Came home to major dino outbreak.

[W1ll]

The only snail that survived when I had dino outbreak was my Strombus, but that was because I was primarily feeding him nori as I really didn't want to lose it.

[justinkdenny]

On 9/24/2021 at 3:06 PM, Clown79 said:

Dino's become an issue when there is an imbalance in the system.

Removing the rocks and scrubbing them may possibly make your problem worse.

 

The worst thing one can do is over clean with a dino outbreak.

 

Everything at this stage is about not cleaning, encouraging competing algeas and introducing biodiversity.

this☝️

[justinkdenny]

19 hours ago, Clown79 said:

I had ostreopsis, the snails that survived were nasaurius.

 

I had to replenish the rest once dino was gone.

I had amphidinium and I also lost snails.

[DevilDuck]

Phosphates: 0.09 ppm This was 0.19 ppm on Sunday, the tank and the dinos are sucking down .05 ppm of Phosphate a day. I will run through an entire bottle of Brightwell NeoPhos in a couple of week at this rate. I will need to switch powdered Potassium Phosphate to keep up with demand.

 

Nitrates: 25 ppm Still steady

Silica: increased to 25 drops of SpongeExcel daily

 

I lowered the tank temp to 82F since I'm seeing some coral not opening fully.

 

Pods and phytoplankton order will be in today. I'll add them into the tank tonight and turn off UV for a couple of days.

[mcarroll]

FYI, po4 needs to be >0.10 ppm to have the intended effects...so your treatment may actually have been having a NEGATIVE effect on the tank UNTIL po4 caught up with your nitrate dosing.

 

I DO NOT RECOMMEND DOING IT THAT WAY (raising nitrates before phosphates are already up) just for the record...can be very hard on corals in addition to "goosing" the dino bloom's effect.

 

Dosing silica is very unlikely to hurt anything, but it's not very likely to help either.  Some folks use it – usually for amphidinium – but it's considered quite experimental compared with all the other "treatment" options that can be recommended.  (I would probably discontinue it after this bottle.)

 

 

You can see an interesting story in these two charts.....

 

Phosphates spiked in July...

...Nitrates spiked a couple weeks later...

...creating a growth spike that leads, over the next couple of weeks, to the phosphate crash around September 1st...

...which seems to have led to some (predictable) die-off and decay since nitrates started climbing after that.

 

That's the way dino blooms are born.  Most of them are REALLY inefficient at photosynthesis AND at nutrient uptake...so variations (eg. increases in light or "nutrient outages") can easily set them off to blooming.

 

Blooming is a great way for Dino's to gain nutrients and prevent starvation BTW...they use toxins to kill whatever tries to eat them, turning them into bacteria food.  Voila!  Available nutrients!

 

This is also one of the main reasons you need all that NeoPhos you're going through – dino shells are a very complex carbon source whose breakdown promotes MASSIVE bacterial action....which is what drives the tank's nutrient levels from "low" to "really, really zero".  

 

Your phosphate doses are going, at first, almost exclusively, to those bacteria breaking down dino shells from the old bloom.  Once you've filled that need (and once the bloom dies down), you won't have to dose phosphates much if at all.

 

I would strongly suggest reading at least the first post (including linked material) on my Dino-mega-thread (approaching 11,000 posts) as you proceed with your bloom.   Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?   Post questions/comments/whatever here, of course!  🙂

 

P.S.   If you want to filter them out of the water, eg. during siphoning, use something closer to 1µ filter media.....something < 25µ for sure.  100+ µ filter media isn't going to trap anything but the largest snot balls – almost no cells from the water.

[DevilDuck]

1 hour ago, mcarroll said:

FYI, po4 needs to be >0.10 ppm to have the intended effects...so your treatment may actually have been having a NEGATIVE effect on the tank UNTIL po4 caught up with your nitrate dosing.

 

I DO NOT RECOMMEND DOING IT THAT WAY (raising nitrates before phosphates are already up) just for the record...can be very hard on corals in addition to "goosing" the dino bloom's effect.

 

Dosing silica is very unlikely to hurt anything, but it's not very likely to help either.  Some folks use it – usually for amphidinium – but it's considered quite experimental compared with all the other "treatment" options that can be recommended.  (I would probably discontinue it after this bottle.)

 

 

You can see an interesting story in these two charts.....

 

Phosphates spiked in July...

...Nitrates spiked a couple weeks later...

...creating a growth spike that leads, over the next couple of weeks, to the phosphate crash around September 1st...

...which seems to have led to some (predictable) die-off and decay since nitrates started climbing after that.

 

That's the way dino blooms are born.  Most of them are REALLY inefficient at photosynthesis AND at nutrient uptake...so variations (eg. increases in light or "nutrient outages") can easily set them off to blooming.

 

Blooming is a great way for Dino's to gain nutrients and prevent starvation BTW...they use toxins to kill whatever tries to eat them, turning them into bacteria food.  Voila!  Available nutrients!

 

This is also one of the main reasons you need all that NeoPhos you're going through – dino shells are a very complex carbon source whose breakdown promotes MASSIVE bacterial action....which is what drives the tank's nutrient levels from "low" to "really, really zero".  

 

Your phosphate doses are going, at first, almost exclusively, to those bacteria breaking down dino shells from the old bloom.  Once you've filled that need (and once the bloom dies down), you won't have to dose phosphates much if at all.

 

I would strongly suggest reading at least the first post (including linked material) on my Dino-mega-thread (approaching 11,000 posts) as you proceed with your bloom.   Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?   Post questions/comments/whatever here, of course!  🙂

 

P.S.   If you want to filter them out of the water, eg. during siphoning, use something closer to 1µ filter media.....something < 25µ for sure.  100+ µ filter media isn't going to trap anything but the largest snot balls – almost no cells from the water.

Thanks @mcarroll! I was hoping you would chime in! 

 

I have scanned the R2R Mega-thread, it's 550 posts, so I didn't read them all. I will re-read the first page and the linked info.

As you suggested, I will increase PO4 until its > 0.10 ppm

 

As of yesterday I've added a couple of bottles of copepods and started dosing live phyto.

 

 

 

[Kindanewtothis]

On 9/28/2021 at 11:05 AM, justinkdenny said:

I had amphidinium and I also lost snails.

I guess I've been lucky, I had (and I suppose they are still somewhere in my tank) small cell amphidiniums and I only lost one mexican turbo and I'm not sure it was even related.

[DevilDuck]

Updated:

 

Google Sheets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iN3Rf4lT3LPh5AbnffVxuFtZTiW67okqIgRISsXmkKk/edit?usp=sharing

 

Phosphates: 0.23 ppm - Will pause dosing for now

Nitrates: 25 ppm - no dosing for the last week, consumption seems to have slowed

Silica: 30 drops

 

Yesterday night I added 3 bottles of copepods (2 Display / 1 Refugium)

Poured in a some live phyto. I didn't measure, approx 30-40ml

UV has been off to allow phyto and pods to settle

 

[mcarroll]

23 hours ago, DevilDuck said:

Phosphates: 0.23 ppm - Will pause dosing for now

Nicely done. 👍😉  Unless you are still noticing an immediate drop in ppm after dosing (re-test 20+ min after dosing; but I bet you're past that) it shouldn't take much to maintain >0.10 ppm from here on out.  Stop dosing when it ceases to trend toward zero....which could take while to happen, or not.

 

23 hours ago, DevilDuck said:

Nitrates: 25 ppm - no dosing for the last week, consumption seems to have slowed

A good sign re:above.  Likely po4 will follow the same trend.

 

Any noticeable change in the bloom from day to day or has it been more or less consistent to your eyeballs?

[DevilDuck]

Phosphates: 0.07 ppm - Wow this was 0.23 ppm yesterday! 0.16 ppm consumed in a day! Kind of scary how fast and how much PO4 I'm dosing with. 

 

Brightwell NeoPhos calculation is <tank volume in gallons> x <amount of PO4 rise in PPM> x 3.758 = <amount to does in ml>

For my tank its 70 x .04 x 3.758 = 10.5224 ml. 0.04 ppm is the max Brightwell recommends you increase per day. In this case, I break the dosing up to about 11ml, twice a day.

 

Nitrates: 25 ppm -  no change

 

 

 

 

[Murphs_Reef]

8 minutes ago, DevilDuck said:

Phosphates: 0.07 ppm - Wow this was 0.23 ppm yesterday! 0.16 ppm consumed in a day! Kind of scary how fast and how much PO4 I'm dosing with. 

 

Brightwell NeoPhos calculation is <tank volume in gallons> x <amount of PO4 rise in PPM> x 3.758 = <amount to does in ml>

For my tank its 70 x .04 x 3.758 = 10.5224 ml. 0.04 ppm is the max Brightwell recommends you increase per day. In this case, I break the dosing up to about 11ml, twice a day.

 

Nitrates: 25 ppm -  no change

 

 

 

 

Oh yeah I have to dose loads.. I am 0.05 in the evening then hanna blinking 0.00 in the morning.. nutrients uptake is a thing and hungry tanks eat it all up..

I managed to keep up to 0.1 for a few days but worked a long day and never fed for JUST ONE DAY and it dropped to undetectable in less than 24hrs.. some people can't get them down enough to keep algae at bay... I can't keep it high enough to relax 

[Clown79]

I dosed phyto 2 times a week which kept my phos up before that, it was constant struggle.

[DevilDuck]

3 hours ago, Murphych said:

Oh yeah I have to dose loads.. I am 0.05 in the evening then hanna blinking 0.00 in the morning.. nutrients uptake is a thing and hungry tanks eat it all up..

I managed to keep up to 0.1 for a few days but worked a long day and never fed for JUST ONE DAY and it dropped to undetectable in less than 24hrs.. some people can't get them down enough to keep algae at bay... I can't keep it high enough to relax 

 

18 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

I dosed phyto 2 times a week which kept my phos up before that, it was constant struggle.

 

Thanks, for a second I thought there was something wrong with the Hanna tester. I've been feeding heavily twice a day, in the morning flake and pellets and in the evening frozen food.

Now, I think I'll need to dose twice a day also.

 

 

[Jakesaw]

1 hour ago, Clown79 said:

I dosed phyto 2 times a week which kept my phos up before that, it was constant struggle.

twice a week only.  Interesting.  I started last week dosing a capful daily on recommendation for local coral store. 

 

So many moving parts in this hobby.  Sometimes it feels mindboggling finding the path that works best.

[Kindanewtothis]

8 hours ago, Jakesaw said:

twice a week only.  Interesting.  I started last week dosing a capful daily on recommendation for local coral store. 

 

So many moving parts in this hobby.  Sometimes it feels mindboggling finding the path that works best.

I might be overdosing phyto in that case... I dose way more than a cap daily.

[Clown79]

12 hours ago, Jakesaw said:

twice a week only.  Interesting.  I started last week dosing a capful daily on recommendation for local coral store. 

 

So many moving parts in this hobby.  Sometimes it feels mindboggling finding the path that works best.

It depends on the product you use.

 

I started every other day when i had dino but once they were gone i cut back.

 

The product i used instructions were every other day. 

 

If i hadn't cut back my phos levels would have stayed higher than 0.25

[Jakesaw]

4 hours ago, Kindanewtothis said:

I might be overdosing phyto in that case... I dose way more than a cap daily.

Mine is only a 10 gallon - and the cap is more like a gatorade cap vs a seachem chemical cap.  The stuff I am using is bright green liquid, came in a clear bottle they could be making at the coral store.  No branding.  It was sealed though. 

 

From what I read online, the phyto should be good for a month in the fridge.  

[Kindanewtothis]

3 minutes ago, Jakesaw said:

Mine is only a 10 gallon - and the cap is more like a gatorade cap vs a seachem chemical cap.  The stuff I am using is bright green liquid, came in a clear bottle they could be making at the coral store.  No branding.  It was sealed though. 

 

From what I read online, the phyto should be good for a month in the fridge.  

For 50g, I use 5ml of Phyto-Feast live every other day since I have a lot on hand (it's concentrated) and the other day I use my own culture about 25ml.

[DevilDuck]

Dosed twice today and now phosphates are measuring 0.55 ppm. Hard to narrow down consumption since it changes so drastically right now 

 

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

 

 

[DevilDuck]

My phosphate consumption is coming down to about 0.10 ppm a day. I'll continue dosing according to this guideline

 

10/2/2021	0.55 ppm
10/3/2021	0.65 ppm
10/5/2021	0.39 ppm

 

I'm alternating dosing MB7 and two different species of phyto.

 

I cleaned the glass after letting it go for week. It was covered in dinos and pods.

 

 

The sand bed is still covered for the most part in dino snot an hour or two after the lights come on.

I lowered the lighting period and levels, which caused my bubble tip anemone to start wondering again.

At one point it wandered onto the sand bed. I tried to place it into the glass container, but I eventually wandered back up onto the rock.

 

I am starting to see some changes from the increased nutrients. The back wall and my UV sterilizer is now covered in green hair algae. There is what I think is bright red cyanobacteria starting to form along with the dinos on the sand and the lower portion of the glass.

 

 

In a moment of weakness, I picked up a bottle of Dino X while I was at the lfs. I'm considering dosing it tomorrow to see if it will speed up this tank's recovery.

 

 

[Murphs_Reef]

Mate I too would be tempted with the DinoX at this point, but if cyano and GHA are present... The tide is turning, tough it out dude!! 

[Kindanewtothis]

7 hours ago, DevilDuck said:

In a moment of weakness, I picked up a bottle of Dino X while I was at the lfs. I'm considering dosing it tomorrow to see if it will speed up this tank's recovery.

Unpopular opinion: I'm still happy I used Dino-X and would do it again. I had cyano too but when I looked under the microscope it was full of dinos. Your call.

[Kindanewtothis]

On 10/5/2021 at 11:17 PM, DevilDuck said:

a moment of weakness, I picked up a bottle of Dino X while I was at the lfs. I'm considering dosing it tomorrow to see if it will speed up this tank's recovery

Did you find the 9 pages instructions on dino-x online?

 

Read the instructions carefully. Establish how much water you really have in your tank (to not overdose).

 

Let us know !

Edited October 7, 2021 by Kindanewtothis

[DevilDuck]

2 hours ago, Kindanewtothis said:

Did you find the 9 pages instructions on dino-x online?

 

Read the instructions carefully. Establish how much water you really in your tank (to not overdose).

 

Let us know !

No, do you have a link? Thanks for the heads up.

[Kindanewtothis]

14 minutes ago, DevilDuck said:

No, do you have a link? Thanks for the heads up.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.faunamarin.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FM_HTU_DINO_X_NEU_Anwendungshinweise_EN_220421.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj4jYH2u7jzAhV8lnIEHarbDgMQFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw05iDWr7bXiHlfc3gmcmEDz