No diggity, no doubt, it’s dinos!

[thatone08]

Hi,

2 month old tank, 20 gallon Red Sea Max nano. Started with dry Carib sea life rock, and fritz turbo start to cycle. About a month completely dark, to avoid a really bad ugly stage(or so I thought). Fast forward fish, a handful of corals, lights on. 2 weeks later, what looks to be diatoms coming on. No sweat this I can handle. Progressively gets worse, darker, snotty, bubbles. Ok, dinos. First experience, start researching as much as I can. Test my water.

ph- 8.4
Nitrates- 35.2
Phosphate-0! Bingo!!!!

I stopped testing at this point. To research more. I see some people have had this happen before, and suggested route I am seeing is does phosphate. Cool I can do that.

Let me know your thoughts on this, if this is a good idea or dosing would be better.
I have another tank, that is Dino free, has phosphates a little high sitting at 1.0 if I do a water change on that tank, could I then use that waste water from the tank and do a water change on the Dino tank. I would be adding phosphates, definitely some more nitrates(not ideal) but other bacteria, to this tank. Possibly making it more diverse in the process.
Also thinking about adding a piece of live rock from this tank, and putting in there as well.

Will be siphoning out what I can. , then a 3 day blackout most likely. Doing vibrant and probably hydrogen peroxide. After black out thinking of dosing phyto and adding pods.

to compete and consume and diversify.

is this to much, or is this a good approach to dirting up and diversifying.

I do run the skimmer at all times. Could this be a factor to the low phosphate? Should I shut it off part of the day?

 

[brandon429]

A rip clean works like this:

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

those are the top four work examples, it’ll hammer back your dinos better than all dosers, less hard on corals and fish compared to extended guess changes etc. these are the steps we do when moving perfectly good tanks to new homes, above we were deep cleaning to beat various invasions. In a nano, that way is best because in the alternative you’re killing millions of cells in the tank, and rotting them in the tank making a chemical stew. You can see by those after shots its perfect in each tank. Copy every step they do, each job was the same set of moves / rock scrapes and sandbed tap rinses, don’t use bottle bac on the new tank it will skip cycle as we show.

 

[thatone08]

A rip clean works like this:

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

those are the top four work examples, it’ll hammer back your dinos better than all dosers, less hard on corals and fish compared to extended guess changes etc. these are the steps we do when moving perfectly good tanks to new homes, above we were deep cleaning to beat various invasions. In a nano, that way is best because in the alternative you’re killing millions of cells in the tank, and rotting them in the tank making a chemical stew. You can see by those after shots its perfect in each tank. Copy every step they do, each job was the same set of moves / rock scrapes and sandbed tap rinses, don’t use bottle bac on the new tank it will skip cycle as we show.

Thanks I will read through that.

 

[Reef.]

What PO4 tester do you use?

From those pics I would not rush to the conclusion it’s dinos.

Looks more diatoms to me.

 

[thatone08]

Hanna ULR

it’s snotty and stringy with air bubbles over everything. If you zoom into the second picture you’ll see better what I’m referring g to. Bottom picture on the the sand bed, most likely diatoms, but the back acrylic has all the bubbles on it.