I've been fighting an outbreak of what I'm pretty sure is dinos in my tank for the last week and a half (don't have a microscope but N and P both tested undetectable and it's a brown slimy bubbly covering that is upsetting my corals so it sounds like the right stuff).
Been dosing NeoNitro and NeoPhos daily to try to get nutrients up, which seemed to be going okay at first (nitrate came up first and then finally started to see the faintest hint of blue in the phos tests), but now I'm getting confused. Both times I've got my phosphate levels to what I'd call 0.05ppm by the Salifert kit (highest value I've managed testing 24 hours post dosing), the next day they've hit 0 despite me adding another dose in between.
My nitrates also drop on those days, so I could understand that perhaps my tank is just consuming all that available phosphate until it runs back out, but that is also where I'm getting confused because it seems like a very fast rate of consumption.
The tank is 10 gallons, set up 2 years ago (it's been an incredibly slow process for me...). Stock as follows:
1 frag pink birdsnest
1 frag duncan (1 head) (it started growing 2 new heads about a month ago and then stopped)
1 frag favites
5 frags zoas (1 is a mini colony the rest are 6 polyps or less)
1 ricordea florida
2 RFA, about 1.5" and 2" across respectively
1 possum wrasse
2 nass snails
5? cerith snails (bought 5 mid-March but as they only come out at night I have no idea how they are doing)
FTS from just before the outbreak for reference of how big/how much coral is in here. Only thing not visible is the duncan.
Is it really plausible for that amount of corals to be using ~5-10ppm nitrate and < 0.05 ppm phosphate daily? Last night I dosed 4ml of NeoPhos which should have given me 0.1ppm to start with, all of which seems to be gone today.
Thanks very much!
Been dosing NeoNitro and NeoPhos daily to try to get nutrients up, which seemed to be going okay at first (nitrate came up first and then finally started to see the faintest hint of blue in the phos tests), but now I'm getting confused. Both times I've got my phosphate levels to what I'd call 0.05ppm by the Salifert kit (highest value I've managed testing 24 hours post dosing), the next day they've hit 0 despite me adding another dose in between.
My nitrates also drop on those days, so I could understand that perhaps my tank is just consuming all that available phosphate until it runs back out, but that is also where I'm getting confused because it seems like a very fast rate of consumption.
The tank is 10 gallons, set up 2 years ago (it's been an incredibly slow process for me...). Stock as follows:
1 frag pink birdsnest
1 frag duncan (1 head) (it started growing 2 new heads about a month ago and then stopped)
1 frag favites
5 frags zoas (1 is a mini colony the rest are 6 polyps or less)
1 ricordea florida
2 RFA, about 1.5" and 2" across respectively
1 possum wrasse
2 nass snails
5? cerith snails (bought 5 mid-March but as they only come out at night I have no idea how they are doing)
FTS from just before the outbreak for reference of how big/how much coral is in here. Only thing not visible is the duncan.
Is it really plausible for that amount of corals to be using ~5-10ppm nitrate and < 0.05 ppm phosphate daily? Last night I dosed 4ml of NeoPhos which should have given me 0.1ppm to start with, all of which seems to be gone today.
Thanks very much!