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Critteraholic

Re your hermit, the way the shells are placed next to each other, I vote molt. The easiest way to find out is to take out the hermit "body" and see if it's just a shell. (Or sniff it if you're game. Dead it reeks.) 

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Critteraholic

You didn't hurt your pods by cleaning. As soon as you started messing around they would have dove for rock or sand to escape you. 🙂

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Kindanewtothis
32 minutes ago, Critteraholic said:

Re your hermit, the way the shells are placed next to each other, I vote molt. The easiest way to find out is to take out the hermit "body" and see if it's just a shell. (Or sniff it if you're game. Dead it reeks.) 

The shell was empty, the other shell was my other starlet. I took the "body" out, it think it's dead.

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Kindanewtothis
15 hours ago, Tired said:

 

Give it a month. If you have no reduction of dinos at all, then you'd want to start looking at other solutions. But until it's been a month from now, don't do anything differently

Deal, I'm going to Ontario and will be back on august 21st. I'll see how it is when I come back. I'm not leaving now, will be gone one week. My sister will come every 2 days to top off water, feed the fishs, dose phyto and empty the skimmer cup. 

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Kindanewtothis
On 7/12/2021 at 7:45 PM, Kindanewtothis said:

Phosphate in the 10g: 0.32 (was 0.48)

Phosphate is back to 0.51 in the 10g.

 

I did a quite big water change to take it from 0.48 to 0.32 so what now another water change? Should I do it weekly (there is no skimmer on that tank). Phosphate remover pad for a day ? ( don't want to eliminate all phosphate) Do nothing?

 

Nitrate are 2.1

I guess I should dose nitrates to make sure dinos don't take the place?

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2 hours ago, Kindanewtothis said:

Phosphate is back to 0.51 in the 10g.  I did a quite big water change to take it from 0.48 to 0.32 so what now another water change? Should I do it weekly (there is no skimmer on that tank). Phosphate remover pad for a day ? ( don't want to eliminate all phosphate) Do nothing?

At this point, I wouldn't consider this a problem.  I'd definitely avoid the phosphate removing media.  I'd stick to a regular water change schedule for the 10 gallon tank.

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Cyano isn't necessarily a problem at this point.  Any competition is good, even if it's ugly.  Ultimately, cyano is much easier to get rid of than dinos.

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Kindanewtothis
2 minutes ago, seabass said:

Cyano isn't necessarily a problem at this point.  Any competition is good, even if it's ugly.  Ultimately, cyano is much easier to get rid of than dinos.

I see that as positive as well as the green on the tank's walls. Because yes, tank is already ugly, took only 1 day afterall...

 

Dosed nitrate in the 10g, aiming for 4

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i never dosed anything, never used any "phosphate remover" or similar products. don't try to kill the algae, cyano or pods. let things live and grow. let the tank mature and cycle. don't chase numbers. radical approach i know.

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Kindanewtothis
13 minutes ago, rough eye said:

i never dosed anything, never used any "phosphate remover" or similar products. don't try to kill the algae, cyano or pods. let things live and grow. let the tank mature and cycle. don't chase numbers. radical approach i know.

Yeah but I know there are dinos too in the 10g and if low nutrients helps them to take over I want nitrate to be higher than 2. Does this makes sens to anyone?

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I guess I'm in the hybrid camp.  I've tried the leave dinos alone route before, and they took over.  And certainly, trying to kill them also doesn't always work out very well.  However, I do feel that removal of some sort is a plus (whether it's siphoning and returning the water, micron filtration, or even UV).  And I certainly believe that supporting life with inorganic nutrients is helpful.  I also consider seeding beneficial life to be very helpful.

 

People will post various successes and failures.  What I keep getting out of these is we should support competition.

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33 minutes ago, Kindanewtothis said:

Yeah but I know there are dinos too in the 10g and if low nutrients helps them to take over I want nitrate to be higher than 2. Does this makes sens ti anyone?

here's something you may not know, that may benefit you: ANY HEALTHY tank has dinos in it. dinos are not bad, they're good. if you let the phyto and pods and algae (and even cyano) do their job the dinos won't be the prevalent lifeforms and balance can be achieved. but you have to let things live and grow. 

 

same as with the human digestive system; all have bacteria in them. people take antibiotics to remove bacteria and then they need to take yogurt to replenish the bacteria. better to stop killing things and trying to balance things with numbers.

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There's definitely many things to be said for not chasing numbers, but we have to look at the numbers a little. Dinos are natural, but they can still multiply to a level that's harmful to the tank. There's human gut bacteria that do that, too. 

 

In general, you don't want nutrients to be low, particularly not in a new tank that hasn't yet matured. If nutrients are low but not zero, the reasonable thing to do is just stop water changes until it's up, and look at feeding to see if the tank's inhabitants would benefit from more. So, yes, you should probably try to get the nitrate higher than 2, but not by doing anything other than avoiding water changes. It's not just for the dinos, either- your beneficial algae needs food, and your corals need food. 

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Kindanewtothis
6 hours ago, Tired said:

the reasonable thing to do is just stop water changes until it's up

If I don't do water change to let the nitrate raise, what do I do about my 0.50 phosphate ?

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Kindanewtothis
20 hours ago, seabass said:

I'd stick to a regular water change schedule for the 10 gallon tank

 

6 hours ago, Tired said:

the reasonable thing to do is just stop water changes

Now what? 😉

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I believe Tired was referring to the 50 gallon, and I was referring to the 10 gallon tank.  With no signs of dinos in the ten gallon, I don't see the need to stop water changes (which are part of normal maintenance).  However, no water changes for your 50 gallon tank.

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Kindanewtothis
2 minutes ago, seabass said:

I believe Tired was referring to the 50 gallon, and I was referring to the 10 gallon tank.  With no signs of dinos in the ten gallon, I don't see the need to stop water changes (which are part of normal maintenance).  However, no water changes for your 50 gallon tank.

This is all confusing, I should stop talking about the 10g or start another journal. My fault.

 

@Tired the tank with low nutrients (nitrate 2) in my 10g, not my dino invested 50g. I saw dinos in the 10g weeks ago and it went away. I understand that dinos are present even in healthy tanks but I don't want them to come back in the 10g (enough problems with the 50g). I said I was aiming for 4 regarding nitrate in the 10g and I understand that you are not for aiming numbers. The phosphate in 0.51 in the 10g, shouldn't I want to reduce it by regular water change? But if I do so, won't my nitrates be even lower. So you talked about not doing water change so the nitrates get higher, now I'm lost.

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40 minutes ago, Kindanewtothis said:

I should stop talking about the 10g or start another journal.

Most people start a new journal.  Although it's not that uncommon to talk about other tanks which aren't their main focus.  Your call.

 

40 minutes ago, Kindanewtothis said:

This is all confusing

You'll also find that people's experiences, methods, and advice will differ (sometimes dramatically).  Luckily, most people posting in this thread are basically on the same page.  Although there are often many different ways to do the same thing in reef keeping.  It can be very confusing at first.

 

Plus, like treatments for dinos, we don't have all the information; and there is still some speculation, experimentation, anecdotal evidence, as well as trial and error.  Various treatment methods have often been used simultaneously and have resulted in various degrees of success.  Some of which might be due to the passage of time and not the treatment itself.  Some of the methods have short term success and we don't necessarily know what the long term results were.  Finally, there are numerous strains of dinos, tank conditions can rarely be exactly duplicated, and treatment protocols are sometimes difficult to replicate exactly (for example, the method of siphoning dinos, filtering the water, and returning the water to the tank).

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this is why i said don't chase numbers. if you've been alternately using phosgard (or similar) to reduce phosphate, meanwhile dosing to bring things up, you should stop. people grow macro algae in tanks as a way to export nutrients. when algae grows in the tank the same thing will happen, but at a slower, more natural rate. the rapid fluctuations from adding chemicals, or using chemicals to remove things can't be good. 

 

you also need to give those pods a chance to feed and grow. people keep phosphates down as a way to control algae growth. this is certainly not a problem in either of your tanks. more the opposite.

 

my tank is about 8 months old. at a year old i hope it to be mature. but i don't have any SPS corals (and neither do you), so nutrient levels aren't so critical.

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Kindanewtothis
On 7/22/2021 at 5:14 PM, Kindanewtothis said:

I meant 2 days before it's all dirty again.

At least now there is green on the tank walls.

 

Dinos are accumulating at the surface.

20210724_100640.jpg

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20210724_100612.jpg

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6 minutes ago, Kindanewtothis said:

At least now there is green on the tank walls.  Dinos are accumulating at the surface.

That's the stage my tanks are at too.  I consider that progress.  To remove it, I'm taking a plastic measuring cup and slowly submerging it (open side up, with one side slightly lower) so that surface water overflows into the cup.  You can filter this water and return it like you are doing with water you are siphoning out.

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Kindanewtothis
1 hour ago, seabass said:

That's the stage my tanks are at too.  I consider that progress

Do you have dinos all over the sandbed too?

 

Edit: how is that progress? Isn't it because the dinos are all over the place? Or because I blow them off the rocks?

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The green is the progress. That's competition for the dinos. You want to see a lot of algae, and I mean a lot. 

 

When I said to stop doing water changes on the tank with low nutrients, I did mean the 10gal, yes. Low nutrients are generally bad. 

 

High phosphate probably isn't a concern. Unless the corals are visibly distressed, leave it alone. Fluctuating parameters are bad for everything in the tank. Just let it be, and as the algae grows, it'll use that phosphate up.

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1 hour ago, Kindanewtothis said:

Do you have dinos all over the sandbed too?

 

Edit: how is that progress? Isn't it because the dinos are all over the place? Or because I blow them off the rocks?

As Tired stated, green algae is progress.  I did have dinos covering the sand bed.  In one tank, I removed the sand bed completely.  I've also been dosing silicate, so the other tank (with the sand bed) is covered with diatoms (which, again, I'd much rather have than dinos).

 

I am getting the same film on the water surface as you are.  I'll have to take a sample to examine under my microscope.

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  • Kindanewtothis changed the title to Kinda's Large Tank Adventure (LTA)

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