ADA - the 2 island reef

[Andreww]

5 hours ago, JR! said:

thanks man. i always like to see whats under the hood if you will 😛

 

Here you go. Basic 3 compartment sump, kinda messy at the moment; water drains into a 4” sock, skimmer and carbon reactor in the middle and 2 return pumps in the last compartment. Tunze ATO in there as well.

 

Used to have a refugium in the middle but took the chaeto out due to dinos growing all over it.

Ill probably go back to making the middle section a refugium again, with some more live rock or marinepure balls in there as well.

 

[JavaJacketOC]

Put some brightwell bio media in there. You've got room for more filtration.

[Andreww]

2 hours ago, JavaJacketOC said:

Put some brightwell bio media in there. You've got room for more filtration.

Usually skimmer is elevated in the back of the sock and the middle is taken by macro algae. But I can still put some filter media under the filter sock.

Im debating on miracle mud in the refugium area.

Seems like Mike Palleta loves it and has it in all his tanks. 

Gotta do more research on it though.

[thecoralbeauty]

So, i read back a bit in your thread regarding dinos too. Any recent insight? I'm trying to go the pods/phyto/bacteria route too and have a brightwell brick in the mail to me as well. 

 

You said you pulled the cheato because it was covered in dinos....

I had just put some macros in my sump with a light on it when my dinos started growing... i just pulled the macros out yesterday, so i've yet to witness a change, not enough time yet. I had sea lettuce and red pom pom, no cheato. wonder if there's a correlation there?

[Andreww]

26 minutes ago, mwhitelock said:

So, i read back a bit in your thread regarding dinos too. Any recent insight? I'm trying to go the pods/phyto/bacteria route too and have a brightwell brick in the mail to me as well. 

 

You said you pulled the cheato because it was covered in dinos....

I had just put some macros in my sump with a light on it when my dinos started growing... i just pulled the macros out yesterday, so i've yet to witness a change, not enough time yet. I had sea lettuce and red pom pom, no cheato. wonder if there's a correlation there?

I cannot say with certainty that one thing I did helped with dinos.

My nutrients were very low. I tried elevating those.

I dosed Nitrates and have seen a good response from corals. After a while , Nitrates stayed elevated and I stopped dosing.

When I tried dosing PO4 algae of all sorts started growing like mad.

So I stopped that as well.

Someone was saying dinos like macro algae so that’s where I had the most growth.

The rest were on the rocks.

I removed all the old sand and replaced with new. Only that I washed the new “live” sand so the bacteria or most of it went down the drain.

I removed that too and this time I put a larger grain sand in straight from the bag. 

Dino growth has diminished 10x. Still seeing small specks of it here and there but nothing like before. 

Could be that the bacteria in live sand is helping? Maybe...I’ve also started dosing phyto and aminos. Pod population has really gone up and a few days ago the whole glass was full of them.

But I can’t put my finger on one thing I’ve done and say : That helped get rid of dinos. Could be a combination of things...

I think we all have dinos in our systems. It’s just a matter of time until an imbalance takes place and they show their ugly head unfortunately...

 

 

[Andreww]

Never seen such polyp extension at night before. So I fed them some reef roids.

 

I’m sure aiptasia is laughing at me while snatching roids out of the water column. But tomorrow morning I’ll show them the syringe full of AiptasiaX.

We’ll see who’s laughing then ....

[Andreww]

@mwhitelock , my parameters have fallen back down. PO4 At 0 and NO3 at 0.5.

Dinos have started forming again.

I guess we can see a correlation here.

Dosed both elements and plan on doing that for a while.

The struggle to keep them elevated is real, I guess a large tank with lots of fish doesn’t have this problem.

So there you have it, keep your nutrients up. Even with the risk of HA taking over ,  it’s better than Dinos. 

[thecoralbeauty]

11 hours ago, Andreww said:

@mwhitelock , my parameters have fallen back down. PO4 At 0 and NO3 at 0.5.

Dinos have started forming again.

I guess we can see a correlation here.

Dosed both elements and plan on doing that for a while.

The struggle to keep them elevated is real, I guess a large tank with lots of fish doesn’t have this problem.

So there you have it, keep your nutrients up. Even with the risk of HA taking over ,  it’s better than Dinos. 

I have a lawnmower blenny and a yellow tang that have kept me from ever dealing with any hair algae since they arrived in the tank. 

So, I guess that's the secret- keep nutrients up! My fish will take care of the algae 🙂

 

I have also added a lot of new pods the last week and am dosing heavy phyto to keep the populations up, since I have two wrasses that enjoy them as snacks too. Hopefully that helps- I am seeing a slight decrease in dinos but wasn't home at all yesterday or the day before during daylight to see how heavy they were on my sand bed. 

 

thanks for thinking of me with the update! dinos are stressful- it's helpful to have someone dealing with the same thing and keeping me posted. 🙂

 

[Christopher Marks]

How are things going this month with the dino battle @Andreww? Still doing PO4 and NO3 to overcome them? This situation seems to be happening to more and more reef keepers.

[Andreww]

15 hours ago, Christopher Marks said:

How are things going this month with the dino battle @Andreww? Still doing PO4 and NO3 to overcome them? This situation seems to be happening to more and more reef keepers.

Hey Christopher thanks for asking.

Still battling them unfortunately but my SPS are growing so at least that’s what keeps me from tearing down the tank.

Ive been dosing PO4 and NO3 but stopped since Dino’s seemed to get even worse after a period of time,(maybe different strain) with 0.6 PO4 and 15ppm NO3.

Green film was forming on the glass every single day to the point of not being able to see inside.

Now I just stopped dosing those 2 elements and cyano has appeared more pronounced.

I think we are on the right track. 

I didn’t want to use any chemicals to destroy the dinos but I might just have to resort to it if all else fails.

 

95% of the sand is out as well. Over a period of 3 weeks I dropped the Alk from 9 to 7.5 since nutrients were not what they used to be with the other fish. Now fish get fed every 3-4 days, 

and corals one time a week with a sizable dose of reef roids.

Algae blenny is feasting on the GHA every day and is fat as it can be(I can probably support 3 lawnmowers with my current GHA garden lol), the hawk seems to not lose any belly size with the current 3-4 day feeding interval and is looking good.

At one point I was considering putting the whole setup up for sale...but I’ll keep at it , and hopefully be able to pull through.

I was also thinking of introducing macro algae back into my system. I kept it out ever since I started seeing dinos.

But sump is sparkling clean now and display looks like a mess. So that might be the next step before any chemicals get involved...

 

 

[Andreww]

Despite the constant Dinoflagellate battle for the last few months , my pink lemonade has shown OK growth and coloration especially after switching to T5’s .

Heres a before and after. 

Pictures are taken 4 months apart.

[Andreww]

Decided to take a break from saltwater and convert this small tank over to a planted tank. Life just gets in the way sometimes....

Thank you everyone for your help and support along the way. It’s been fun!

 

[Tom@HaslettMI]

6 hours ago, Andreww said:

Decided to take a break from saltwater and convert this small tank over to a planted tank. Life just gets in the way sometimes....

Thank you everyone for your help and support along the way. It’s been fun!

 

I really enjoyed your tank. Especially your aquascapes. GL in your FW endeavors!

[Andreww]

Before I transfer completely into the freshwater forum, just though I’d do a last tank update and how it looks now after the teardown.

3 week dry start method before flooding and adding CO2.

Theres tiny pieces of moss all over that wood.

In 3 months time, that should be all covered up in moss and front and side filled in pretty good in about a month’s time.

Going for the thick dark forest look with tiny neon tetras (about 30 of them).

[JavaJacketOC]

Look for cardinal or ember tetras. I like cardinals a lot, they stay smaller than neons. You going to do Co2 injection?

[Andreww]

3 hours ago, JavaJacketOC said:

Look for cardinal or ember tetras. I like cardinals a lot, they stay smaller than neons. You going to do Co2 injection?

I looked into cardinals however I had no idea they stay smaller than neons I always thought they’re pretty similar in size when fully grown.

 

Only reason for neons was the 70cent/fish price at this particular store vs the cardinals at 4$/fish.

Ive seen neons at 3$/fish but a bit bigger so the 70c is really appealing.

 

X30 adds pretty quick . Same with shrimp.

I have to look for something that will give a nice contrast with the green and brown theme. Probably red cherry shrimp to forage through the Fissidens moss.

 

Yeah I’m doing CO2 still waiting for a few items to complete the build.

Still kicking myself for selling the previous system.

[JavaJacketOC]

On 4/18/2019 at 11:08 PM, Andreww said:

I looked into cardinals however I had no idea they stay smaller than neons I always thought they’re pretty similar in size when fully grown.

 

Only reason for neons was the 70cent/fish price at this particular store vs the cardinals at 4$/fish.

Ive seen neons at 3$/fish but a bit bigger so the 70c is really appealing.

 

X30 adds pretty quick . Same with shrimp.

I have to look for something that will give a nice contrast with the green and brown theme. Probably red cherry shrimp to forage through the Fissidens moss.

 

Yeah I’m doing CO2 still waiting for a few items to complete the build.

Still kicking myself for selling the previous system.

Oh wow, cardinals are expensive by you! They're similar in price by me. I guess they're technically the same size is butt cardinals have always stayed smaller for me. More red as well, so I've always preferred them. I keep golden pencil fish with them, love them all together. I need to redo my freshwater planted, micro amazon swords have taken over so it's time to rescape, I'll be following along for motivation.