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Kentech’s Comeback 5G Pico - New Pics!


Kentech5

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1 hour ago, Amphrites said:

Those are definitely dinos.

I recommend getting some bottled Nitrate and Phosphate and dosing up to 15 and 0.1 respectively, adding some pods, running lots of carbon and trying to manually-remove some through filter floss. Abstaining from water changes for a while should help as well, Clown79 had allot of luck with dosing phytoplankton. Sometimes Dino's are part of your ugly-phase/cycle, but thats a pretty bad outbreak.

Guess I will have to go grab the Sera test kits and use those until I get my Red Seas in. Won’t be able to go grab those til Friday. Low nutrients is not a problem I am used to having. Granted I have been doing pretty frequent water changes. Just going to feed well the next couple days until I can test and be sure that’s what is happening. 

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Currently using a syringe to blow the Dino’s off the rock once or twice a day and running a HOB with carbon and filter floss. I am changing the filter floss a couple times a day as it seems to be collecting a good amount of the Dinos. I’m continuing to feed well. 

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Well it’s pretty hard for me to believe it but it looks like low nutrients is my issue. Nitrates tested at 0 and phosphates at 0.02. Ill test again tomorrow to confirm but for now I will increase feedings and continue avoiding water changes. I suppose I’ll have to start checking some other levels and prepare to dose if I can’t replenish with water changes. 
 

I’m also still spraying the dinos off the rocks once or twice a day and frequently changing out the filter floss in my HOB. I’m hoping removing as many dinos as I can this way will help get whatever trace elements they are using out of the tank. 

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Well I did  another round of testing today. Despite increasing feedings 2 to 3 times my nitrates still sit at 0. Phosphates are now at 0.04. So I have started dosing nitrates slowly in the hopes that this helps improve the situation. Manual removal of Dino’s with filter floss continues but it doesn’t seem to be making a difference. Most corals are fine but my purple hammer looks very annoyed although I don’t see any exposed skeleton. I am hoping dosing nitrates will be all it needs.  I think my phosphates are at an OK level but I worry nitrate dosing may drop them so I assume I may need to dose phosphate too. 
 

No water changes is driving me crazy. It goes against all my reefing instincts. I have a calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium test kit coming in because I am worried about those levels without any water changes. If they do end up needing supplementation I know I can get them at my LFS so I have held off on ordering those. LFS didn’t have any Red Sea kits which are what I prefer and ordering there takes a bit too long for something like this that may be time sensitive. 

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Have you considered a 48 hr or so blackout to help fight the outbreak? I'm not sure how much dino's depend on light but I will say a blackout has helped me in the past controlling algae. However, I was basically running a fowlr. Not sure how much no light for that long will affect your reef.

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7 minutes ago, Revenant said:

Have you considered a 48 hr or so blackout to help fight the outbreak? I'm not sure how much dino's depend on light but I will say a blackout has helped me in the past controlling algae. However, I was basically running a fowlr. Not sure how much no light for that long will affect your reef.

If I have the kind of Dino’s I think I do low light is not going to help me much. I’ve used blackouts for cyano successfully in the past but if anything I am trying to encourage algae growth to outcompete the Dino’s right now. 

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So yesterday I dosed enough NeoNitro to increase nitrates by 5 ppm. Today I tested positive nitrates for the first time but I am only reading 0.25. Phosphate has gone down again, consumed with the nitrate I assume so I do have some phosphate I can dose coming tomorrow. Something is uptaking a ton of nitrates. I have a brownish algae I haven’t cleaned off the glass which doesn’t look like diatoms and doesn’t just blow off. I have left that algae alone in hopes it will outcompete the Dino’s but it is ugly. I also have some dark hair algae on the rocks. Tank looks awful although coral looks fine. Really want to scrape and clean everything but I hope what I am doing will be the solution so I will continue to hold back. 

 

Thankfully my other levels seem pretty good aside from a high pH (which the Dino’s should hate I believe.)
 

Full Test Log: 

Temp 79.25 - Seneye

pH 8.56 - Seneye

Ammonia 0.001 - Seneye

Nitrate 0.25 - Red Sea
Phosphate 0.01 - Red Sea

Calcium 440 - Red Sea

Magnesium 1440 - Red Sea

Alkalinity 3 Meq/L / 8.4 dKH


 

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Still never imagined I would be dosing nitrates and phosphate. I remember looking at ultra low nutrient tanks and wondering how anybody manages to get their tanks that low. This is probably the sloppiest I have let a tank be on purpose but I keep reading dino nightmare threads and this seems to be a tried and true approach. If I have to I will get a microscope to narrow down the type of dinos responsible but I am holding off for now. UV will be last resort as it feels kind of like a bandaid that might hurt my biological diversity. 

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On 1/24/2020 at 12:59 PM, Kentech5 said:

Currently using a syringe to blow the Dino’s off the rock once or twice a day and running a HOB with carbon and filter floss. I am changing the filter floss a couple times a day as it seems to be collecting a good amount of the Dinos. I’m continuing to feed well. 

I would syphon them out rather than blowing them around. You’re dealing with a problem on the microscopic level. What you blow around isn’t all that you see. 

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6 hours ago, Smurf said:

I would syphon them out rather than blowing them around. You’re dealing with a problem on the microscopic level. What you blow around isn’t all that you see. 

Can try it but I don’t have a sump and I’m trying to avoid water changes so I’d have to siphon through a filter sock or something and hope it catches them then add the water back in. My understanding is they can go right through one of those though. I’m blowing them off and catching what I can with filter floss in a HOB. I pull a lot of nasty stuff out that way. 

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1 minute ago, Kentech5 said:

Can try it but I don’t have a sump and I’m trying to avoid water changes so I’d have to siphon through a filter sock or something and hope it catches them then add the water back in. My understanding is they can go right through one of those though. I’m blowing them off and catching what I can with filter floss in a HOB. I pull a lot of nasty stuff out that way. 

Thats pretty much how @Clown79 beat them in the Pico contest

 

 

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3 hours ago, Ratvan said:

Thats pretty much how @Clown79 beat them in the Pico contest

 

 

Ya, blowing dino's around spreads them. 

 

Everyday I sucked them out with a Turkey baster and ran that water through a filter sock stuffed with floss, water was returned to tank.

 

Photo period was reduced, pods added to tank, and phyto dosed.

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50 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

Ya, blowing dino's around spreads them. 

 

Everyday I sucked them out with a Turkey baster and ran that water through a filter sock stuffed with floss, water was returned to tank.

 

Photo period was reduced, pods added to tank, and phyto dosed.

I think they’re pretty well spread but I will give that a try instead. Hopefully I will find a filter sock laying around here somewhere. Don’t really want to go buy one as I don’t think any close stores have one. I’ve got an algaebarn pod and phyto order sitting in my shopping cart but I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. When I get home from work I will probably be disgusted enough by my tank that I will click buy. 
 

I did read through your thread looking for ideas. I still have one hammer in particular that’s looking irritated but that could be low nutrients, lighting (it’s the highest euphyllia in my tank), dino’s, or my clown goby who loves hiding behind it. My frogspawn, which I was worried about a few weeks ago, is always huge and the other hammer is usually open and looking fine.  If it does turn out to be the clown goby I’ll deal with it. I would rather have my yellow clown goby than the hammer and maybe it will adjust to the love. 

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1 hour ago, Kentech5 said:

I think they’re pretty well spread but I will give that a try instead. Hopefully I will find a filter sock laying around here somewhere. Don’t really want to go buy one as I don’t think any close stores have one. I’ve got an algaebarn pod and phyto order sitting in my shopping cart but I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. When I get home from work I will probably be disgusted enough by my tank that I will click buy. 
 

I did read through your thread looking for ideas. I still have one hammer in particular that’s looking irritated but that could be low nutrients, lighting (it’s the highest euphyllia in my tank), dino’s, or my clown goby who loves hiding behind it. My frogspawn, which I was worried about a few weeks ago, is always huge and the other hammer is usually open and looking fine.  If it does turn out to be the clown goby I’ll deal with it. I would rather have my yellow clown goby than the hammer and maybe it will adjust to the love. 

Dino's flourish in low nutrients and pods are their main competitor. Seeding my tanks with a lot of pods and getting my phos above 0.1 was when they died off.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Clown79 said:

Dino's flourish in low nutrients and pods are their main competitor. Seeding my tanks with a lot of pods and getting my phos above 0.1 was when they died off.

 

 

Phos just came in today. Tank doesn’t look as horrible as I thought it might today. Still has dino’s but not awful. Gonna do some more testing later today. I just wish pods were a bit cheaper. I think one store out here might have them but I have doubts as to whether they’ll actually be alive. 

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1 hour ago, Kentech5 said:

Phos just came in today. Tank doesn’t look as horrible as I thought it might today. Still has dino’s but not awful. Gonna do some more testing later today. I just wish pods were a bit cheaper. I think one store out here might have them but I have doubts as to whether they’ll actually be alive. 

Ya they are. I seeded my tank with 24 oz, then an additional 16oz a month later. 

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2 hours ago, Kentech5 said:

Phos just came in today. Tank doesn’t look as horrible as I thought it might today. Still has dino’s but not awful. Gonna do some more testing later today. I just wish pods were a bit cheaper. I think one store out here might have them but I have doubts as to whether they’ll actually be alive. 

Rastapods on eBay can hook you up if you're able, they're willing to mix different pods in a bottle too.

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2 hours ago, Amphrites said:

Rastapods on eBay can hook you up if you're able, they're willing to mix different pods in a bottle too.

Ill take a look, thanks for the tip. Do they have phyto too?

 

 

They aren’t coming up for me on ebay. 

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