So I’ve been running my first reef tank for about 4 months now. 30 gallon with 10 gallon sump. About 5 gallons of the sump space is setup as a refugium. Never really had much of an ugly phase until a month and a half ago when I had a huge dino outbreak. Within a few days everything was covered in brown bubbly snot strings. My phosphates were at about 0.15 and my nitrates had dropped to 0.
I tried changing my filter socks, cleaning the glass, and blasting the rocks daily, stopped dosing aminos, fed heavier, started dosing Neonitro on a dosing pump (which did bring my nitrates up to about 3 ppm), and none of it made any difference. Starting to get frustrated, I did a 4 day blackout while treating with Dr. Tim’s and my tank looked amazing afterwards……. For a week. Then they started coming back. Only this time my phosphates had dropped to 0 and my nitrates had risen to over 20 because I forgot to turn off the dosing pump while the tank was in blackout which lowered its nitrate uptake.
I tried dosing NeoPhos and it only made things worse. I dosed 4.3 ml at a time to raise levels to 0.04 and within half a day or less they would be back to 0.0. It seems like the Dino’s might be a different type this time because they’re not forming nearly as many long snotty strings and seems almost powder like when I scrape them off the glass. They come back FAST though after I scrape them. After scraping it’ll only take about 8 hours before the glass is so covered that I can barely see through it again. I tried stopping the phosphate dosing yesterday and they’re growing back much slower. I’m kinda at wits end right now because the only options left in my bag are installing UV and/or trying carbon dosing in the hopes that the bacteria produced will crowd out the Dino’s. Any suggestions?
I tried changing my filter socks, cleaning the glass, and blasting the rocks daily, stopped dosing aminos, fed heavier, started dosing Neonitro on a dosing pump (which did bring my nitrates up to about 3 ppm), and none of it made any difference. Starting to get frustrated, I did a 4 day blackout while treating with Dr. Tim’s and my tank looked amazing afterwards……. For a week. Then they started coming back. Only this time my phosphates had dropped to 0 and my nitrates had risen to over 20 because I forgot to turn off the dosing pump while the tank was in blackout which lowered its nitrate uptake.
I tried dosing NeoPhos and it only made things worse. I dosed 4.3 ml at a time to raise levels to 0.04 and within half a day or less they would be back to 0.0. It seems like the Dino’s might be a different type this time because they’re not forming nearly as many long snotty strings and seems almost powder like when I scrape them off the glass. They come back FAST though after I scrape them. After scraping it’ll only take about 8 hours before the glass is so covered that I can barely see through it again. I tried stopping the phosphate dosing yesterday and they’re growing back much slower. I’m kinda at wits end right now because the only options left in my bag are installing UV and/or trying carbon dosing in the hopes that the bacteria produced will crowd out the Dino’s. Any suggestions?
