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Unread 12/28/2014, 10:33 AM   #532
Squidmotron
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Plano, TX
Posts: 675
Quote:
Originally Posted by karimwassef View Post
In terms of doing nothing - I think we do things but call them 'nothing'. Did you feed more instead of less? Did you allow algae to grow without ripping it out? Did you do less water changes?

I personally think these actions all help the biology stabilize. (Except water changes, I still believe that's just good any time). I'm thinking of introducing chaeto into my main DT to outcompete with them.
Let's drill down and see if I can figure out more. Sadly, most of these are not very scientifically done.

(BTW, I live in Dallas as well. I notice dino outbreaks are very common here and I wonder if something about our water is at all related.)

Things that I think had little to no effect:

1) Feeding: While feeding, I tried phases wherein I fed very little for weeks and it didn't seem to have a noticeable effect. I tried feeding a lot to establish other algae to outcompete dino. I tired solidly for at least a month with each, but probably more. Didn't really do much that I could tell in this time frame.

2) Protein Skimmer: I have always run a protein skimmer and have never taken it offline. It is a Super Reef Octopus 250.

3) UV Sterilizer: I tried this for awhile. It didn't "solve" the problem, but mine was undersized anyway. Not a great experiment.

4) Ozone: Never tried.

5) Macroalgae. I have this is in a well-lit sump. Caulerpa and cheato. Tried increasing the light cycle. This actually grew VERY LITTLE while dino was active. Once dino died out, it's growth exploded. My conclusion was that dino is more effective at getting nutrients from the water. Caulerpa noticebly outcompetes the cheato.

6) Lights out. Lights out visually works for quite awhile. The longer you do lights out, the longer it takes for the dino to reappear. In my most desperate phase I went for 14-15 days. Some coral died (surprisingly few however). The dino was out for a long awhile, but it came back. I think this just delays the process.

7) Hydrogen Peroxide. This did absolutely nothing for me. Nothing at all. Even with 3 times the suggested dose for several weeks. I am absolutely amazed that so many people reported this working. This didn't really do much to my coral either, except they were annoyed right after dosing. I would say the overall effect on the tank was zero.

8) pH. This was an early experiment. And man it sucked. I killed some pumps using kalk for this and maintaining a high pH for a long time. No effect.

9) Flow. Tried insane levels of flow. Tried very litttle. It didn't really do anything.

Things that may have had some effect:

1) Water & RO/DI. The water in the Dallas area is suspicious to me. It was especially bad last year and the year before as measurements showed. My RO/DI filters were dying out quickly. Like in 6-8 weeks quickly. It may be tangentially related to the drought. Before my "dino die out", I had replaced all filters with brand new filters. And religiously, I had replaced them again not 2 months later. Mainly because I bought extra filters in bulk. When I think back on it, my dino did not last far past this phase.

2) Sand bed. I had added sand over the course of the previous year. I had also replaced the sand bed once entirely because of my belief that nutrients in the sand bed may have contributed to dinos. After this replacement period, dinos exploded visually. The population seemed to visually double. This made no sense to me because things like silicates would help DIATOMS and not DINOS. This is when I bought my microscope to verify that in fact what I was seeing with dinos. It was very obviously dinos, although other things were present. During this time, I came across a paper that most of the specifies of dinos we find in our tanks consume these diatoms. So it may just be an alternate food source. I resolved to not add/replace sand again until the dinos were gone.

3) Nutrient increase. I think actually the nutrient increase is a RESULT of a the dinos disappearing and no the cause of it, but eventually there was a nutrient increase. However, when I deliberately had tried to increase them it did not seem to work in the past. Just food for thought. I think dinos would make an excellent filtration system for our tanks, if but only they could be isolated.

4) Water changes. My water changes were less religious during the phase where dinos were dying out. But did happen every 6 weeks or so. And instead of buying water from my local store during bouts of laziness, I used my filter-replaced RO/DI and made 100% of all my water to perfect spec.


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Current Tank Info: 210 Gallon "Mixed Reef" Tank (84 inches wide)
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