Yeah my rock had an extra couple of days to cook so I know what smell you are referring to. I scrubbed and rinsed (w/ salt water) in the garage to keep the stench outside.
Work with what you understand your coral needs are for your system first. In my systems, your residual nutrient levels aren't quite sufficient but mine are accustomed to excess levels. Yours may not be.R2R Friends, I could really use some help as I'm at wits end. To recap briefly, I was battling dinos for the first time in years. Didn't confirm the exact type by microscope, but it was brown snot with bubbles that stayed in the same general places on my rocks. I did a dirty tank method (no water changes, no skim collection). The brown snot went away after 4 weeks, but the bubbles didn't. I still haven't been doing any water changes (6 weeks now), but my skimmer has been collecting again for the past couple weeks. UV and carbon have both been going the whole time. I've struggled to keep my nitrate up at 2.5ppm and my PO4 at 0.02 despite no water changes and only a tiny ball of chaeto in my fuge---and that's dying anyway. Now it looks like I also have a cyano outbreak plus I have a whole bunch of brownish fuzz algae all over my rocks. My corals are losing color, my bubble tip anemone looks stressed (half retracted), my Elegance coral is also retracted and stressed, my sea apple hasn't extended its feeders in several days---and I feel like my whole tank is just going to crap.
I feel like I need to go back to doing water changes, but I'm afraid this will make my dinos worse. I'm also unclear if I need to do regular water changes anymore (other than removing about a gallon of skimmate a week) since I'm dosing Aquaforest's 3-component bundle and all my water parameters look great by Triton ICP-OES testing.
I'm attaching some pictures and would love to know if you think I still have dinos and if you think I'm doing something wrong here. I spent years with a relatively simple tank setup and trying to keep my nutrients at zero since I didn't have much coral. Now that I'm trying to keep more SPS and some detectable nutrients, I've got lots of problems.
My tank equipment can be found in my signature link. My parameters are all solid and stable (80F, 1.026SG, pH 7.9 - 8.2, 8.5 dKH, 450ppm Ca, 1330pm Mg, 2.5ppm NO3, 0.02ppm PO4, and all others by recent Triton Labs ICP-OES looked fine).
Thanks for your help
Ive had good luck with LIVEROCKNREEF "Home of da famous Florida Primo Deco Live Rock". Bill, the manager der buried dem rocks himself over 20 years ago da last time da bears won a superbowl.
Thanks @ReefMan692! I love the Karate Kid reference! One of the greatest cheesy movies of all time! I appreciate your advice and you sharing your own experience. I don't think I have GHA. The fuzz on the rocks is just a film like algae that historically appears anytime my phosphate level becomes detectable. However, I think you're right in that my peak phosphate level is likely higher than 0.02ppm (which is probably best thought of as the residual level I guess) and that consumption by the corals and algae are masking the peak level. (Same with nitrate.). I've been dosing both Seachem Flourish Nitrogen and Phosphorus a couple times a week to keep the levels of 2.5 and 0.02 ppm...but I probably need to start thinking about these target levels differently in my tank. If I think about them as residual levels and use them (and the appearance of the film algae and the health of my corals) as a way to extrapolate what my peak levels are (impossible to figure out of course given all the variables, but I'll assume that in my tank peak levels equal 3X residual levels---at least at current coral/algae levels), that should help me dial-in what I'm doing about supplementation (and feeding). Here's my immediate plan:
My Dinos are back, killing everything, blanketing everything. I never did a microscope check before, but here it is. Can someone help me identify and give me a good plan of attack?
In the past I tried increasing PO4/NO3 for weeks, and it just made the dinos worse. The way I "won" temporarily was I used DinoX and then started dosing NoPox and built up so much bacteria that nothing could basically live. Dinos were kept to a minimum. Then I stopped dosing NoPox for over a year and there were no issues, but then I started up my chaeto in my algae reactor and started dosing Brightwell Chaetogro. While my chaeto is growing, the dinos came back as well.
Here are the photos with a video as well:
My Microscope (a cheapo kids one I think)
Best I could do with the microscope. It was shakey AF:
A video of me trying to hold still as possible. This microscope doesn't have a way to keep things still, it's plastic and just has a single layer that I blooped some dinos onto. It's a drop of water that wiggles like a ****. Sorry.
Agree ostreopsis. What size is your tank? Edit, I see it’s a 170, so about 45 gallons ish. The 8 watt UV is probably undersized but worth a shot. You will need to run it to and from display tank temporarily to have any chance though. Ideally, you would have at least 1 watt UV per every 3 gallons. So about 15 watts or more.
I'm really encouraged by your success although I'm still very much struggling with them. My dirty tank method led to a nuisance algae explosion almost overnight one night this week and I still can't get rid of the dinos---despite a powerful UV with rapid tank turnover. I'm also dosing phyto daily and my system is teeming with copepods despite having 5 wrasses. I decided to abandon the dirty tank approach and start an aggressive approach. We'll see how it goes after a couple weeks. Anyway, congrats on your success and enjoy your clean tank!
I don't recall which dino you have, but hopefully one that likes to swim at night. If so -- and the UV isn't cutting it -- I would highly recommend VERY SLOW flow through the unit. Dinos are not algae, they are not bacteria nor protozoa. They are armored protists. They can handle some UV exposure just fine. You want to broil these things not tan them.
Thanks ScottB! I’m waiting on another microscope for ID bc the first one I ordered was a useless piece of . I have a Pentair 50 watt Smart HO UV for my system (300G net water volume) which is designed for saltwater systems up to 330G net volume. I have it on a closed loop system in my sump fed by a dedicated 1800gph pump with a ball valve for flow control. Changing plumbing to have UV direct inline with DT isn’t an option for me, but I’ve got 3X/hr system volume turnover going through my sump so I think I’m ok on that front. For uV flow, I’ve got it tuned high flow for bacteria and algae currently. I’ll take your advice and lower flow to nuke things to a crisp. Will report back in a few days. Thx!
