have LCA, confirmed via microscope. I have been battling them for about 4 months. I set the tank up with dry rock, and 80% dry sand mixed with a few bags of “live” sand. I ran the tank with just fish and no lights for over a month and slowly ramped lights up. Added a few frags and within two weeks had Dino’s. I run a UV plumbed directly into return pipe.

I read the entire LCA thread and decided to use the silica method. I started super slow. 12 drops a day in a 120 gallon total volume system. Over the last 4-6 weeks I am currently at 100 drops per day. Half after lights out half before lights on. I have a salifert silicate kit and it stinks! However I believe for me the sweet spot was/is about 70-80 drops per day. A few of my sps don’t like the 100 drops. Under the scope I do see more diatoms then before dosing however not like I was hoping. Yesterday my sample was 95% Dino’s.

Dinos are mostly on the sand but on the rocks also. Funny think is they don’t bother SPS or LPS at all. Not one bit. However they bother my zoa’s. The completely cover them. They won’t open and I have to blow them off at least twice a day and even with that they are still slowly melting away. I have tried siphoning through a 5 micron sock. Doesn’t work. I have tried leaving the sand alone, definitely doesn’t work. These jerks are brutal. If I stir/siphon a section of sand they are back in literally 15-20 mins. At this point I am going to remove all the sand I can get to. I am currently building two wrasse dens for my sand sleeping wrasses, then I am going to pull the sand. I absolutely hate the look of a bare bottom tank but I am fed up with these Dino’s. I plan to remove the sand over a two to three week period, restart my biweekly water changes, continue dosing about 75 drops of silica, and baste the rocks, (which I do every three days or so). After dosing silica I saw some hair algae blooms. Nothing crazy. I ordered 175 small snails from reef cleaners. About 35% survived shipping/ and a few days after. I am going to the LFS and grabbing a ton more larger snails to attack my rocks. I hope that after sand removal and basting remaining rocks, the continued silica dosing, I can knock them back and flip the switch.

I should also mention the very first thing I did was try to balance nutrients. I started skimming from 8pm to 8am only. Raised nitrate to 10-15 from 3-8ppm. And try to keep phosphate at 0.02-0.07. Which is considerably harder than keeping nitrate at desired levels. I can’t tell you how many pouches of nitrate and phosphate I have gone through over the last two months. BRS should personally thank me for the business!!

Sorry for the long post. I will update with pics of how terrible the tank looks when lights come on today. I had reef tanks from 2002-2010 and set this system up last March. I never thought I would watch videos and be jealous of white sand. It was easy back in the day!! Who would have thought battling these Dino’s would be harder than keeping designer SPS happy. I will never set up another tank with dry rock again. Although people have set up live rock displays and gotten Dino’s also, I believe dry rock/sand is like a welcome mat for them to flourish once introduced via frags or snails or whatever. I was so set on a perfect NSA scape. I beat up Marco rocks with a hammer for a month making a perfect masterpiece only to pull my hair out fighting Dino’s. I would gladly trade my NSA masterpiece for an against the back glass rock wall with beautiful white sand and no Dino’s!!!

 

[Cscultho]

Removing my sand to battle the dreaded Dino’s was and is the best decision I’ve made in the hobby so far. Coral are so much happier!

 

[slingfox]

@REEFRIED! Have you considere just removing the top layer of sand and thoroughly rinsing? I had the same issue as you early on where if I just removed small patches, the regrew back by the next morning. It was only when I removed the top layer from as much of the tank as I could reach did the regrowth start to disapate materially. I had to do manual scrubbing of rocks and removal and rinsing of the top layer of sand 3x over a course of a week didn my LCA population get crippled. Along with that I also did nitrate, bacteria and silica daily dosing as well as pouring in bottles copepods. Once my LCA got under control, cyano started growing all over my sand and on the rocks, GHA, cyano and osteropsis dinos took over the rock. I considered this a good sign that the mix was changing to more managing uglies.

One other tip: One of the other forum members suggested this and it seemed to work when I tried it last week: Buy some filter floss and cut it into large long strips and place it into your display tank. I did this an it collected a lot of dinos which I exported by pulling out the strips. I thought about rinsing and reusing but ended up just throwing them away since I have a huge mat of filter floss from Amazon. I hung them up on the display glass by tied them to small suction cups I had laying around from other aquarium equipment. Have not got a chance to try again since I have been away for the last week. I will see my tank later today after a week running by itself. Is probably going to need another deep clean!

 

[k log(omega)]

I am at the point where I want to remove my sand. I posted in the LCA thread about this also. I definitely have LCA, confirmed via microscope. I have been battling them for about 4 months. I set the tank up with dry rock, and 80% dry sand mixed with a few bags of “live” sand. I ran the tank with just fish and no lights for over a month and slowly ramped lights up. Added a few frags and within two weeks had Dino’s. I run a UV plumbed directly into return pipe.

I read the entire LCA thread and decided to use the silica method. I started super slow. 12 drops a day in a 120 gallon total volume system. Over the last 4-6 weeks I am currently at 100 drops per day. Half after lights out half before lights on. I have a salifert silicate kit and it stinks! However I believe for me the sweet spot was/is about 70-80 drops per day. A few of my sps don’t like the 100 drops. Under the scope I do see more diatoms then before dosing however not like I was hoping. Yesterday my sample was 95% Dino’s.

Dinos are mostly on the sand but on the rocks also. Funny think is they don’t bother SPS or LPS at all. Not one bit. However they bother my zoa’s. The completely cover them. They won’t open and I have to blow them off at least twice a day and even with that they are still slowly melting away. I have tried siphoning through a 5 micron sock. Doesn’t work. I have tried leaving the sand alone, definitely doesn’t work. These jerks are brutal. If I stir/siphon a section of sand they are back in literally 15-20 mins. At this point I am going to remove all the sand I can get to. I am currently building two wrasse dens for my sand sleeping wrasses, then I am going to pull the sand. I absolutely hate the look of a bare bottom tank but I am fed up with these Dino’s. I plan to remove the sand over a two to three week period, restart my biweekly water changes, continue dosing about 75 drops of silica, and baste the rocks, (which I do every three days or so). After dosing silica I saw some hair algae blooms. Nothing crazy. I ordered 175 small snails from reef cleaners. About 35% survived shipping/ and a few days after. I am going to the LFS and grabbing a ton more larger snails to attack my rocks. I hope that after sand removal and basting remaining rocks, the continued silica dosing, I can knock them back and flip the switch.

I should also mention the very first thing I did was try to balance nutrients. I started skimming from 8pm to 8am only. Raised nitrate to 10-15 from 3-8ppm. And try to keep phosphate at 0.02-0.07. Which is considerably harder than keeping nitrate at desired levels. I can’t tell you how many pouches of nitrate and phosphate I have gone through over the last two months. BRS should personally thank me for the business!!

Sorry for the long post. I will update with pics of how terrible the tank looks when lights come on today. I had reef tanks from 2002-2010 and set this system up last March. I never thought I would watch videos and be jealous of white sand. It was easy back in the day!! Who would have thought battling these Dino’s would be harder than keeping designer SPS happy. I will never set up another tank with dry rock again. Although people have set up live rock displays and gotten Dino’s also, I believe dry rock/sand is like a welcome mat for them to flourish once introduced via frags or snails or whatever. I was so set on a perfect NSA scape. I beat up Marco rocks with a hammer for a month making a perfect masterpiece only to pull my hair out fighting Dino’s. I would gladly trade my NSA masterpiece for an against the back glass rock wall with beautiful white sand and no Dino’s!!!

I had a similar situation. Started with marco rocks that i rinsed in bleach and then vinegar and then cooked in saltwater with bacteria for over a month then built the tank. all was great for a couple years actually, i even moved the tank to a new house with no problems. the bs started when i thought it was a good idea to have a bubble scrub timer go every night and my nutrients dropped to zero. went through turf algae, cyano, finally dinos: prorocentrum and LCA ALONG WITH CYANO. my tank was looking bad when i made this post, corals were dying, cyano covering rocks, dino covering sand etc. i was dosing silicates, high nutrients, not much change. had diatoms all over the glass but not enough to outcompete dino in sand. i started manual removal of dino’s in sand and that kinda helped.

what finally helped me was removing the top layer of sand with most of the dino in it. i’m sure i didn’t get all of it but whatever, that’s gonna be basically impossible without restarting. i rinsed the absolute dog spit out of that sand and put it in a bucket with sw, phytoplankton, nutrients, some diatoms i scraped from my glass, a heater and bubbler. i left that until my order of gulf rocks arrived. threw some of these in the sand bucket and the rest in another qt bucket.

after a few days i siphoned out more sand and threw it out. took my rocks out and scrubbed them. scrubbed pumps and everything else i could. took out most of the water. added the rinsed seeded sand and new live rock to the tank. blacked it out for a few days. then lights back on to blues only, SUPER LOW for a week or more. i’m at this stage now. nutrients are up up up but whatever. no cyano on rocks yet, no dino showing on sand unless i look in the microscope but i gotta really look for them. i’m still dosing silicate. i think 100 drops might be too low for your tank, i put like 200 at a time in mine and then lowered the dose just to keep it in there and i’m only running a 50 gallon. hopefully this stays okay. we’ll see. i just got sick of waiting for months so i got aggressive with it. fwiw i think the mistake a lot of people make with sand is putting in totally dry dead sand. this is why i didn’t wanna remove mine completely, and i made sure it was seeded with life before putting it back in. the dino’s only hang out in the top layer, and if that real estate is occupied there’s nowhere for them to go.

 

[REEFRIED!]

@REEFRIED! Have you considere just removing the top layer of sand and thoroughly rinsing? I had the same issue as you early on where if I just removed small patches, the regrew back by the next morning. It was only when I removed the top layer from as much of the tank as I could reach did the regrowth start to disapate materially. I had to do manual scrubbing of rocks and removal and rinsing of the top layer of sand 3x over a course of a week didn my LCA population get crippled. Along with that I also did nitrate, bacteria and silica daily dosing as well as pouring in bottles copepods. Once my LCA got under control, cyano started growing all over my sand and on the rocks, GHA, cyano and osteropsis dinos took over the rock. I considered this a good sign that the mix was changing to more managing uglies.

One other tip: One of the other forum members suggested this and it seemed to work when I tried it last week: Buy some filter floss and cut it into large long strips and place it into your display tank. I did this an it collected a lot of dinos which I exported by pulling out the strips. I thought about rinsing and reusing but ended up just throwing them away since I have a huge mat of filter floss from Amazon. I hung them up on the display glass by tied them to small suction cups I had laying around from other aquarium equipment. Have not got a chance to try again since I have been away for the last week. I will see my tank later today after a week running by itself. Is probably going to need another deep clean!

I have actually removed the top layer of sand before. Actually I wasn’t trying to remove sand. I was trying to just siphon out the Dino’s. They came right back.

I guess it is worth a shot. I am planning to remove all the sand. So I might was well try and suck up just the top layer and the Dino’s with it. I do not plan on adding any of the sand I remove back. Not worth it to me. I may eventually add sand back if I can beat the Dino’s.

 

[REEFRIED!]

I had a similar situation. Started with marco rocks that i rinsed in bleach and then vinegar and then cooked in saltwater with bacteria for over a month then built the tank. all was great for a couple years actually, i even moved the tank to a new house with no problems. the bs started when i thought it was a good idea to have a bubble scrub timer go every night and my nutrients dropped to zero. went through turf algae, cyano, finally dinos: prorocentrum and LCA ALONG WITH CYANO. my tank was looking bad when i made this post, corals were dying, cyano covering rocks, dino covering sand etc. i was dosing silicates, high nutrients, not much change. had diatoms all over the glass but not enough to outcompete dino in sand. i started manual removal of dino’s in sand and that kinda helped.

what finally helped me was removing the top layer of sand with most of the dino in it. i’m sure i didn’t get all of it but whatever, that’s gonna be basically impossible without restarting. i rinsed the absolute dog spit out of that sand and put it in a bucket with sw, phytoplankton, nutrients, some diatoms i scraped from my glass, a heater and bubbler. i left that until my order of gulf rocks arrived. threw some of these in the sand bucket and the rest in another qt bucket.

after a few days i siphoned out more sand and threw it out. took my rocks out and scrubbed them. scrubbed pumps and everything else i could. took out most of the water. added the rinsed seeded sand and new live rock to the tank. blacked it out for a few days. then lights back on to blues only, SUPER LOW for a week or more. i’m at this stage now. nutrients are up up up but whatever. no cyano on rocks yet, no dino showing on sand unless i look in the microscope but i gotta really look for them. i’m still dosing silicate. i think 100 drops might be too low for your tank, i put like 200 at a time in mine and then lowered the dose just to keep it in there and i’m only running a 50 gallon. hopefully this stays okay. we’ll see. i just got sick of waiting for months so i got aggressive with it. fwiw i think the mistake a lot of people make with sand is putting in totally dry dead sand. this is why i didn’t wanna remove mine completely, and i made sure it was seeded with life before putting it back in. the dino’s only hang out in the top layer, and if that real estate is occupied there’s nowhere for them to go.

Thank you for the response. I like your idea of seeding the sand going back into the display. Which I will definitely do when it comes time to add sand back.

I am not looking forward to removing rocks and scrubbing. Trying to avoid that. I don’t want to get the “rip clean” guys all excited by even mentioning it!!!

I can actually access 90% of my rock work to scrub in tank. Which I abound doing now as that will just scrape away anything beneficial as well, and allow fresh real estate for Dino’s. I do blow off the rocks frequently. Which is what I’m planning on doing for as long as it takes once I remove my sand.

Yes I didn’t believe the 100 drops was too much either, however once I crossed over 80 drops per day a couple sps were not happy. One completely browned out. Now I cannot say for sure it was the silica that browned it out but almost everything else has remained the same as before. Obviously it could be a million different things. I figured I would remain at the 75-80 drops for a couple of weeks and see what things look like before upping the dose again. It actually doesn’t take much silica to encourage a diatom bloom. I’m sure I’m adding enough. However I’m just not seeing the diatoms. In the other threads people said sometimes the bloom is not significant

 

[slingfox]

I have actually removed the top layer of sand before. Actually I wasn’t trying to remove sand. I was trying to just siphon out the Dino’s. They came right back.

I guess it is worth a shot. I am planning to remove all the sand. So I might was well try and suck up just the top layer and the Dino’s with it. I do not plan on adding any of the sand I remove back. Not worth it to me. I may eventually add sand back if I can beat the Dino’s.

I have a 110 gallon display and each removal siphoned out maybe 5.0-7.5 pounds of sand (really depends on size of hose and strength of siphon). I rinsed the sand (did this multiple times over the course of 10+ days) but I bought a new bag of sand as part of Black Friday sales and may just do some replacement next time around. The sand rinsing definitely worked but I had to do it multiple times while keeping up the dosing regimen.

 

[k log(omega)]

Thank you for the response. I like your idea of seeding the sand going back into the display. Which I will definitely do when it comes time to add sand back.

I am not looking forward to removing rocks and scrubbing. Trying to avoid that. I don’t want to get the “rip clean” guys all excited by even mentioning it!!!

I can actually access 90% of my rock work to scrub in tank. Which I abound doing now as that will just scrape away anything beneficial as well, and allow fresh real estate for Dino’s. I do blow off the rocks frequently. Which is what I’m planning on doing for as long as it takes once I remove my sand.

Yes I didn’t believe the 100 drops was too much either, however once I crossed over 80 drops per day a couple sps were not happy. One completely browned out. Now I cannot say for sure it was the silica that browned it out but almost everything else has remained the same as before. Obviously it could be a million different things. I figured I would remain at the 75-80 drops for a couple of weeks and see what things look like before upping the dose again. It actually doesn’t take much silica to encourage a diatom bloom. I’m sure I’m adding enough. However I’m just not seeing the diatoms. In the other threads people said sometimes the bloom is not significant

the only reason i scrubbed my rocks is because they started to get really bad, thick cyano mats with some dino lodged in there and probably some chrystophyte. i only scrubbed them at the surface, i think there’s enough of beneficial stuff in the holes and crevices to make up for anything that got removed. i think it helped free up space for beneficial stuff to take over during the black out period while dino’s were not spreading. but yeah i wouldn’t really recommend a rip clean, don’t get those guys excited here lol. i think the key is adding biodiversity. no one has the time or patience to tear their whole system up and scrub everything every time some dino’s pop up. even my “semi” rip clean thing took me like 6 hours lol. i think the key is to put a big dent into the dino population and then introduce stuff like live rock or sand and diatoms and phyto+pods

 

[Reef.]

Anyone able to beat amphidinium by removing their sand? I’ve tried a whole bunch of methods and nothing seems to work. I have a pretty heavy diatom bloom and stable parameters at 0.1 ppm phosphate and 10-15 ppm nitrate. Been dosing silicates and have a bunch of diatoms but they’re not outcompeting dino in the sand. I just siphoned some dino’s out through a sock into a filter bucket and scraped one side of glass and let the diatoms settle into the sand and mixed them in a little. If this doesn’t show progress i’m thinking of removing my sand, still dosing silicate to induce diatoms, and probably more bacteria, phytoplankton, etc

Yes it does work, just read a thread where the guy tried everything then removed the sand, dinos went, replaced the sand a few weeks later.