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03/16/2016, 05:43 PM | #3351 |
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It's important to have facts before asserting opinions:
I added an ATS many many months after I had used UV and been dino-free and clear. So.. I tried many things. Each worked a little.. Then I tried UV and it was a C change. It won the battle for me. The war was won when the dinos were knocked off balance and then the other approaches started to show benefit. Each attack achieved something different. As far as phyto, enough of it stays alive long enough and competes with any "pathogenic" elements... Then it becomes food. That's the plan. As far as export: ATS is, by far, the best mechanism for export and nutrient control. It kicks in after a powerful skimmer and a healthy open surface sandbed. They are not in opposition... They're allies. Each can deliver a unique export capability. I have almost no rocks on my 3' x 8' x 3" sandbed. That's my bacteria and detritus cleanup zone. The monster skimmer removes organics The scrubber and chaeto removes inorganics.
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03/16/2016, 08:54 PM | #3352 | ||||||
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At the time you got rid of the dinos did you have any algae in your display tank? Quote:
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03/16/2016, 10:33 PM | #3353 |
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There was no algae in the tank from the point I used LaCl and had the dino bloom. At that time, I had a chaeto mass that was growing, but as soon as the dinos came in, the chaeto started to die. After the UV, my chaeto rebounded and started absorbing again. The sand (small particles host more bacteria), the skimmer and the chaeto were my exports. So I never had algae except on my front glass. I also had a dozen ravenous tangs that ate any hint of algae in the DT... Turning it into organic waste that was consumed or exported by the sand or skimmer.
Whatever they didn't grab fast enough, my chaeto captured as N and P. Then I installed my ATS. Now both are working, and I think the ATS is winning. A C change means an immediate change into the opposite direction. I was losing the battle and the UV had an immediate effect that reversed the tide... UV will not kill everything immediately. I have a 660gal system and I was circulating at 200gph through it... There's a lot of phyto that never saw my UV reactor, at least not for many hours. They were like kamikaze - they fought all night and then were eventually sacrificed and turned into food for the coral. Dinos are like an alien alternative to the normal algae based food chain. Once they were stunned hard enough by UV, other normal life started to win. The critical difference here is in the dino's reaction to dark. Unlike hair algae or chaeto or pods, dinos will disseminate into the water column by dark to hunt. This mixotrophic behavior is exactly why UV kills them preferentially. There are spores and some pods that are zapped too, but the vast majority of them are benthic. They're not suspended free floaters in the water column. So- if all your enemy behaves in a way that is uniquely different than all your friends- use it! Most of the good guys are safe. All the bad guys are nuked over the darkness hours. By morning, the dinos try to come back, but they can't breed fast enough to compete with a tank's worth of benthic competitors or a chaeto mass that now feeds on their dead waste to grow even bigger! This is why feeding started to work... As did all the other methods. I made it an unfair fight by preferentially zapping the free floating dinos.
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03/16/2016, 10:40 PM | #3354 |
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By the way, when I say thousands of pods... I mean it. I probably added close to 20,000 pods. At night, the rocks were nearly crawling with them. They were in everything. I'm sure the free floating babies were zapped but there were such large masses of pods that it was like a near inexhaustible source. As long as I fed phyto, they were all over.
I also added close to 200 glass shrimp. They're still in my tank, breeding. I even got some massive pieces of live rock encrusted with huge rhodactis and sponges and life. I created an explosion of life and diversity to compete constantly with the dinos while I was nuking them. I also expected that in the mix, there would be elements that would b predatory to the dinos.
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03/17/2016, 07:08 AM | #3355 |
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03/17/2016, 07:45 AM | #3356 |
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Apologies for long post, but I want to give enough info so that other eyeballs can look at the data and maybe come to different conclusions, or catch something I've missed.
Short version: Dinos (90% amphidinium and a little coolia) and cyano simultaneously retreated to verge of disappearance over the course of 3 days in a tank with high NO3 (30ppm), high PO4 (0.50 ppm), high lighting (including 3 hours of sunlight), no UV or algaecides - in association with growing large amounts of macroalgae (chaeto and caulerpa) on the sandbed. Dosing trace elements and vitamins caused dinos/cyano to reverse and begin increasing again. Original goal was to kill dinos by growing algae, or at least see if I could grow lots of algae and still be dino infested, because that would be interesting. And I didn't want to do blackouts because I'm trying to grow maximum algae and because I know dinos need light, I'd like to find out what else they need - that's more interesting. No UV, because I don't have one, and I found out my amphidinium don't leave the sand anyway. So, dirty method+light+no skimming+trace elements: 5 times the food, only 2hrs light to the fuge (less nutrient uptake there - more for the DT), trace elements to boost algae growth and basically make sure nothing was nutrient limited. Green film algae, coraline on glass, bits of macros on rocks, cyano, and dinos all grew well - no GHA or diatoms. Test kits however revealed that just dumping food in wasn't enough. PO4 was elevated 0.20, but NO3 was undetectable. So I began dosing KNO3 in addition to heavy feeding, a week or so later testing showed my NO3 was between 10-20ppm, but my PO4 had dropped to new lows for my tank 0.04. So in addition to elevated feeding I began simultaneously dosing both N and P daily - KNO3 for N, and a high P miracle grow fertilizer 4-12-4 (N-P-K) derived from only ammonium phosphate, potassium phosphate and urea - no metals. I also had stopped trace elements, with the idea that I wanted to give everything N, P, and light in excess and have them fight it out for anything else they needed, hopefully find a trace element limitation. At this point Feb 12, green film ruled the glass and dinos/cyano ruled the sand. These pics are 1-2 weeks after I had siphoned everything. https://goo.gl/photos/n4fLAy29SQSyxPqh7 https://goo.gl/photos/KKbHGZv3x2XryKLc9 https://goo.gl/photos/iRzDpv5y5K2t4QAZA So I decided to move some algae in directly. I pulled two big hunks of Chaetomorpha and Caulerpa from the fuge onto the front and back trouble spots right on the sand bed. Feb 12th https://goo.gl/photos/CYnGvADZJk5yVqX38 I worked my way up to N and P dosing that looked like this March 1 measured: NO3 10+, PO4 0.23 March 1,2,&3rd I added 10ppm NO3 and 0.20ppm PO4 every day March 4th measured: NO3 15, PO4 0.21 so I kept dosing at those levels. Chaeto and Caulerpa grew well, many many more pods, worms, and general critters took up residence in the sandbed. Dinos directly under the chaeto started to disappear. Maybe it was chemical competition, or predation from the critters living in the chaeto, or reduced light under chaeto, or a combination. Other than directly below chaeto, cyano and dinos continued to grow, even right next to the macros. Feb 29 https://goo.gl/photos/9wtRn8pkMxQ9BZUh7 https://goo.gl/photos/yiAiUGL9uoHBmFkh6 I also tried to see if I could deplete trace elements by not feeding the fish for a 2 days, and just dosing N & P, and cranking fuge lights back up. No luck there. Cyano and Dinos still growing. My miracle grow has a small amount of ammonia and urea (2% each) and there's some reason to believe ammonia might encourage cyano, so on March 5th I changed my P source to an industrial cleaner I got at the hardware store - Trisodium Phosphate (80% Trisodium phosphate dodecahydrate, 20% Sodium Sesquicarbonate). I continued dosing 10ppm NO3 and 0.20ppm PO4 daily. I siphoned all dinos/cyano out again on March 7th, and it began growing back as usual in all the usual spots. After a few days, one of the halimeda started looking bad and died a few days later, the other halimeda sprigs stopped new growth, my skimmate had slowed down for the past few days, and the green film on the glass was very slow growing. I'm only connecting these observations to what happened next - after the fact. For two days I didn't have time to look at the tank or dose N or P. Just throw in a pinch of food. Then, March 14thpm, I looked at the tank and saw gorgeous white sand. Dinos had disappeared, cyano was gone too from all the spots where it normally stayed. My monti cap that I had been 100% convinced was dead, extended its polyps for the first time since the end of January when Dinos first appeared in my tank. I figured that two days without dosing, my hungry tank must have eaten up the N or P and crashed the cyano/dino population. So I tested: NO3 between 30-50ppm, PO4 0.50ppm. I checked the numbers with multiple kits because I didn't believe it. No mistake - high N and P. https://goo.gl/photos/Sg4W1mwizRPTEbif6 https://goo.gl/photos/LfcBY249h1pt636d8 Apparently a trace element shortage must have limited cyano/dino growth rate so the tons of benthic fauna was consuming it faster than the replacement rate. Only one small spot of cyano/dino remained. I wanted to see if I could get it growing again by changing nothing except adding back trace elements, so I left everything else in place, kept all the macro with its predators on the sandbed, and put in a week's dose of a couple of trace element mixes: Kent Iron and Manganese: K2O,Fe,Mn,Mo,Zn,Co Aqueon FW plant food:K2O,Ca,Mg,S,B,Fe,Mn,Mo,Zn and finally, for vitamins I added a days dose Kent Microvert: I,Vit A,B12,B6,B1,C I followed those doses up the next day with half of what I had added the day before. Over the next 2 days, In some spots dinos/cyano returned. The last remaining brown sand patch stopped its rapid decline and slowly started to spread again. In other spots only cyano made a comeback. These are pics of 3/14,15pm and 3/16am https://goo.gl/photos/hSj6x3VNQXwxWWNFA https://goo.gl/photos/UqMRbfNxtCuVrKf59 https://goo.gl/photos/XwWYmf5rPuGBT8ih7 Other possible effects of trace element dosing: the halimeda started new green shoots, and finally after months, a couple of new tufts of GHA on rocks. If I had to guess, I don't think the reversal is sustainable at this point. Even with continued trace element dosing, sand samples from all over the tank show way too many sanddwelling critters for dinos to reassert dominance. If I had to guess which trace element is responsible, I'd lean towards Iron, as it has the most documented effects in limiting the growth of the things that seemed to decline over the past week. On the other hand, it has the most documented effects across the widest range of organisms because it's the most studied trace element. It could be any number of other things, there's nothing I've observed that excludes, for instance the Cobalt-B12-Cyano-Dino connection. Correlation, causation and coincidence can be hard to tease apart, but here are key observations that (to me) point to trace element limitation and are consistent with Iron.
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03/17/2016, 10:24 AM | #3357 | ||||||
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03/17/2016, 11:28 AM | #3358 |
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Seeing white sandbed for a whole day is a wonderful feeling.
I've had enough Chetomorpha in the tank to fill two stuffed shopping bags, but it didn't have any impact. A few times the thought has occurred to me to move it to the display, but looking at the dinos that migrate every night to the sump changed my mind. Scientists working in the field have often mentioned the dinos hanging on to algae, but I've never witnessed that. One could speculate the rise in Nitrates and Phosphates could be the effect rather than the cause of the dinos crashing and this instant signs of better tank health is something I've witnessed several times and reported in this thread. You had some success here, but as usual it's difficult to explain and somehow, no matter what methods are used dinos will find a way to show up soon after. |
03/17/2016, 02:23 PM | #3359 | |
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Others with ATS had the ATS die when dinos came in. Dinos can thrive at lower nutrient levels that either. So, when the ATS cannot survive, it dies and the decomposition quickly feeds the dinos. That is simple enough. The cure, then, is to raise the level of nutrients to where the ATS or chaeto can begin to fight back by consuming the nutrients. Unfortunately, you could also just be feeding the dinos. In my case, the UV stopped that. The non-free floating algae started to feed and the dinos died. Sand is key to the nitrogen cycle, ammonia-nitrite-nitrate-N2 gas... etc... I have a lot of sand in dedicated containers in my sump. Each is over 4" thick and they're stacked. It is a nitrogen machine... nitrogen escapes = export. Sand is also in my sand bed. The detritus eaters consume animal waste that would become rank in the tank. Their waste is smaller and easier to extract with flow. That's where the skimmer picks it up... export again. Hair algae is competition for dinos. Chaeto too. The trick is to raise the N and P level up to where those competitors have a fighting chance while knocking the dinos down. C change = "sea change" = we have come to refer to a sea change as being a profound transformation caused by any agency http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sea1.htm Everything in my tank eats everything. My corals eat, my worms and pods eat, my phyto eats... who cares as long as I provide a source of food? If it serves a purpose beforehand, so much the better. I feed 4 leaves of Kale, 4 sheets of Nori, 2 raw shrimp, 2 cubes of mysis, 3 cubes of cyclopese, reef roids and reef chilli along with 60ml of phyto and 60ml of restor + selcon + garlic X... with NO algae and corals growing so fast I have to give them away. Alien species is meant to explain that they're incompatible with the other food chain... that begins with normal algae. They are not algae. If your dinos don't go into the water column, then the UV is ineffective. Mine did and UV was the most significant critical tool to getting rid of them.
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03/17/2016, 02:58 PM | #3360 | |
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I'm trying to come up with reasons why algae outcompetes dinos so well and why so much chaeto does nothing...
The first thing I'm thinking is that GHA prefers urea/ammonia much more than nitrate. I don't know the dinos uptake of ammonia compared to nitrate is but maybe the GHA can outcompete dinos because it gets the first grab. The second thing is that the GHA might be putting chemicals in the water to hinder the growth of other species at the bottom of the food chain in order to keep themselves the dominant species in the system. These chemicals might work on the dinos too. The last thing I can think of and I've said it before is that GHA grown on a scrubber screen maximizes the conditions for growing GHA. These conditions are not as favorable to the dinos and the algae wins. I think it could be a combination of all these things and probably something else I can't think of right now too. Quote:
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03/17/2016, 03:32 PM | #3361 | |||||||||
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03/17/2016, 05:29 PM | #3362 |
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You've convinced yourself and it really doesn't help other people. You focus on semantics when I think my point is clear to everyone else.
If it's important for you to feel that you're right, then you're not interested in helping others. That's a shame. For example: Having algae in my ATS isn't the same having algae in my DT. I'm sure you understand this, but you decide to focus on this minutia that adds no value to others, just to jab at a clear and useful comment I made. Another example: dinos starve algae or chaeto.. Killing them. Does it matter that they did it without attacking the algae? No. Again, minuscule focus on specific words instead of helping others... One more: detritus eaters in the sand make the skimmer a better exporter... So what? I already said it's a cooperative effort. The Nitrogen export from denitrification is export, but you missed that. And while you know that bacteria lives in the sand, you find it important to point out that it's the bacteria, not the sand... Again, why does it matter? You focus on the words when everyone reading this thread knows that bacteria enables the N cycle and that bacteria lives in the sand. Who are you helping?
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03/17/2016, 05:30 PM | #3363 |
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How does it feel knowing that you can cause massive suffering to others by dismissing a potent tool that didn't work for you? I hope your ego sleeps well at night.
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03/17/2016, 05:51 PM | #3364 |
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Here at Reef Central, we believe that dialogs between participants should be conducted in a friendly and helpful manner. If you disagree with a posting, please express yourself in a way that is conducive to further constructive dialog. Conversely, when you post on any given subject, you must be willing to accept constructive criticism without posting a hostile or inflammatory response. Personal attacks of any kind will not be tolerated. Please work to insure that Reef Central remains a friendly and flame free site where everyone, especially newcomers, can feel free to post questions without fear of being unfairly criticized. Thank you for your cooperation. Let's keep the discussion civil.
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03/17/2016, 05:52 PM | #3365 | |
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I've never seen dinos on my caulerpa, chaeato or other algae that does not stay close to the ground. |
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03/17/2016, 06:39 PM | #3366 | |
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03/17/2016, 06:49 PM | #3367 |
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A lot of the food will end up in the water column eventually, possibly as "output" from various animals. Some of that will be removed by the skimmer or incorporated into algae that's exported (if any algae trimming is done). The rest will become mineralized nutrients like nitrate and phosphate. The percentage will vary from tank to tank.
I'm not sure how much filtration the sandbed actually performs. That also will vary from system to system, but a number of people have removed sandbags and not noticed much difference in the water parameters. Likewise, Randy added a macro algae refugium and saw his sandbed seem to reduce its production of nitrogen or oxygen, or both.
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03/17/2016, 08:09 PM | #3368 |
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I apologize. My second post was not constructive.
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03/17/2016, 09:59 PM | #3369 |
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So what is the cure for dinoflagellates?
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03/18/2016, 07:25 AM | #3370 |
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I would like to start dosing nitrates as I feel this is what most people are doing to rid of the dinoflagellates. How do I do it? Where do I get a bottle of nitrate. Is it potassium nitrate?
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03/18/2016, 07:55 AM | #3371 | |
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I use. Look it up.
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03/18/2016, 08:17 AM | #3372 | |||
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side note: weeks ago when the dino outbreak was young, I coudn't find any dino predators in the tank or the fuge, or skimmer or algae sandbed I cultured. Now, everywhere I look, every sample has a handful of different organisms eating dinos. And the locations of dinos/cyano retreat and reappearance says that proximity to algae is a strong factor. Quote:
My tank had been holding steady at pre-dose numbers of 10+ NO3 and 0.20+ PO4 - last test on 3/4, with daily doses of 10ppm NO3 and 0.20ppm PO4. I continued this dosing along with feeding every day. I dosed and fed up to and including Friday 3/11, Here's what my a section of my sandbed looked like on 3/11 https://goo.gl/photos/SgBdove54yMfqApT9 Light brown amphidinium/cyano dusting in the sand. Not mass globs of snot that would nuke a tank in die-off. on Sat 3/12 and Sun 3/13 I didn't dose. I only had time to throw in 1-2 cubes of food and a couple of pinches of flake both days. Then Mon 3/14 my sand is clean and my NO3 is 30, and my PO4 tests 0.50. To put 0.50 PO4 in scale, my system is 245Liters (65 gal) so that's 122mg of PO4 or 40mg of P, which is the equivalent of 50g (dry weight) Caulerpa or 890grams (2.0 pounds!) wet weight. I promise I didn't have a half a pound or a pound or two pounds of caulerpa - or anything else - die in my tank without my noticing. It seems incredibly unlikely that I added 10 NO3 and 0.20 PO4 doses every day up through Friday, and then over Saturday & Sunday while getting a couple of cubes and several pinches of flakes my tank crashed N or P to zero so violently, it killed off something on the scale of a pound or two of living stuff and broke it down back into N and P in the water column by Mon. It seems much more plausible, in my opinion, that in some tanks when algae/whatever "outcompetes" dinos into reduction - or more likely, reduction by slowing their growth below predation rate, it might be outcompeting dinos for elements other than N and P. Especially since a lot of the tanks in question are by their own admission trying to keep a "dirty" - high N and P - state. Maybe we get fixated on N and P because that's what we can measure and control. (just look at my routine for example) There's a fairly common fallacy in science that probably has a name - "whatever I can measure must be the most important factor." But I think it's possible we might be missing that the real action shaping the composition of the algal community is trace elements - at least under "dirty method" conditions. Like RHF said a short while back - 800 posts ago (!) Quote:
Last edited by taricha; 03/18/2016 at 08:22 AM. |
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03/18/2016, 10:06 AM | #3373 |
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Didn't mean to hurt you feelings and I am here to help, whether you agree with me or not is another story. I feel like I have lots of useful experience dealing with and eliminating dinos. I thought we were having a conversation not a heated argument... guess not.
I also think that the things I mention have value to the conversation. For example if dinos flat out kill algae then my idea would be useless but they don't. My point about sand beds is not directly related to dinos but I was trying to make the point that people have BB tanks and have healthy systems... also a sand bed is probably not that big of a factor when it comes to eliminating dinos. Also in my opinion there is little difference between algae on a screen vs in the DT except for the nutrient uptake is much higher on a properly set up ATS. I was asking if you had any algae growing anywhere in the tank (screen, glass, rock, powerhead etc.) at the time you eliminated the dinos. I'm also open minded to all theories and if there is sufficient evidence I would be more than happy to switch any of my views. I have first hand experience also... I'm not just reading a book and regurgitating the information. The UV is fine, it can be a good tool. The idea behind UV is to knock back dinos while giving way to other competition. This could also be done in other ways, maybe even better ways, like for instance sucking them out with air line tube. That would export dinos while ensuring no die off. This however is not addressing the root of the problem. If competition never increases dinos will still live. So there needs to be some way to do this. Either with chaeto if it works, increasing nutrients to allow GHA in the DT, or adding an algae scrubber to be able to grow algae in a low nutrient environment. Last edited by jweist; 03/18/2016 at 10:50 AM. |
03/18/2016, 12:16 PM | #3374 |
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My reaction was to the nitpicking on semantics when the point was clear.
I agree that we need competition and algae is the best competition. I don't agree that it works without first creating an opportunity for the algae to take "root". To be clear- this is figurative language, not intended for a deep dive into the attachment mechanisms of algae. Manual dino removal has not been effective in knocking them back based on the responses in this thread. Again- figurative language. This isn't a description of physical force acting on dinos. Slow UV + dark + skimmer export has been effective in knocking them back. I am an advocate of ATS. I am an advocate of UV. I think either alone is insufficient for a long term "cure". Please no debate on the term "cure". IME, kicking them back and giving ATS or chaeto or phyto a leg up (these creatures don't have legs- to be clear) is the key.
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03/18/2016, 12:17 PM | #3375 |
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Just an update for me:
Been feeding heavy for 5 days now, skimmer has also been turned off. The Bad: -Dinos have proliferated, about double the amount -Red Dragon RTN'd -Small Ich outbreak on one of my clowns The Good: -I actually see a few specks of coraline growth starting on my dirty dino covered powerheads and overflow. Tank has been up 8 months and have had zero coraline growth this whole time. I suppose coraline is an algae, so it makes sense there was a lack of growth when my nutrients were probably too low this whole time. Finally pleased to see coraline grow... -A small amount of GHA is now growing in my refugium, next to my chaeto - although cheato growth is stagnant...can't get it to grow still... -Tank glass finally has a haze again to it - hopefully I am getting some phosphates - although the haze is whitish/cloud like, not the typical green or brown dusting...but its something...don't think I've had to clean my glass in weeks, will leave it be for now, as it sounds like anything could help out compete the dinos at this point. Phosphate and Nitrate still reading 0. My theory surrounds dinos thriving when there is an imbalance between phosphate and nitrate. This tank was plagued with pale sps corals, so I began dosing nitrate, I got them up to 5 ppm, but then noticed the glass was spotless and never needing cleaning, hence my phosphates likely dove down severely - the next day dinos began. This dirty approach has been hard to watch my tank go through, but I think its necessary. There is no question that the clean approach can be equally harmful to my tank inhabitants, because stability goes out the window some. If I can keep my fish alive and corals from dying back further, I will be happy. I just have this feeling I need to keep feeding to get through the ugly stage to come out on top. My first tank 10 years ago was the most successful. The one difference I have noticed with it compared to all the rest, was that the tank had a hard, hard, hard, cycle - it got very ugly, algae blooms everywhere, back to back, etc. My last 3 tanks have never had such hard cycles. It almost seems perhaps the dinos have appeared because I never fully cycled this tank. I can't even get a nitrate reading for crying out loud. My first tank, which was most successful, always had nitrate readings that I was trying to drive down. just sharing some random thoughts - It helps me to write things down as I feel like I am in some dino therapy of some sort. |
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