Coral Kingdom Of Thras ~ Waterbox 130.4 💦 ~ SPS Filling In

[Thrassian Atoll]

So far so good with the skimmer.  Should be plenty of room for the algae reactor.  Wish the pump was physically connected to the reactor though.   

[Thrassian Atoll]

Skimmer and chaeto reactor hooked up.  Hopefully the micro bubbles go away at some point.  It’s making my probe readings go crazy.  Sump is packed now.  Wish I had room for a bigger sump but it is what it is.

 

[Thrassian Atoll]

I received a Golden Rhomboidalis Fairy Wrasse from Dr. Reef on Friday.  Young male, like 2”.  Going to be nice seeing him get larger and more colorful.  He’s doing great though.  Getting chased around a little bit but nothing serious.  Expected for a newcomer.  My fish total is up to 9 now.  
 

Dr. Reef will order me a lineatus once his new setup is up and going and then his quarantine process will begin.  Hopefully I’ll have him by May.  
 

Here’s some crappy photos of the fish.  Man, he’s hard to get a decent photo of.  
 

 

[Tamberav]

Love that hawkfish! Awesome you got a fish from Dr Reef. Hope it goes well! I have two fish ordered from one of the venders from humblefish's forums.

 

 

[Thrassian Atoll]

8 hours ago, Tamberav said:

Love that hawkfish! Awesome you got a fish from Dr Reef. Hope it goes well! I have two fish ordered from one of the venders from humblefish's forums.

 

 

Thanks!  Hawkfish has a lot of personality.  Unfortunately he only eats mysis though, he won’t touch flake or pellets.  
 

Dr. Reef actually had somebody back out on the purchase of the Rhomboidalis and he hit me up.  Not sure how that happened though, he wants half up front and that’s not a cheap fish.  
 

Who did you go with to get fish from?  

[Tamberav]

6 hours ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

Thanks!  Hawkfish has a lot of personality.  Unfortunately he only eats mysis though, he won’t touch flake or pellets.  
 

Dr. Reef actually had somebody back out on the purchase of the Rhomboidalis and he hit me up.  Not sure how that happened though, he wants half up front and that’s not a cheap fish.  
 

Who did you go with to get fish from?  

That's okay because I don't feed any pellet or flake 😛

 

I ordered from Bay Bridge Aquarium.

[Thrassian Atoll]

4 hours ago, Tamberav said:

That's okay because I don't feed any pellet or flake 😛

 

I ordered from Bay Bridge Aquarium.

Haha, my wife feeds flake and or pellet in the afternoon and I feed different frozen foods every night.  I don’t think I could get her to feed frozen.

 

Nice, haven’t heard of them.  I’ll check them out.

[Elizabeth94]

Funny, my hawkfish is the same. Only takes frozen foods. And gosh he is a pig. Looks like he is going to explode after I feed the tank! 

[Thrassian Atoll]

1 minute ago, Elizabeth94 said:

Funny, my hawkfish is the same. Only takes frozen foods. And gosh he is a pig. Looks like he is going to explode after I feed the tank! 

Haha!  My hawkfish isn’t the smartest when it’s feeding time.  He always goes for the biggest chunk of food, can’t eat it, plays with it for a minute and then when he spits it out and goes for something different most of the food is gone thanks to the anthias that goes into a frenzy during feeding. 

[Thrassian Atoll]

Well, I am pretty sure what I thought I have been dealing with in the past few months as cyano, is in fact dinoflagellates unfortunately.  

I decided to buy a microscope and dive in.  I have been trying to get an answer on what type and have gotten no where.  If anybody knows, please tell.  Looks like there’s different methods for battling each type.  
 

 

 

 

 

[Thrassian Atoll]

Somebody helped me ID it as large cell amphidinium.  I am 99% sure that’s correct.  I believe that to be the hardest to get rid of too since it doesn’t go into the water column?  I’ll have to research more tomorrow.  Disappointing for sure.

[mitten_reef]

4 minutes ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

Somebody helped me ID it as large cell amphidinium.  I am 99% sure that’s correct.  I believe that to be the hardest to get rid of too since it doesn’t go into the water column?  I’ll have to research more tomorrow.  Disappointing for sure.

any other telltale sign of the bad dino, the "dinoflagellate" is a large family of the single cell organisms.  what prompted you to look more closely?  

 

If it's the stuff on the sandbed, i'd start by manual removal, daily if you have to.  how's the nutrient level?

[Thrassian Atoll]

Just now, mitten_reef said:

any other telltale sign of the bad dino, the "dinoflagellate" is a large family of the single cell organisms.  what prompted you to look more closely?  

 

If it's the stuff on the sandbed, i'd start by manual removal, daily if you have to.  how's the nutrient level?

I usually suck it all out each week during a water change.  Not just vacuum but sucked the top layer of sand out.  It comes right back that week.
 

Signs have been that nothing touches it and some of my snails have been dying pretty regularly.  A little more than normal for snails in my opinion.  I got a few tiger conchs because I heard they eat cyano and they don’t touch it.  
 

Also, I turned up flow quite a bit and it doesn’t move.  It’s only on the sand.  Nothing on the rocks.  A little on the mp40s.  

 

It’s not green or red, more of a rusty brown color. Complete eyesore.  Everything else is doing great but having rust colored sand makes looking at the tank unenjoyable.  
 

It’s apparently the hardest Dino’s to get rid of.  If it was the other type I could just buy a UV sterilizer since the other type goes into the water column at night.  This stuff stays to the sand.  
 

So I have no clue what I am going to do.  I have some research to do.  I don’t want to go bare bottom, never liked bare bottom but if I have to?  
 

My nutrients are 15 nitrate and .03 phosphate.  I actually just set up the algae reactor to bring the nitrate down some.  Not sure if raising phosphates would help with this type of Dino.  I have had nutrients at least above zero for both for months now and it hasn’t helped.  I know 0 nutrients will make Dino’s appear.

[Elizabeth94]

Have you lost any livestock yet? Ugh sorry to hear this. I was hoping it would be the kind beatable with UV, but no such luck. I was battling some rust colored stuff, and still am. But I believe mine are diatoms from new sand. The snails and conches eat it. 

Im curious if adding biodiversity would be something to consider for this type of dino. Weird because your parameters are almost what I was aiming for to avoid dinos. Adding live rock to my system seemed to help with my diatoms. Unless have dinos too. But its not bubbly. 

 

[Thrassian Atoll]

5 minutes ago, Elizabeth94 said:

Have you lost any livestock yet? Ugh sorry to hear this. I was hoping it would be the kind beatable with UV, but no such luck. I was battling some rust colored stuff, and still am. But I believe mine are diatoms from new sand. The snails and conches eat it. 

Im curious if adding biodiversity would be something to consider for this type of dino. Weird because your parameters are almost what I was aiming for to avoid dinos. Adding live rock to my system seemed to help with my diatoms. Unless have dinos too. But its not bubbly. 

 

No livestock other than snails have died, which again could just be that they are snails and snails die.  😂  I don’t think it’s one of the more toxic types, just one of the types really hard to get rid of and is an eyesore.  I haven’t seen it on any of my corals.  I have some small patches of hair algae so my nutrients aren’t low for sure.  I’ll take a photo tomorrow of the tank.  
 

From what I read today and if I can remember, raising nutrients doesn’t work, water changes don’t work, uv doesn’t work.  I’ll read a ton more tomorrow and Sunday about it and make a game plan hopefully.  

[mitten_reef]

Maybe a little more aggressive removal schedule?  Twice a week, or every other day?  
seems to me if it stays confined to the sand, it should be easy to get rid of. yes, remove the entire sand bed could be one solution. But hopefully it won’t get to that point. 
 I added this https://www.aquavitro.com/remediation.php to my tank when I had dino on the walls (yeah, it was kind of a weird case).  Figured it mainly would help introducing competing bacteria/microorganisms to the ecosystem.  I scraped and siphoned out almost 5 gallons every other day the first week, then twice a week the next, it stopped coming back after just a little over 2 weeks. 

[Thrassian Atoll]

10 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

Maybe a little more aggressive removal schedule?  Twice a week, or every other day?  
seems to me if it stays confined to the sand, it should be easy to get rid of. yes, remove the entire sand bed could be one solution. But hopefully it won’t get to that point. 
 I added this https://www.aquavitro.com/remediation.php to my tank when I had dino on the walls (yeah, it was kind of a weird case).  Figured it mainly would help introducing competing bacteria/microorganisms to the ecosystem.  I scraped and siphoned out almost 5 gallons every other day the first week, then twice a week the next, it stopped coming back after just a little over 2 weeks. 

I actually started adding microbacter7 a few weeks ago to see if it would out compete it and it didn’t do anything.  Siphoning it multiple times a week may help.  I haven’t looked anything up yet today, but I think I saw somebody mention getting like 10 micron socks and siphoning it through that but not replacing the water.  Would probably be what I would do.  

[Thrassian Atoll]

I’ll have to read this thread front to back, but getting rid of these guys doesn’t look promising.  
 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/amphidinium-dinoflagellate-treatment-methods.365850/page-46

[Thrassian Atoll]

So unfortunately there is not a lot to be done about this type of dinoflagellate.  I don’t want to do this, but I think I am going to go bare bottom.  Not all at once but siphon out some during each water change.  Probably take a month or so.  
 

Like I have previously mentioned I am not a big fan of bare bottoms, but my sand looks like doo doo and there isn’t a cure all for amphidinium.  
 

There are a ton of pros for bare bottoms though.  Easier to keep clean, can crank up my pumps, more room for corals.  Eventually I think the bare bottom could look good.  At least I hope.

[mitten_reef]

23 minutes ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

So unfortunately there is not a lot to be done about this type of dinoflagellate.  I don’t want to do this, but I think I am going to go bare bottom.  Not all at once but siphon out some during each water change.  Probably take a month or so.  
 

Like I have previously mentioned I am not a big fan of bare bottoms, but my sand looks like doo doo and there isn’t a cure all for amphidinium.  
 

There are a ton of pros for bare bottoms though.  Easier to keep clean, can crank up my pumps, more room for corals.  Eventually I think the bare bottom could look good.  At least I hope.

My tank is bare bottom and I hardly notice it any more. 

[Thrassian Atoll]

10 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

My tank is bare bottom and I hardly notice it any more. 

I might actually enjoy it because I will be able to purchase a lot more lps like chalices and stuff that can just grow on the glass.  

I should be good siphoning out a little bit each week right?  My sand doesn’t have a lot of life in it.  I don’t want to crash the system or anything.

[mitten_reef]

14 minutes ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

I might actually enjoy it because I will be able to purchase a lot more lps like chalices and stuff that can just grow on the glass.  

I should be good siphoning out a little bit each week right?  My sand doesn’t have a lot of life in it.  I don’t want to crash the system or anything.

That’s how I ended up with bare bottom, probably sucked out a pint or two every water change. I had these weird nasty looking red worms living in the sand and little green algae balls that were tumbling around the surface and just wouldn’t go away.  So I slowly sucking them out, along with the sand. Then just never got around to add sand back in, 😅. 

[Tamberav]

😞 I am not familiar with this type of dino. Do you think live rock and live sand are any prevention? Or is this a problem for those as well?

[Thrassian Atoll]

2 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

That’s how I ended up with bare bottom, probably sucked out a pint or two every water change. I had these weird nasty looking red worms living in the sand and little green algae balls that were tumbling around the surface and just wouldn’t go away.  So I slowly sucking them out, along with the sand. Then just never got around to add sand back in, 😅. 

Haha, pretty much how mine will go probably.  If the Dino’s just go away eventually I will keep what’s left of the sand, but I doubt that will happen.

[Thrassian Atoll]

3 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

😞 I am not familiar with this type of dino. Do you think live rock and live sand are any prevention? Or is this a problem for those as well?

Established rock and sand may help.  The only thing that will even hinder this type of Dino from reading the 47 page thread I linked above, seems to be adding silica to increase diatoms to compete with it.  
 

If it was the other type of Dino’s, UV would kill it and I would of ordered a jabeo 55 watt today.  This type of Dino isn’t that toxic but it stays in the sand bed and doesn’t swim into the water column at night, that’s why it’s so hard to get rid of it.  It actually goes deeper into the sand at night.  In that thread people tried everything and all they did was kill all of their corals.  I am not changing anything that will effect my corals that much.  I would rather lose my sand that kill my corals.  
 

I honestly don’t know how to avoid getting Dino’s.  I am pretty sure I got the other type in my lagoon a couple years ago.  Is it possible to dip everything and kill it all before it enters the tank?  Did Dino’s even exist 5 years ago?  No clue.