seabass Posted February 25, 2023 Share Posted February 25, 2023 I've learned that there isn't one right way to do anything in a reef tank. However, my thought is that if you are sure about dinos, then I'd remove the GFO for now. The consensus about phosphate has changed dramatically. Now 0.10 ppm doesn't raise much concern. Even 0.20 doesn't sound too critical. Currently, we seem to talk more about minimums than maximums. And when fighting dinos, we often see people upping their minimum recommendations. Higher nutrient levels seem to support corals and even lower life forms which might help to compete with dinos. Sure, that also means supporting unwanted forms of algae, but that seems to be an unavoidable necessity. You'll need to diligently keep up your manual algae removal so that it doesn't take over your tank. I have fought and beat dinos before, but I wouldn't consider myself an expert. For some forms, a UV sterilizer and/or micron polishing filter in the display can help too. 2 1 Quote Link to comment
spectra Posted February 25, 2023 Share Posted February 25, 2023 I like a dirty tank........... I think the best growth I ever saw was in my temporary 40 breeder I set up in my garage when building my 100....... I crammed all sorts of fish and corals in that thing and did not test once just kept up on water changes and kept on feeding..... 29 gallon simple sump crammed with rocks along with sand and plants kind of like a refugium...... loved the look when I took it down and hate to say it but could never grow stuff that good again.......... 4 Quote Link to comment
HarryPotter Posted February 25, 2023 Share Posted February 25, 2023 I’ve never tested nutrients, I wonder if it would improve things if I kept them more stable. 2 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted February 25, 2023 Author Share Posted February 25, 2023 20 minutes ago, HarryPotter said: I’ve never tested nutrients, I wonder if it would improve things if I kept them more stable. I never really have either, but then again this is my first time with a big tank and out of my ~10 or so new setups/ tank moves, this is my first time experiencing dinos. All my Nanos I just did water changes and fed "heavy" so if anything, I had excess nutrients. In this tank, I assumed I was feeding heavy but based on my test results after nearly trippling my feeding, I was feeding light. Hell, I am using the same exact filtration on this 125 as I was on my rsr170, so I don't think I'm necessarily over cleaning... I guess I just wasn't feeding enough. 2 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted February 26, 2023 Author Share Posted February 26, 2023 I didn't get a chance to post yesterday with results but just tested this morning. Yesterday was pellets 3x through out the day and a dose of reef roads, fish roe and rods food plus nori. Test results today Alk-8.0 Nitrate-0.3 Phosphate -.135. I'm not sure why this jumped up so much with the reactor still running, but I guess it works in my benefit anyway. I am giving up on feeding to the max and instead am going to start dosing ESV b-ionic nitrate I am going to start with half of the recomended dose and take it from there. 1 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted February 27, 2023 Author Share Posted February 27, 2023 Fed pellets 3 times again today, dosed 40 ml of nitrate, fed my mixture of frozen/roids and raised temperature 1 degree from 79 to 80. Scrubbed the glass and will hopefully have the time to vacuum the sandbed into filter socks. Quote Link to comment
FISHnChix Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 On 2/25/2023 at 8:23 AM, spectra said: like a dirty tank........... I think the best growth I ever saw was in my temporary 40 breeder I set up in my garage when building my 100... I don't know how much of it is a dirty tank. Yes nutrients is good but I think the dirty tank comes from being lazy. Lazy also equals stability imo . 🤷♂️. No swings when you don't mess with shit daily/weekly Quote Link to comment
FISHnChix Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 I also feel with a sps tank there is a lot of luck and variables. Some setups work and some don't. What is it? The rock/dosing/lights/tank size/ tank maturity/flow/coral choice or region they come from/black magic?? I would pick a mentor and follow suit . Someone who has had luck multiple times and failures . The guy I think of who has nailed sps and started a new tank and struggled with a setup but ended up righting the ship is MittenKitten. Just my 2 cents 1 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted February 27, 2023 Author Share Posted February 27, 2023 I'm not having bad luck, just a small Dino infiltration I am trying to keep at bay. Hell, first pic is from February 12, other is just a few seconds ago. Not bad acro growth for less than 2 weeks of time. 3 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted February 27, 2023 Author Share Posted February 27, 2023 I also just realized I have no clean socks left, so I hand scrubbed them all and threw them in the washer with some distilled vinegar. I do 2 cycles on the socks and let them dry then throw them right back in, so I will be running sockless till tomorrow morning and then in the pm will start a thorough vacuuming of the sand bed. 1 Quote Link to comment
mitten_reef Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 10 hours ago, FISHnChix said: I also feel with a sps tank there is a lot of luck and variables. Some setups work and some don't. What is it? The rock/dosing/lights/tank size/ tank maturity/flow/coral choice or region they come from/black magic?? I would pick a mentor and follow suit . Someone who has had luck multiple times and failures . The guy I think of who has nailed sps and started a new tank and struggled with a setup but ended up righting the ship is MittenKitten. Just my 2 cents Thanks for the nice words, haha. I’m just a stubborn sob, and don’t wanna quit the sticks. Patience is the absolute common denominator across my tanks. Second is keeping things simple and finding a routine that works for me. dino is pretty normal with a new tank about this age, sounds like you’ve got a plan to deal with it. I usually just up my feeding and manual removal thru wc. I know it may sound counterproductive to some. but if you dislodge them from surfaces, you want to suck all the free floating dino out from the water column. Else they’ll just land somewhere and restart. I’ve used peroxide, with no ill effect. To help with curbing dino, by dosing it at night - the theory is it can kills free-floating dino, just not when they clump together into the snot. 1 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted March 3, 2023 Author Share Posted March 3, 2023 Been sick for a while. Didn't really have the energy to test but kind of just kept eyeballing my doses and feedings kept up. What I've noticed is that at this time, it is pointless to even try keeping the glass clean. Chaeto and ulva in the sump is such a dark forest green that it never was before. I did not dose nitrates yesterday as I fell asleep before the time I usually would do it. So left over from the previous days dose, nitrates are .3. Phosphate- .098 alkalinity was 7.6. Huge drop in alk. All coral seem to be happy with exception to the gorgonions and rfa's still. Where I vacuumed the dinos out, they stayed a way for a while but seem to be creeping back up. Need to get a siphon going with a smaller tube so I don't take as much sand out this time. As a cool side note, the vlamingi tang is now so used to my hand being in the tank that it will basically let me pet him/her when I come up to it. Temperature has been steady at 80 degrees and I will try raising it to 81 tonight to see how that helps. 2 Quote Link to comment
ml86743 Posted March 3, 2023 Share Posted March 3, 2023 On 2/26/2023 at 10:46 PM, patback said: I'm not having bad luck, just a small Dino infiltration I am trying to keep at bay. Hell, first pic is from February 12, other is just a few seconds ago. Not bad acro growth for less than 2 weeks of time. Awesome growth shot - When I was dealing with dinos and dosing nutrients HEAVY I also saw tremendous growth from a few different corals. When I started to cut back and trying to target very specific nutrient levels things started to look out of whack within days...the predicaments of reefing.. 1 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted March 5, 2023 Author Share Posted March 5, 2023 On 3/3/2023 at 11:00 AM, ml86743 said: Awesome growth shot - When I was dealing with dinos and dosing nutrients HEAVY I also saw tremendous growth from a few different corals. When I started to cut back and trying to target very specific nutrient levels things started to look out of whack within days...the predicaments of reefing.. I haven't tested yet today but it's worth a mention. Ive started dosing nitrates twice a day on top of feedings instead of once. I would say slightly less "undesireable" coverage than usual. It is now only 50% Dino and the other 50 is made up of cyano( or atleast the cyano is covering over dinos). I'll take the lesser of two evils honestly. Gonna keep on chugging along with what I'm doing and hope that the cyano and refugium algaes take over then I can just try to balance everything out. 1 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted March 5, 2023 Author Share Posted March 5, 2023 Erins tank also had a babyboom of limpets, so I threw a half dozen or so into the tank and think I'm seeing most of them. Gonna keep siphoning off asterina and limpets every few days from her supply to help bolster up my clean up crew. 2 Quote Link to comment
seabass Posted March 5, 2023 Share Posted March 5, 2023 The cyano is probably due to excess organics (not nutrients). It might indicate you could use a little tweak in feeding, more maintenance, or more flow. But I'm with you, I'd take cyano over dinos every time. 1 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted March 6, 2023 Author Share Posted March 6, 2023 Big mile stone. Nitrates are at an all time high of 3. Phosphates .208. Alkalinity 8.0. I mean, either what I had looked and acted exactly like dinos but wasnt, or I had the quickest battle ever. At the end of today, I'd say 90% is gone. Just a few of the base rocks have a spot here and there and the overflow walls still have a few stringy strands clinging around. One acro is still getting it all caught up on its branches. Temperature is at 82* (normally kept at 78) 2 Quote Link to comment
patback Posted March 6, 2023 Author Share Posted March 6, 2023 This is also super ####ing cool, or icky depending on who you ask. By my estimation, 50-75 pods per square inch of rock on average. Really hard to get a pic without breaking out a tripod. I actually want to use a real camera, or I'm even seeing that my phone now has a raw setting but it isn't charged enough to use it. Soooooo many bugs. 5 Quote Link to comment
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