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Unread 01/24/2016, 07:43 PM   #2788
34cygni
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Join Date: Mar 2013
Posts: 59
DNA, have you been checking water samples for the presence of coccolithophores?


Quote:
11/16/2014, 12:37 AM #387
DN

Are there more dino-reefers out there having problems with their parameters?

My system holds 400g, but my kalk stirrer and calcium reactor designed to maintain 2400g are not keeping up.
Correcting the levels only holds for a short time and 400 is the highest calcium level I've been able to maintain recently, but it used to be lower.
Quote:
11/16/2014, 09:30 AM #389
sculptor

Yes. I dose 2 part via brs dosers and kalk through ATO and I can't get my Ca above 380 and my alk above 7.5 dkh. No precipitation on pumps/heaters here either. I just recently started the kalk, and I almost doubled the 2 part dose( 96 ml per day of each part, up from 55 ml), the only parameter that changed was my pH went up about .2.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DNA
Ca of 350, alkalinity of 5 and Mg at 1300.
Maybe low Ca and alk is the result of the system finding an equilibrium point with cocos in the calcium cycle. But eventually, the cocos in your system died off -- or maybe with low Ca and alk they simply couldn't make armor and reproduce as quickly, so predation by the dinos eventually caught up to them. When the coco population went into terminal decline, the dinos went with them. And there's this...

Quote:
06/06/2014, 01:35 AM #228
DNA
I have even less dinos than last update.
Cyano is still going strong but only half so compared to two weeks ago.
My display tanks algae is at around 25% from its high.

It's been five weeks since I lost most of the dinos and by the rate things are going it could be a clean tank in another five.
The immediate change in the corals was amazing so there is no doubt about the ill effect dinos have on them.
They colored up in a few days and growth that had been none before was noticed.

The most drastic action I did was to turn off the calcium reactor.
Three days later the dinos crashed.
Maybe the cocos crashed first and took the dinos down with them because they didn't have enough food at night to sustain the bloom.

Of course, this all assumes ostis are preying on cocos, but it's a reasonable assumption. As noted, cocos and dinos sometimes co-occur in the wild. Dinos are often seen on the edges of a coco bloom, so I'd guess the cocos are holding the dinos off with chemical warfare, but concentrations at the edges of the bloom are low enough for dinos to nip in and snag themselves a meal.

At any rate, narrowing the parameters to Ca and alk seems to point to a calcifying organism, so it seems reasonable to put cocos back on the table for consideration.


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