Increasing po4

[Carnthetiges]

Looking for some advice on bumping my po4.

I've got what appears to be Amphidinium dinos after a protracted period of low nutrients.

NO3 has been raised via additional feeding/livestock to approx 20, though PO4 still sitting very low (salifert test hard to get an exact reading but it's clear).

 

Thoughts on the best way to get this up?

I'm thinking dosing seachem flourish phos as opposed to say introducing reef roids into the feed schedule.

 

Cheers

[mcarroll]

2 hours ago, Carnthetiges said:

I'm thinking dosing seachem flourish phos

This.

 

How are you cleaning the tank and filtering the water currently?

[Carnthetiges]

Ive cut back on water changes thanks to the dinos, 10% every month or so to keep no3 in check.

Periodically run some water through a sock to catch any floaters.

 

Its a 15g AIO and theres a bit of algae growth in filter that ive left alone.

Otherwise filter is floss (swapped out every couple of days) for mechanical and some bioballs (washed every water change) and matrix for biological.

 

 

[mcarroll]

I'd considering discontinuing the floss, bioballs and matrix.  Can you post a pic of your tank?

 

If you want to filter dino's out of the water (dubious proposition if you're dealing with amphidinium, which tend to keep to the substrate) then make sure your filter sock has a micron rating of ≤25µ.  Ideally ≤10µ.  A rating of 100 or more isn't going to catch anything but the biggest snotty hunks.

 

Can you try the trick of growing some chaeto on the substrate where the dino's are worst?  The hope, more or less, is that the dino's move into the chaeto (algae are probably their preferred habitat, and they seem to LOVE chaeto) and then (with hope) you can remove them by taking out the chaeto in a few days.  Read up on the details of what folks have tried before....it's not a sure thing.

[Carnthetiges]

26 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

I'd considering discontinuing the floss, bioballs and matrix.  Can you post a pic of your tank?

Open to it, but what's the reasoning behind it - excess filtration, the live rock in the display should handle it?

The chaeto idea's new to me, pretty sure i can track down a blob at the LFS.

 

Tanks shot below, excuse the blue. It's really just the substrate effected. I stir it up most nights, then add some peroxide when lights are off. By the next night there's a light dusting of brown, if left to itself it looks pretty turgid the following day.

[mcarroll]

Is it just the pic or do you have a pretty significant growth of green hair algae on most of the rocks?  If so, that's a good sign overall.  You corals and fish all look great – that pic could be a postcard!  It's like you posed the fish for the shot.  LOL

 

1 hour ago, Carnthetiges said:

Open to it, but what's the reasoning behind it - excess filtration, the live rock in the display should handle it?

A big part of what happens during a dino bloom is eutrophication...more specifically microbialization...due to an excess of available carbon sources, the whole ecosystem shifts toward bacteria.  Primarily this is because of dead dino cells that need to be broken down.  A dino's exoskeleton (the main leftover after death) is called a theca.  Theca are considered something like a 5000:1 carbon source in terms of the amount of primary nutrients (N & P) that would be needed to break them down.  This is familiar terminology if you've done any composting....newspaper and sawdust, for example, have a carbon ratio in the 100's and are the strongest carbon sources commonly available.  Theca are strong!!!

 

 

You may be interested in reading more details on this stuff....most of the journal articles I sourced this info from are saved and linked on my blog in the Dinoflagellates section.  Virtually all of them have the ordinal PDF available.

 

A good two to start with are these:

• Putting the N in dinoflagellates
• Bacterivory in algae: A survival strategy during nutrient limitation

(For clarity (dino's have been one of the hobby's confusing topics) I try to avoid drawing conclusions from articles where only the abstract is available, but you might find one or two like that if the material is really good and simply not available from another source.)

[seabass]

On 11/23/2021 at 2:10 AM, mcarroll said:

due to an excess of available carbon sources, the whole ecosystem shifts toward bacteria.

Matt, so during a dino bloom do you feel that tanks are still heavy with carbon sources, or that carbon is limited due to the bloom?  Normally people recommend not to dose carbon with dinos, so limiting carbon sounds good.  Although the carbon might be primarily bound in the theca.

 

I was just thinking that if the system shifts towards favoring bacteria (and is still carbon rich), that we could take advantage of that by dosing N and P along with ZEObak.  Maybe helping to consume the available carbon (limiting its use by the dino bloom), and hopefully shifting the ecosystem back to a new balance.

 

@mcarroll your thoughts?

[mcarroll]

Reducing bacterial mass by removing the bio-block was the idea I left out of that half-baked post...I put the links in and thought I was done...forgot where I was in the edit. 🙂 😬🥱

 

So the problem and solution in a dino bloom are multifaceted...

 

Dino's feed on bacterial blooms (see link above) that are caused or are incidental during these eutrophication events.  Eutrophication and dino bloom can become a self-reinforcing cycle....with the dino's killing everything that moves, then the bacteria use up the nutrients that death frees up, then the dino's eat the bacteria...  Rinse, repeat.

 

So...

 

Dosing N and P help the bacteria to work FASTER through all that carbon source that is generated during the bloom while it is producing millions of cells as dino's live and then die.  This ends the eutrophic conditions that preclude almost all other microorganisms from recovering.

 

Also, dosing N and P is to hopefully encourage all new generations of dino's to be "happy" dissolved-nutrient loving algae-epiphytes again.

 

And last but not least, dosing N and P is to foster all the GOOD microalgae and other microorganisms that have to be replaced after the ravage of a dino bloom.  (Anecdotally speaking, bacterial supplements have never been suggested or required during treatment.  It might be an interesting thing to experiment with if you happened to have "extra" tanks that have dino blooms. 😉  (Some people do!!)

[Jakesaw]

On recommendation of my Local coral store, I was advised to feed pellets & Flakes to raise Phosphates, and frozen foods for nitrates

 

I'm trending out of DINO bloom that's receding as I added 2nd fish ( Talbot damsel who eats a ton.  I'm feeding pellets in am and frozen PM ).  Had zero nitrates / zero phosphates for about 9 months.  My nitrates have increased to about 10 now, Phos still not measureable but only a week in.

[mcarroll]

If you have liquid phosphates, this is where I'd begin adding some.

 

Having an excess of nitrates and no phosphates is potentially a very bad state for coral symbiosis and can provoke your dino's to bloom.  Dino's to blame on both counts, funny enough....coral dino's are pissed on the one hand, "pest dino's" are pissed on the other.  (Both would probably like about the same stable conditions)

[Carnthetiges]

Thanks for the kind words, they pout for food anytime i'm near the tank 🙂

 

Yep, in the last week or two the GHA has made a bit of a resurgence - it's a bit of a short mat covering a chunk of the rock work as opposed to the long flowy stuff i've seen on other posts.

Assume that's an indication of things moving in the right direction.

 

I picked up some Flourish Phos today so i'll start dosing lightly over the next week to see if i can get some detectable P.

 

Appreciate the input thus far, sorry if this comes across daft, but i still don't get the relationship of removing some of the filter media to the dino theca?

 

[mcarroll]

I may be taking the wrong approach with my attempts to explain...hopefully this is more clear (and not more opaque)! 😉 

 

When not starving and not pissed off, dino's are "innocent" epiphytic algae – living while clinging to (most than likely) a macro algae and absorbing the nutrients it needs from the water or from its host's exudates.  Not unlike most diatoms we see in algae samples.

 

When dino's are blooming (not attached, ie not epiphytic), they're in the mode of "starving" photosynthetically-speaking – they can't get enough nutrients to make their photosynthetic gear work properly.  (Dino's are, coincidentally, terrible at swimming and fairly terrible at photosynthesis.) 

 

Since dino's can also just eat, more or less like you and I eat (eating is one thing they're really good at), they eat things like bacteria around them rather than starving to death.  

 

In "survival mode" dino's produce (more) toxins – a photosynthetic byproduct, concentrated in their mucus, very similar to palytoxin – and a lot of mucus (also a photosynthetic byproduct) to kill things that try to eat them.  

 

Interestingly, the massive quantity of mucus produced in "survival mode" also serves to protect them from light and from getting washed out to sea during the bloom (remember, terrible swimmers....supposed to be epiphytic), instead they have more ability as part of a "mucus blob" to settle and to stick to a substrate.  (Dino's may produce toxins while fully engaging in photosynthesis for subsistence, but cell count and mucus generation are both much MUCH smaller.  I actually haven't seen too many articles that look at dino's non-blooming behavior....I.e. their "normal" behavior.)

 

So....your bio-block serves as a ripe and massive population of bacteria for any toxic dino's circulating in your system – where we want to discourage that behavior.  Also, bio-media is a strong, but unnecessary and unwanted, competitor for dissolved nitrogen when your tank is in an overall state of lack.  

 

So remove a food source and habitat for toxic dino's AND remove a big competitor from the dissolved nutrient pool.

[Jakesaw]

On 11/24/2021 at 9:15 PM, Carnthetiges said:

Thanks for the kind words, they pout for food anytime i'm near the tank 🙂

 

Yep, in the last week or two the GHA has made a bit of a resurgence - it's a bit of a short mat covering a chunk of the rock work as opposed to the long flowy stuff i've seen on other posts.

 

 

I'm getting my first sight of GHA in my tank too.  Mainly on back walls.  I think it's from increased pellet feedings which started with the introduction of my Talbot's damsel.  

 

Re: MacCarroll's removing nutrients - it's really not an option.  My new fish is a heavy eater to feed his swimming activity.  If he doesn't get his 2 full meals a day, the fish gets a bit nasty swashing sand everywhere.