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Unread 10/04/2015, 05:28 PM   #2013
ZandEDad
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 1
Thank You

I just spent most of my precious, precious Sunday reading through this thread. For the past few years, ever since I started my 65 gallon tank, I've had corals and snails die off and seen little to no growth in my corals. I figured it was something I was doing wrong - too much/too little light, phosphates too high, bad quality salt, wild param swings, etc. So I chased a fix. Upped/reduced lighting; dosed; skimmed; added a calcium reactor; added a phosphate-removing reactor. But still nothing...

All this time I've also seen no coralline growth, except in shaded areas, and a nice "film" of brown "algae" on my rocks, back wall and sometimes on the sand bed. I would scrape it off and blow it off only to see it return. And the stink from the water changes led me to believe my sand bed was bad...

So I tore it down a month ago, cleaned it with fresh water, replaced the sand but reused the live rock. Lo and behold, the "algae" is back and I had a nice goopy explosion on my sand bed just yesterday. Only this time, there were bubbles. Dinoflagellates! What I didn't realize was that I've had them for years - it explains the alk swings with few corals; the lack of coralline growth; the lack of coral growth.

After reading these 81 pages, I've now realized something else - my microfauna are gone. And my snails (mainly Astrea) died off. No spaghetti worms, no feather dusters in the sand bed (I do have them on the rock), all bristle-worms and micro brittle stars are gone and there are zero pods. I figure at some point the Dino's released toxins that killed everything, or maybe I starved them out even though I feed decently...

So until today and after reading all of your posts, I had no clue. Now I have one and at least some plans of attack. I'm thankful my situation isn't as bad as some of yours, but I'm envious of some of the gorgeous tanks out there. I want what they have. With all of your posts these past few years, I may finally be on my way to that level of success. Keeping fingers crossed!

As an aside, before my upgrade, I ran a 40 breeder with a 250 watt halogen, no sump, no skimmer and just a modified Aquaclear with chaeto. Had amazing life in that tank (corals didn't really grow but that's probably because I should have dosed to get my parameters up).


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