Self resolving dinos and gha

[Gligor]

Hello everybody.
These days in experiencing interesting, and hopefully lasting occurrence.
I had dinos for the past six months, and didn't do anything special about that except installing a large uv sterilizer 3 months ago. My No3 were 20 and Po4 were 0.1 The uv didn't do anything noticeable about that.
One day I noticed extreme dino outbreak, and when i tested, I was reading double zeros.
I started feeding heavy and blow dinos from the sand every day. My no3 went to 20, and my po4 to 0.03. That's when I stated to experience massive gha outbreak on the glass. The dinos were well present as well.
I continued to blow dinos from the sand and suck out the larger strings of dinos every day with turkey baster.
A week ago I noticed that the dinos are fading, and the gha is slowly dissapearing When I tested I was reading NO3 - 40 and PO4-0.2
These parameters are the same to this moment.
I literally didn't do anything different with my tank. How can the GHA diaper dissappear and nutrients rise? What caused the dinos to start dissappearing when they were thriving along with the gha for months?
I still have a little bit of the both, but I'm praying that they will dissappear completely. I'm noticing a a patch of turf algae that won't dissapear, but I don't mind it.
The light is the same on both pictures, the tank is 1.5years old started with live rock.

 

[brandon429]

Well done

Nobody has a system to cause that for others is the key

Therefore nobody can reasonably answer the question, we'd be guessing. Nice transition though.

There's always going to be a gradient where magical things can happen in the home, but they don't transfer well when tested in others reefs.

The uv is a big variable. Known to help with cures in thousands of patterned posts. The most transmittable benefit from the description above is having uv handy for rough battles, that's helpful in a high pct of threads

Regarding nutrient management as described: the whole dinos thread of 700 pages at the top of the nuisance algae forum is hundreds of tanks using that same method and they got worse vs better. The final observation is: transmissibilty = 0 but awesomeness where it helped = 100

 

[brandon429]

If you found a way to pattern those results for large tanks that don't want to disassembly clean you could change reefing.



You should take the aspects you think work, send a direct message to the next help thread poster, and work the tank via message direction. Have them replicate the procedure.

Hone down what works in their tanks over and over and then you'll impact reefing forever

 

[Gligor]

If you found a way to pattern those results for large tanks that don't want to disassembly clean you could change reefing.



You should take the aspects you think work, send a direct message to the next help thread poster, and work the tank via message direction. Have them replicate the procedure.

Hone down what works in their tanks over and over and then you'll impact reefing forever

Change reffing? I'm beginner, this is my first tank, and it's my first time facing all these occurrences as much as the next guy.
The thing I understand is that this hobby is filled with a lot of unknowns, and we tend to overcomplicate things.
For example:
-Nutrients: NO3 and PO4. A lot of people try to battle for numbers and don't even know what they are. I'm not saying I do, but I see them as fertiliser for: corals, algae, cyano, dinos, etc. Extreme increase, and you will burn your corals, the same way you will burn a plant if you add a lot of fertiliser at once. No nutrients, no growth, and even dieoff.
-Algae, cyano, dino. Part of every ocean. The problem in our reef tanks occurs when they start to take over.


The big mistakes I've made, and lessons I've learned.
- Mistake 1. I had really bad GHA outbreak, and one day I decided to manually remove ALL of it. I didn't realise that those algae were consuming my nutrients, so I had really bad spike, and cyano and dino outbreak at the same time.
- Mistake 2. I used antibiotics to remove cyano. But after that all my corals started to shrink, and took time to recover. Also dinos started to overtake. That's when I decided that no hammer solution will ever entermy tank again. I had cyano one more time, but managed to get rid of it with flow.

Back to the topic.
This last time I didn't touch my gha because It was controlling my nutrients and competing dinos, and didn't really hurt anything. I was advised against, but I was blowing dinos from the sand daily with hope that they will be sucked trough the uv. I was sucking and removing larger strings of dino daily with turkey baster.
I dont really know what happend, but both dinos and gha are going away on their own. Nutrients are slowly rising. I still haven't completely got rid of them, and I can't say that they won't come back, but something is happening in my tank that I can't understand. That's why I'm asking if anyone had experience similar to mine, and what to expect next?

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

If you found a way to pattern those results for large tanks that don't want to disassembly clean you could change reefing.



You should take the aspects you think work, send a direct message to the next help thread poster, and work the tank via message direction. Have them replicate the procedure.

Hone down what works in their tanks over and over and then you'll impact reefing forever

I just updated my dino thread. Large-ish tank. Didn’t do anything but let other algae outcompete. Microscope samples show the population transition.

 

[CHSUB]

Dinoflagellates and GHA, among other algaes require nutrients to grow. Does not matter the level a low resolution hobby test reads, from 0 to whatever, if nutrients are present algae grow. Imo, your aggressive maintenance it the reason you treading towards success…

 

[Slocke]

Hello everybody.
These days in experiencing interesting, and hopefully lasting occurrence.
I had dinos for the past six months, and didn't do anything special about that except installing a large uv sterilizer 3 months ago. My No3 were 20 and Po4 were 0.1 The uv didn't do anything noticeable about that.
One day I noticed extreme dino outbreak, and when i tested, I was reading double zeros.
I started feeding heavy and blow dinos from the sand every day. My no3 went to 20, and my po4 to 0.03. That's when I stated to experience massive gha outbreak on the glass. The dinos were well present as well.
I continued to blow dinos from the sand and suck out the larger strings of dinos every day with turkey baster.
A week ago I noticed that the dinos are fading, and the gha is slowly dissapearing When I tested I was reading NO3 - 40 and PO4-0.2
These parameters are the same to this moment.
I literally didn't do anything different with my tank. How can the GHA diaper dissappear and nutrients rise? What caused the dinos to start dissappearing when they were thriving along with the gha for months?
I still have a little bit of the both, but I'm praying that they will dissappear completely. I'm noticing a a patch of turf algae that won't dissapear, but I don't mind it.
The light is the same on both pictures, the tank is 1.5years old started with live rock.

This sounds very similar to me. All I did was add some filter floss to remove the dinos and let other algae's and bacteria compete. Dinos are now gone and GHA is going away.

I think patience and some (but not too much) management is the main key in reefing

 

[LovinlifeinGuam]

I'd attribute the benefits to your patience!

 

[Reefering1]

Agreed. It didn't just disappear. You took actions and gave it time to work. It's not a miracle, it's the basis of reefing.

 

[LovinlifeinGuam]

To follow up with my last comment, congratulations! Your tank is almost certainly far more mature than previously and many organisms are likely to start thriving even better!

 

[brandon429]

There sure are a lot of dinos challenge tanks, in the nuisance algae forum, that no published authors have the courage to take on, who would appreciate someone offering to guide their tanks into compliance


What that will allow: testimonies that come from completing works for others vs tanks we run. That one change up makes all the difference. So far, 100% of the success stories here are the unrepeatable types.

They are still good wins, making progress for sure. Next step: venture into jobs where we don't control final narrative

 

[Reefering1]

There sure are a lot of dinos challenge tanks, in the nuisance algae forum, that no published authors have the courage to take on, who would appreciate someone offering to guide their tanks into compliance


What that will allow: testimonies that come from completing works for others vs tanks we run. That one change up makes all the difference. So far, 100% of the success stories here are the unrepeatable types.

They are still good wins, making progress for sure. Next step: venture into jobs where we don't control final narrative

Give it a break Brandon. This poor guy is happy for progress and wanted to share. That's it. He doesn't owe the hobby a thing, let alone you.

 

[JonoH]

I had a GHA outbreak about a year ago now, and didnt really do anything to directly attack it.
What i did do was..

Add some more live rock into the sump
Manually put snails onto the GHA

It dissappeared within a month, and i have not had it since - parameters run pretty high on my tank, Nitrates 30-40 and phosphates around .1-.2 generally.

Honestly i think most tanks have dinos and GHA and all the other stuff, it just lives in a balance, thinks only go astray when that balance is messed up somehow.

 

[Gligor]

Thank you all for the support, I will post updates if my method is working in the long run. Maybe it's not even my method that is working, maybe something is happening on microscopic level. But i will say that my tank looked way better when i was blowing the dinos from the sand, and sucking out larger dino strings daily, than when I left it alone for a week, that's when I experienced really nasty outbreak.

 

[Slocke]

Thank you all for the support, I will post updates if my method is working in the long run. Maybe it's not even my method that is working, maybe something is happening on microscopic level. But i will say that my tank looked way better when i was blowing the dinos from the sand, and sucking out larger dino strings daily, than when I left it alone for a week, that's when I experienced really nasty outbreak.

Have you tried just putting filter floss in a high flow area and cleaning the floss daily? That’s what I did. It will shock you how much dinos you remove

 

[Moe K]

I think the anecdotal evidence all points to bacteria. There is bacteria strains in our tanks that you can not buy in bottle. Sometimes you get lucky and get the good kind that is strong, resilient, and helps keep your tank pristine and in balance. Other times you get organisms out competing the good bacteria and make it near impossible for the good to colonize fully until the bad is either removed or starved out.

It all comes down to the bacteria strains IMO. This would explain how some tanks can feed heavy yet still drop in po4 and nitrate and some can not even with an advanced filtration system.

Its a simple concept but ridiculously hard to find what strains those are that we could benefit from the most. Its the difference from a new tank to a mature tank. Even with flawless water chemistry I have found coral struggle until that balance of good bacteria is achieved.

There is some awesome bottled bacteria out there but I have yet to find one that is as beneficial as what ever bacteria is cultivated on mature live rock.

That's my theory anyway