To vacuum the sand bed or not when dosing silicate.

[dennislagoon]

I have been facing dinos in my Reefer 170 for more than 9 months now and eventually the prorocentrum have become the dominant one. They’re mainly on the sand bed.

For about 3 to 4 months I have been keeping No3 at 5-15 ppm and Po4 at ~0.05 ppm through dosing. And adding live phyto and bacteria daily and doing no water changes. I vacuum the sand bed once in a while through a 5 micron filter sock as it doesn’t make much of a dent.

Unfortunately UV didn’t do much too (11W with 2x tank volume flow), so I started dosing silicate every other day about a week ago after I vacuumed the sand bed.

In a week time my sand bed is completely covered and I have trouble keeping the alkalinity up.

Just wondered if it would be a smart move to vacuum the sand bed (without cleaning the diatoms on my glass) or let everything be undisturbed

What’s your opinion on vacuuming your sand bed while doing the silicates treatment?

 

[Miami Reef]

Perhaps all the diatom growth elevated the pH, which increased the calcification, or the lack of dinoflagellates is less stressful to your corals, which improves growth.

I think it’s fine to siphon your sand.

 

[Subsea]

Explain silicate treatment.

Why are you dosing silicates? I dose silicates to grow sponges.

 

[dennislagoon]

Perhaps all the diatom growth elevated the pH, which increased the calcification, or the lack of dinoflagellates is less stressful to your corals, which improves growth.

I think it’s fine to siphon your sand.

You’re right that my pH has been elevated by 0.2. And just to clarify, there are a lot of stringy diatoms on the glass, but my sand bed is completely covered with dinos.

Explain silicate treatment.

Why are you dosing silicates? I dose silicates to grow sponges.

It’s treatment mostly used for LCA dinos or prorocentrum. Basically dosing silicate to enduce a diatom bloom to outcompete the dinos.

 

[Subsea]

“It’s treatment mostly used for LCA dinos or prorocentrum. Basically dosing silicate to enduce a diatom bloom to outcompete the dinos.”

@dennislagoon
I can identify with the concept. I use ammonia for nitrogen and ChaetoGrow for trace minerals to outcompete dinoflagellate.

PS: I dose silicates for ornamental sponges in 75G display and cryptic sponges in 30G cryptic refugium with mud filter. System is 25 years mature.

 

[dennislagoon]

Great looking tank. Wish I had such a clean sand bed and mature tank.

Since the dinos were mainly on the sand bed, I decided to remove the sand bed today, except below the rocks where it’s shaded. Pretty tired of looking at a brown tank.

Hopefully this will give the system some room to breath again and I can work on stabilizing things again.

 

[Subsea]

My sandbed is not clean. IT HAS 25 years of detritus in it. I stir it to feed Sea Apple. I just did vacume out Cynobacteria, GHA and Aptasia.

 

[Miami Reef]

My sandbed is not clean. IT HAS 25 years of detritus in it. I stir it to feed Sea Apple. I just did vacume out Cynobacteria, GHA and Aptasia.

Your tank looks fantastic!

 

[dennislagoon]

It’s still looking amazing. Guess it’s fine when it’s controllable, where as mine was definitely not.

 

[Subsea]

Initially, I operated this tank with 6” dsb using a Jaubert Plenum with mud\macro refugium. Five years ago, I vacuumed all but 2” of substrate, plumbed in reverse flow into plenum space, up thru substrate.

 

[Dan_P]

I have been facing dinos in my Reefer 170 for more than 9 months now and eventually the prorocentrum have become the dominant one. They’re mainly on the sand bed.

For about 3 to 4 months I have been keeping No3 at 5-15 ppm and Po4 at ~0.05 ppm through dosing. And adding live phyto and bacteria daily and doing no water changes. I vacuum the sand bed once in a while through a 5 micron filter sock as it doesn’t make much of a dent.

Unfortunately UV didn’t do much too (11W with 2x tank volume flow), so I started dosing silicate every other day about a week ago after I vacuumed the sand bed.

In a week time my sand bed is completely covered and I have trouble keeping the alkalinity up.

Just wondered if it would be a smart move to vacuum the sand bed (without cleaning the diatoms on my glass) or let everything be undisturbed

What’s your opinion on vacuuming your sand bed while doing the silicates treatment?

Are the dinoflagellates just ugly or a serious threat to your animals? If just ugly, try not disturbing your system other than maintaining nitrate and phosphate.

 

[dennislagoon]

Only maintaining my nitrates and phosphate unfortunately didn’t gave it much of a dent. It really overrun my system

I did loose some CUC along the way, especially last couple of weeks. Also, my hammer and duncan are not opening for a couple of days now and I think this has to do with something being out of wack because of not doing water changes for so long. Hence why I removed the sand bed to finally do a water change today. Last time (couple of months ago) I did a water change, which gave the dinos a huge boost.

Just want a moment to stabilize things a bit without having a tiramisu sand bed depleting all the nutrients or trace elements right away. The sand bed really felt like a great breeding ground for the dinos.

Really hope I made the right call though.

 

[Subsea]

I have been facing dinos in my Reefer 170 for more than 9 months now and eventually the prorocentrum have become the dominant one. They’re mainly on the sand bed.

For about 3 to 4 months I have been keeping No3 at 5-15 ppm and Po4 at ~0.05 ppm through dosing. And adding live phyto and bacteria daily and doing no water changes. I vacuum the sand bed once in a while through a 5 micron filter sock as it doesn’t make much of a dent.

Unfortunately UV didn’t do much too (11W with 2x tank volume flow), so I started dosing silicate every other day about a week ago after I vacuumed the sand bed.

In a week time my sand bed is completely covered and I have trouble keeping the alkalinity up.

Just wondered if it would be a smart move to vacuum the sand bed (without cleaning the diatoms on my glass) or let everything be undisturbed

What’s your opinion on vacuuming your sand bed while doing the silicates treatment?

@dennislagoon

I looked for a tank thread to better understand your set up and to better understand your experience level.

Considering that your original post asking for advice was followed the next day with removal of 9 month old sandbed, I find that to be a somewhat impulsive course of action. To outcompete your dinoflagellate outbreak, diversity of micro fauna & fana would be a long term solution for system stability. I use diver collected, uncured live rock & sand to inoculate the system.

Because I operate large systems, I use aroggonite substrate as a living biofilter to process inorganic & organic nutrients into live food to feed hungry mouths using multiple nutrient pathways.


Good fortune on your course of action.

 

[dennislagoon]

@dennislagoon

I looked for a tank thread to better understand your set up and to better understand your experience level.

Considering that your original post asking for advice was followed the next day with removal of 9 month old sandbed, I find that to be a somewhat impulsive course of action. To outcompete your dinoflagellate outbreak, diversity of micro fauna & fana would be a long term solution for system stability. I use diver collected, uncured live rock & sand to inoculate the system.

Because I operate large systems, I use aroggonite substrate as a living biofilter to process inorganic & organic nutrients into live food to feed hungry mouths using multiple nutrient pathways.


Good fortune on your course of action.

I understand it does look impulsive, @Subsea. However, I've been debating this for a while.

I am aware that I removed good organism along with the dinos and I do understand the ultimate goal of outcompeting them through biodiversity. It's why I dose live phyto, pods, bacteria and silicates. And adding some rock or sand from a mature system is still on my to-do list.

It was hard to imagine the good organisms had any room to make a comeback with the amount of dinos I had on my sand (and their quick return after vacuuming). My original post was indeed about to vacuum or not, but eventually pulled the trigger of removing their favorite breeding ground all together. Just hope to give the good organisms a better chance of getting the upper hand, before I incrementally add some sand back.

 

[Subsea]

With respect to biodiversity, what bacteria are you dosing. Depending on product, it could be bacteria for sediments or free swimming bacteria in the water column. Protein skimmers remove free swimming microbes from the water column. It is for that reason that your major nutrients of nitrogen & phosphate are low. When nitrate & phosphate limited, opportunistic algaes dominate without sufficient competition.

Only maintaining my nitrates and phosphate unfortunately didn’t gave it much of a dent. It really overrun my system

I did loose some CUC along the way, especially last couple of weeks. Also, my hammer and duncan are not opening for a couple of days now and I think this has to do with something being out of wack because of not doing water changes for so long. Hence why I removed the sand bed to finally do a water change today. Last time (couple of months ago) I did a water change, which gave the dinos a huge boost.

Just want a moment to stabilize things a bit without having a tiramisu sand bed depleting all the nutrients or trace elements right away. The sand bed really felt like a great breeding ground for the dinos.

Really hope I made the right call though.

When you say maintaining nitrates & phosphates, what are those levels?

 

[dennislagoon]

I actually never hooked up my skimmer thus far, as I never got high enough nitrate or phosphate levels. Hence why I started dosing Nyos Nitrate+ and Phosphate+ after about 2 or 3 months. Unfortunately I started this too late and the dinos were already present back then.

I have been keeping No3 at 5-15 ppm and Po4 around 0.05 ppm ever since, mostly weekly tested but in changing conditions I test more often. I test No3 with Nyos and Po4 with Hanna ULR.

I've used Dr. Tim Eco-Balance Probiotic and recently switched to Microbe-Lift Special Blend, just for the sake of introducing different bactaria. I dose this daily along a special blend of live phyto cultered by my LFS. Once month or so I add a couple of bags with copepods.

 

[Subsea]

What food do you feed your fish & corals and how much?

 

[dennislagoon]

Mostly frozen mysis or brine shrimp once a day. Just a quarter cube. And when I feel like it in the morning, I give a small amount of extra pellets out of my dry food selection to bring in some diversity. Or some nori or algae waffles for the CUC, since I don’t have much algae.

My 2 clowns, bangai and yellow watchman seem to be well fed and happy with this routine.

 

[Subsea]

That should be sufficient to show nitrate & phosphate on a 9 month old system. Do you have a full tank shot with white light showing the uglies before you removed the sandbed.

 

[Subsea]

I actually never hooked up my skimmer thus far, as I never got high enough nitrate or phosphate levels. Hence why I started dosing Nyos Nitrate+ and Phosphate+ after about 2 or 3 months. Unfortunately I started this too late and the dinos were already present back then.

I have been keeping No3 at 5-15 ppm and Po4 around 0.05 ppm ever since, mostly weekly tested but in changing conditions I test more often. I test No3 with Nyos and Po4 with Hanna ULR.

I've used Dr. Tim Eco-Balance Probiotic and recently switched to Microbe-Lift Special Blend, just for the sake of introducing different bactaria. I dose this daily along a special blend of live phyto cultered by my LFS. Once month or so I add a couple of bags with copepods.

Dosing phytoplankton is good.

I see little need to continue dosing bacteria. If you were running your protein skimmer, it would be a type of carbon dosing to grow bacteria that absorb nutrients that are then removed with protein skimmer. I suggest you use your protein skimmer for gas exchange only and allow wet skimmate to return to tank.