Hey All,
Well after reading so many of these posts it’s nice to be writing my own.
I tried my hardest to do things one step at a time to find that golden bullet and i think it was a combination of things that fixed it and the more i researched the more disheartened i became.
However, i didn’t give up and neither should you, and as long and as painful as it was am going to list what i think got me here and how i got out of it, so let’s get into it.
How i got here:
I think this is the most important step, and it is not always easy and i can say after going through the motions what i thought was the problem was not.
So the first thing when we join this hobby is we ram down your through research research research, and that’s what i did, and as crazy as it sounds that’s what got me into this problem! Now i am by no means saying do not research but try and understand what is happening and think of your tank as an ecosystem because the sooner you do that the sooner you will have success. For me i built my system from the ground up, made my own sump over engineered everything to give me the best success i could from countless hours of reading talking etc.
I did such a good job i caused complete havoc to the ecosystem, from the get-go i had cheato and a 1000w grow light over the top of it, and this right here was the cause of all my problems and it took me a year and 8 months to work this out. My tank would always read 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate, and all was going well, the tank was awesome it was full of pods to the point where i could have used my net to catch them and sell them, my tank was spotless my rock looked bone white as well see photos below. Now after reefing for a while it is apparent to me now that this tank while it has gone through a Nitrogen cycle but the rock is still dry and has zero life. This tank in this photo is 6 months old! The refugium was sucking up all the nitrate and phosphate and with no competition the pods where exploding and that’s awesome right?.
So as the weeks went by i decided i would get a CUC i started with 2 snails and i stupidly dumped the water into my tank, well as you guessed it they starved to death in 18 days and the cheato absorbed all the phosphate and nitrate they produced, however they came with a friend, Red flatworms i didn’t see them at first and that 1 turned into 10 turned into a bazillion.
They were feeding on the only thing that was in my tank and that was the pods. So i went down the LFS and i got Flatworm exit and i used it, knocked em down, a week later they were back so i hit them again, 6 boxes later! i decided this wasn’t working, and i said to myself stuff it I’m going to just ride this out, i got myself a wrasse and a spotted mandarin and they definitely ate them, just not fast enough however eventually they died off and i was convinced i was in the clear. Well turns out what really happened was they were feeding off the pods and eventually they killed off the pods and then they all died, and now things started to turn on me. Now i was in a situation where i have a tank with no pods, no nitrate no phosphate, well what were those pods feeding on? it wasn’t algae that’s for sure, and as if by magic my beautiful white sand turned brown, and then by morning it was white again! Yerp dinos if your reading this and you happen to have these and cannot beat them go over to Mack's reef...Dinoflagellates support group!. I battled these jerks for months on my own and after joining the group i beat them in a month. For me beating them involved turning off my white lights, reducing my blues to 8 hours, and boosting my nitrate and phosphate, and repopulating the system with pods. I couldn’t boost my nitrate because my refugium was taking all the phosphate and nitrate so i decommissioned it. After about a week my rock started to gain colour and then boom a wild GHA outbreak, after about a month my dines were gone and my biggest battle was ahead of me. I created a perfect storm i managed to push out the ugly stage for 1 year and 6 months and it hit me hard, every little type of GHA i had all came out of the woodwork and it was world war 3.
Summary:
So, in summary i stalled my rock cycle and brought in a pest that had a food source and took off like wild fire that depleted its food source then left me with the perfect conditions for dinos, and to beat them i removed the refugium that was holding back the rock cycle.
How i beat the GHA/Lyngbya:
Well before i get to much into what worked i thought i would start with what didn’t work, and this my or not apply to you. The first step really and yes its hard but identify that algae or alleges and find out what it feeds off, you could read the depths on the internet and find something that looks like it and go full tilt like i did and dump a whole heap of fluconazole into your tank. I watched algae start to float around in my tank and i was sure that was going to sort my issues out, well i killed the little bit of GHA in the tank and like all good things i learned if you quickly eradicate something, another organism will take its place, and for me this was Lyngbya, but i didn’t know it at this point. I then went to my LFS and over the course of 2 months i spent $250 on snails, $75 on a seahare, Lawnmower blenny, sadly they all died due to starvation. Nothing would live longer then 10-18 days, i was given a million reasons as to why so i ordered an ICP test and waited for my smoking gun. It came back perfect, nothing out of the ordinary and my LFS's were at a loss. So back on the internet i went, and i came across two videos that changed everything for me the first being, one i cannot find but i will and i will add it here when i do but it was talking about how balance works within an ecosystem and this was from two divers who consult on large scale tanks, and manmade reefs around the world.
The other was this which rang true with everything i experienced to date.
BIOME CYCLE
Now for me here everything came together for me and the things i have learnt along the way, and forgive me for all my rambling but i had to provide some evidence to my method or at least how i came to the decision that i did as to who the hell am i have only been doing this for such a short time!, and for anyone that actually knows me i cannot accept things are the way they are because for me that means you just don’t know, or you are happy with not knowing.
So i took what i learnt, i knew i had an ecosystem that was up the %^&*( by my own doing and had spent a hell of alot of money and effectively built a tank for strain of GHA, i beat dinos by reaching out for help and the process was simple, identify it out compete it restore balance. So, i got out my microscope got a book on algae and found it Lyngbya.
Kool job done, couldn’t find much on how to beat it and it was a tricky one. This bugger didn’t need light well not much anyways as it grew anywhere, my sump everything.
It needed something right? it clearly needed some kind of nitrate, phosphate or mineral/element so i re-instated my refugium and got it going.
Well it didn’t take off like i had hoped my nitrates and phosphates started to go down and the cheato was not doing well. I looked at the fact i had a tank full of algae and a small amount of cheato. What hope did it ever truly have?
So i turned my lights in my DT down to a minimum and cranked my 1000w grow light to full, and i started dosing nitrate and phosphate, i didnt want to feed something else in the display was the reasoning for my dimming of the lights. Within a week i had a stupid amount of cheato and from here i dosed just enough nitrate and phosphate to keep my levels low. 5ppm nitrate .05 phosphate (I just chose this number), I left it this way for about a week and then i manually removed a large portion of the Lyngbya, followed by a 10% water change, and the algae was super easy to remove for the first time.
Now once a week i would, remove as much as i could scrub the rocks inside the tank and syphon it out / catch it with a net followed by a 10% water change, i did this every week for 4 weeks and something funny started to happen, i started to notice other types of algae popping up here and there but in small amounts. Now along my way i got a Bristle tooth tang, Foxface and a hippo tang hoping these would be the solution to my GHA i didnt mention this because they didnt touch anything anyways, but these guys started picking at the rocks eating this new algae. slowly but surely even the algae in my sump started to die, and as i would remove mountains of cheato less and less of it was this ugly algae and now 5 weeks later my tank looks like this.
Now this photo has been taken with white lights only, so it looks horrid however everything is full of life and i can finally start to put all the corals i have so desperately been wanting to put in there.
Summary
So in summary for me i out competed the algae by turning the lights down in the display introducing an algae i could control and feed it nitrate and phosphate until i had more mass of it then i did in my display, and then manually removed and scrubbed my rock inside the tank followed with a 10% water change every week for 4 weeks. The tank you are looking at above i have not done any removal in 4 weeks and i finally have a CUC that is living and happy.
Hope this helps guys!
Well after reading so many of these posts it’s nice to be writing my own.
I tried my hardest to do things one step at a time to find that golden bullet and i think it was a combination of things that fixed it and the more i researched the more disheartened i became.
However, i didn’t give up and neither should you, and as long and as painful as it was am going to list what i think got me here and how i got out of it, so let’s get into it.
How i got here:
I think this is the most important step, and it is not always easy and i can say after going through the motions what i thought was the problem was not.
So the first thing when we join this hobby is we ram down your through research research research, and that’s what i did, and as crazy as it sounds that’s what got me into this problem! Now i am by no means saying do not research but try and understand what is happening and think of your tank as an ecosystem because the sooner you do that the sooner you will have success. For me i built my system from the ground up, made my own sump over engineered everything to give me the best success i could from countless hours of reading talking etc.
I did such a good job i caused complete havoc to the ecosystem, from the get-go i had cheato and a 1000w grow light over the top of it, and this right here was the cause of all my problems and it took me a year and 8 months to work this out. My tank would always read 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate, and all was going well, the tank was awesome it was full of pods to the point where i could have used my net to catch them and sell them, my tank was spotless my rock looked bone white as well see photos below. Now after reefing for a while it is apparent to me now that this tank while it has gone through a Nitrogen cycle but the rock is still dry and has zero life. This tank in this photo is 6 months old! The refugium was sucking up all the nitrate and phosphate and with no competition the pods where exploding and that’s awesome right?.
So as the weeks went by i decided i would get a CUC i started with 2 snails and i stupidly dumped the water into my tank, well as you guessed it they starved to death in 18 days and the cheato absorbed all the phosphate and nitrate they produced, however they came with a friend, Red flatworms i didn’t see them at first and that 1 turned into 10 turned into a bazillion.
They were feeding on the only thing that was in my tank and that was the pods. So i went down the LFS and i got Flatworm exit and i used it, knocked em down, a week later they were back so i hit them again, 6 boxes later! i decided this wasn’t working, and i said to myself stuff it I’m going to just ride this out, i got myself a wrasse and a spotted mandarin and they definitely ate them, just not fast enough however eventually they died off and i was convinced i was in the clear. Well turns out what really happened was they were feeding off the pods and eventually they killed off the pods and then they all died, and now things started to turn on me. Now i was in a situation where i have a tank with no pods, no nitrate no phosphate, well what were those pods feeding on? it wasn’t algae that’s for sure, and as if by magic my beautiful white sand turned brown, and then by morning it was white again! Yerp dinos if your reading this and you happen to have these and cannot beat them go over to Mack's reef...Dinoflagellates support group!. I battled these jerks for months on my own and after joining the group i beat them in a month. For me beating them involved turning off my white lights, reducing my blues to 8 hours, and boosting my nitrate and phosphate, and repopulating the system with pods. I couldn’t boost my nitrate because my refugium was taking all the phosphate and nitrate so i decommissioned it. After about a week my rock started to gain colour and then boom a wild GHA outbreak, after about a month my dines were gone and my biggest battle was ahead of me. I created a perfect storm i managed to push out the ugly stage for 1 year and 6 months and it hit me hard, every little type of GHA i had all came out of the woodwork and it was world war 3.
Summary:
So, in summary i stalled my rock cycle and brought in a pest that had a food source and took off like wild fire that depleted its food source then left me with the perfect conditions for dinos, and to beat them i removed the refugium that was holding back the rock cycle.
How i beat the GHA/Lyngbya:
Well before i get to much into what worked i thought i would start with what didn’t work, and this my or not apply to you. The first step really and yes its hard but identify that algae or alleges and find out what it feeds off, you could read the depths on the internet and find something that looks like it and go full tilt like i did and dump a whole heap of fluconazole into your tank. I watched algae start to float around in my tank and i was sure that was going to sort my issues out, well i killed the little bit of GHA in the tank and like all good things i learned if you quickly eradicate something, another organism will take its place, and for me this was Lyngbya, but i didn’t know it at this point. I then went to my LFS and over the course of 2 months i spent $250 on snails, $75 on a seahare, Lawnmower blenny, sadly they all died due to starvation. Nothing would live longer then 10-18 days, i was given a million reasons as to why so i ordered an ICP test and waited for my smoking gun. It came back perfect, nothing out of the ordinary and my LFS's were at a loss. So back on the internet i went, and i came across two videos that changed everything for me the first being, one i cannot find but i will and i will add it here when i do but it was talking about how balance works within an ecosystem and this was from two divers who consult on large scale tanks, and manmade reefs around the world.
The other was this which rang true with everything i experienced to date.
BIOME CYCLE
Now for me here everything came together for me and the things i have learnt along the way, and forgive me for all my rambling but i had to provide some evidence to my method or at least how i came to the decision that i did as to who the hell am i have only been doing this for such a short time!, and for anyone that actually knows me i cannot accept things are the way they are because for me that means you just don’t know, or you are happy with not knowing.
So i took what i learnt, i knew i had an ecosystem that was up the %^&*( by my own doing and had spent a hell of alot of money and effectively built a tank for strain of GHA, i beat dinos by reaching out for help and the process was simple, identify it out compete it restore balance. So, i got out my microscope got a book on algae and found it Lyngbya.
Kool job done, couldn’t find much on how to beat it and it was a tricky one. This bugger didn’t need light well not much anyways as it grew anywhere, my sump everything.
It needed something right? it clearly needed some kind of nitrate, phosphate or mineral/element so i re-instated my refugium and got it going.
Well it didn’t take off like i had hoped my nitrates and phosphates started to go down and the cheato was not doing well. I looked at the fact i had a tank full of algae and a small amount of cheato. What hope did it ever truly have?
So i turned my lights in my DT down to a minimum and cranked my 1000w grow light to full, and i started dosing nitrate and phosphate, i didnt want to feed something else in the display was the reasoning for my dimming of the lights. Within a week i had a stupid amount of cheato and from here i dosed just enough nitrate and phosphate to keep my levels low. 5ppm nitrate .05 phosphate (I just chose this number), I left it this way for about a week and then i manually removed a large portion of the Lyngbya, followed by a 10% water change, and the algae was super easy to remove for the first time.
Now once a week i would, remove as much as i could scrub the rocks inside the tank and syphon it out / catch it with a net followed by a 10% water change, i did this every week for 4 weeks and something funny started to happen, i started to notice other types of algae popping up here and there but in small amounts. Now along my way i got a Bristle tooth tang, Foxface and a hippo tang hoping these would be the solution to my GHA i didnt mention this because they didnt touch anything anyways, but these guys started picking at the rocks eating this new algae. slowly but surely even the algae in my sump started to die, and as i would remove mountains of cheato less and less of it was this ugly algae and now 5 weeks later my tank looks like this.
Now this photo has been taken with white lights only, so it looks horrid however everything is full of life and i can finally start to put all the corals i have so desperately been wanting to put in there.
Summary
So in summary for me i out competed the algae by turning the lights down in the display introducing an algae i could control and feed it nitrate and phosphate until i had more mass of it then i did in my display, and then manually removed and scrubbed my rock inside the tank followed with a 10% water change every week for 4 weeks. The tank you are looking at above i have not done any removal in 4 weeks and i finally have a CUC that is living and happy.
Hope this helps guys!
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