Dinos?

[Hunter90 HD]

Hello everybody,

I have had my reefer 425xl running about a year now and my corals and fish are thriving.

here are my parameters which remain stable:

salinty - 1.026
KH - 9
Ca - 450
Mg -1280
Ph- 8.2
Ammonia - 0
Nitrate - 2
Phosphate - 0

I have an annoying algae issue which I believe is Dinos as they are on my rockscape and is brown with bubbles which accumulate until the fish disturbers them..

now the fish love it they are grazing all day and I’m not too bothered about the algae on the back of my tank as I have tangs they do spend a lot of their time grazing on rocks and back wall.
It is more that is looks ugly and I would like to sharpen it up a bit..

Recently coralline algae has been growing which is awesome

I do run a refugium with which runs whilst the main DT lights are off to try to balance PH a bit and it does grow hair algae..

haven’t been able to grow chateo I did have some in there at first but it got outpeated by hair algae - in my view it is still extracting nutrients from the water and it has died down in the refugium.
I would say my nutrients are way too low as I have 0 phosphate and I have only got 2 nitrate within the last month it has pretty much remained untraceable all year…
I think I need to raise my nutrient levels but I would of thought doing just that would invite the wrong bacteria to grow…

I am curious as to what everyone’s actions would be here ?

What would you recommend to combat what I think is Dinos!

I do have some turbo snails but I don’t think I got enough probably around 5-8 at the moment.

I did have urchins when the tank was a few months old but they died I assume because the salinity was not stable and had a few issues with stability
I do have shrimp in there and have been keeping those for a few months

Any advice would be great thanks!

 

[Hunter90 HD]

Photo update :

 

[sixty_reefer]

Phosphates at zero is the first alarm bell.

 

[Hunter90 HD]

Video with filter:

Phosphates at zero is the first alarm bell.

I do run NoPox too 4ml daily..

would you recommend easing the dosing off, get more fish?

what would be the safest way to increase phosphates?

I guess I can always dose more NoPox if it gets a bit too high and water changes

 

[sixty_reefer]

Video with filter:

I do run NoPox too 4ml daily..

would you recommend easing the dosing off, get more fish?

what would be the safest way to increase phosphates?

I guess I can always dose more NoPox if it gets a bit too high and water changes

You only have a residual nitrate of 2 if nitrate is stable at that just dose phosphates separately to not break the balance of the system, in a way nopox can help minimise the bloom.
Personally even if nitrates were going down I would just had both via dosing over stopping nopox due to the benefits it has over the full take over of the dinoflagellates

 

[Hunter90 HD]

You only have a residual nitrate of 2 if nitrate is stable at that just dose phosphates separately to not break the balance of the system, in a way nopox can help minimise the bloom.
Personally even if nitrates were going down I would just had both via dosing over stopping nopox due to the benefits it has over the full take over of the dinoflagellates

Thank you! Yeah my nitrate has been traceable all year only hit like 1-2 this month..
I was going to look at another fish as well but didn’t want to overcrowd the tank as I have:
2 x clowns
Regal tang
Sailfish tang
Purple yellow tail tang
Fox face rabbit fish

will look at maybe dosing some phosphate

 

[sixty_reefer]

Thank you! Yeah my nitrate has been traceable all year only hit like 1-2 this month..
I was going to look at another fish as well but didn’t want to overcrowd the tank as I have:
2 x clowns
Regal tang
Sailfish tang
Purple yellow tail tang
Fox face rabbit fish

will look at maybe dosing some phosphate

Personally that’s what I would do, you may want to take into consideration that the phosphates do get in a balance with the aragonite surfaces also meaning that even if you start dosing phosphates now it may take a wile to get them to be able to see them. You may have to double dose.

 

[EricR]

Dose up phosphates to desired level would be my first step as well, at least to detectable. (I like 0.05-0.08 ppm but that's personal preference).
*be prepared in case higher phosphates causes nitrates to start getting consumed faster -- happened to me and seems fairly common. (I run higher nitrates than you at 6-10 ppm and mine bottomed out pretty fast once phosphates were maintained, so just a caution here)

There are several LENGTHY threads on dealing with dinoflagellates on here and usually the first step is to ID the type of dinos with pics/videos under microscope,,, since different types respond best to different treatment/removal approaches. (Personally, I didn't do that and got passed it with just manual removal and maintaining reasonable phosphate and nitrate levels but probably better to know and approach it with best plan, if possible)

 

[Steve2020]

I agree with EricR. Need to determine type of Dyno to determine the best method to eradicate them. On another note nice fish list but IMO your tank size is borderline for even one of the Tangs or Foxface.

 

[Hunter90 HD]

I agree with EricR. Need to determine type of Dyno to determine the best method to eradicate them. On another note nice fish list but IMO your tank size is borderline for even one of the Tangs or Foxface.

Thanks! I will identify what specific algae this is..
And as for the fish, thanks!
I do plan to move the tangs on when they get too big, no doubt they will outgrow the tank