Worst tank on the planet.

[Devisissy]

(trigger warning all the algae)

Ok so brand new tank somehow gets byropsis. Since I have no corals I think ok let's treat it. Fluzocole and it's gone. Cool. Nope, now I have what looks like cyano. Ok fine, side effect of fluzocole let's just treat it. Chemiclean doesn't do crap. In fact everything is worse.

It's stingy, makes a sheets, easily removes, doesn't seem to bother livestock, grows on glass, sand, rocks. Grows back after removal within hours. Does not respond to three day blackout.

I went a whole month of no water changes, then one 20% each week. I tried uv.

I am currently dosing nitrates and phosphates to keep them at 10ppm nitrate and phosphate .01-.02 daily. Adding 20mL of MB7 daily, 10mL H2O2, and coral snow 15mL. Changing socks daily, and cleaning skimmer twice a day. No change so far.

I suck so bad at this. I'm keep trying and just keep fing it all up. At least I don't have corals. So I have what appears to be white turf algae, it doesn't come off like the rest of this stuff and it's getting blasted by the mp40. I also have about five specs of cotton candy algae that just appeared today. And what I think might be dinos? I don't know.

I don't have my microscope. I tried an experiment. One cup tank water each cup with a chunk of this algae. First is control, then I tried dinox in one cup, algae fix in another, fluzocole in another. All four algae chunks looked the same. Nothing changed. This stuff also clings to your arm hair if you put you arm in the tank. It's almost like this brown gunk is dead. But it's not. I'm at a loss.

SO JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL!

Here is some algae **** for you.

Oh and we are fostering this thing. I'm told he is cat. His name is Paws. On Monday his leg is getting removed. So he will then be a Tri Paw. See what I did there? Hopefully someone will want a cat with three legs.

 

[crazyfishmom]

So it sounds to me like a case of needing to just stop for a few days. Your water chemistry is completely out of balance. Have you tested for silicates? Algae does really well with silicates in the system.

If you don’t have corals then don’t worry about nitrates and phosphates at all.

I would consider bacterial dosing to help increase beneficial bacteria in the tank. Also, pulling rocks out and brushing off with a stiff brush is needed to start to physically remove this stuff.

Good luck!

 

[Devisissy]

So it sounds to me like a case of needing to just stop for a few days. Your water chemistry is completely out of balance. Have you tested for silicates? Algae does really well with silicates in the system.

If you don’t have corals then don’t worry about nitrates and phosphates at all.

I would consider bacterial dosing to help increase beneficial bacteria in the tank. Also, pulling rocks out and brushing off with a stiff brush is needed to start to physically remove this stuff.

Good luck!

ICP had silicates on the low end of acceptable range. MB7 is bacteria. Also bio digest every 15 days. Doing nitrates and phosphates and holding them surprisingly steady at 10/ .01 because of another thread that saw success with this method. I'm cool to do nothing as I am lazy. Also, rockworkmis cemented together in arches. It would be a complete tear down and if that's the case I'm out of the hobby.

 

[Idech]

You need to stop using chemicals. As you can tell, they only make things worse.

I would syphon as much as possible what is on the sand, take the rocks out and brush them in tank water (you don’y want to kill your live rock), and do a big water change. Then dim your lights for a while, maybe 30% (assuming you don’t have any corals). In time, you will turn them back up gradually.

Then, just observe what is going on. Give it time. Keep dosing bacteria, add lots of copepods and a bit of phytoplankton. See what happens, and whatever does, find natural ways to help it go away.

This takes time. Breathe and relax.

 

[Devisissy]

I dose 60mL phyto nightly. Pods I bought from guy here and I see them on the glass can order more for sure.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

I dose 60mL phyto nightly. Pods I bought from guy here and I see them on the glass can order more for sure.

is your Phyto live? Or is it the Reef Nutrition kind?
Also... Get some live sand from here or make a trip to the coast... (cold water rubble/sand is fine)

Tampa Bay Saltwater – America's #1 Live Rock for Reef Aquariums

 

[thatotherblkguy701]

idk looks like what i had it was dinos it was like a brown cyano a round of chemiclean knocked it out i have since stop doing weekly water changes and have gine

 

[Devisissy]

is your Phyto live? Or is it the Reef Nutrition kind?
Also... Get some live sand from here or make a trip to the coast... (cold water rubble/sand is fine)

Tampa Bay Saltwater – America's #1 Live Rock for Reef Aquariums

The ocean here is cold and full of human feces and needles. But I can grab a handful of of alki I guess. Easiest beach to get to. Ugh I hate driving through Seattle. The phyto I have is called Tommy's and I get it from bulk reef supply.

 

[Yooper Reef]

How old is the tank? What livestock do you have?

 

[Devisissy]

How old is the tank? What livestock do you have?

5 months. I have two clowns, dispar, wrasse, basslet, snails, urchin. I had a blenny, he must have died. He was sickly from day one but past warranty...should have kicked the tires harder.

 

[Troylee]

Looks like Dino’s to me not cyano at all… do you have a uv sterilizer? Dino’s seem to be a by product of chemiclean any more… people treat their tanks with chemiclean and boom Dino’s.. sigh.

 

[Devisissy]

Looks like Dino’s to me not cyano at all… do you have a uv sterilizer? Dino’s seem to be a by product of chemiclean any more… people treat their tanks with chemiclean and boom Dino’s.. sigh.

So fluzocole caused cyano, chemiclean caused dinos. Dino X? Which didn't do anything in my small scale test. What to do about the cotton candy algae? I did try the uv and it didn't do much.

 

[NoobishReefer22]

So fluzocole caused cyano, chemiclean caused dinos. Dino X? Which didn't do anything in my small scale test. What to do about the cotton candy algae? I did try the uv and it didn't do much.

I am currently using DinoX to get rid of some very bad dino's in my tank and it is working. I have unfortunately lost a couple of corals but it isn't conclusive that DinoX caused this or the Dino toxins because the corals were doing pretty poorly before I started with DinoX as well. Also in your case you don't have any corals so should be good!

 

[JustAnotherNanoTank]

I’m sorry about your troubles.

What I noted when reading everything was all the stuff you are dosing to your young tank. And I mean even before any of the flucon, chemi, or Dino x. I think you just need to feed your fish regular and let it mature at its own pace.

I also didn’t see anything about water changes or if you make your own rodi for top off? Could be source water related.(Learned that the hard way.)

 

[kingranch2003]

(trigger warning all the algae)

Ok so brand new tank somehow gets byropsis. Since I have no corals I think ok let's treat it. Fluzocole and it's gone. Cool. Nope, now I have what looks like cyano. Ok fine, side effect of fluzocole let's just treat it. Chemiclean doesn't do crap. In fact everything is worse.

It's stingy, makes a sheets, easily removes, doesn't seem to bother livestock, grows on glass, sand, rocks. Grows back after removal within hours. Does not respond to three day blackout.

I went a whole month of no water changes, then one 20% each week. I tried uv.

I am currently dosing nitrates and phosphates to keep them at 10ppm nitrate and phosphate .01-.02 daily. Adding 20mL of MB7 daily, 10mL H2O2, and coral snow 15mL. Changing socks daily, and cleaning skimmer twice a day. No change so far.

I suck so bad at this. I'm keep trying and just keep fing it all up. At least I don't have corals. So I have what appears to be white turf algae, it doesn't come off like the rest of this stuff and it's getting blasted by the mp40. I also have about five specs of cotton candy algae that just appeared today. And what I think might be dinos? I don't know.

I don't have my microscope. I tried an experiment. One cup tank water each cup with a chunk of this algae. First is control, then I tried dinox in one cup, algae fix in another, fluzocole in another. All four algae chunks looked the same. Nothing changed. This stuff also clings to your arm hair if you put you arm in the tank. It's almost like this brown gunk is dead. But it's not. I'm at a loss.

SO JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL!

Here is some algae **** for you.

Oh and we are fostering this thing. I'm told he is cat. His name is Paws. On Monday his leg is getting removed. So he will then be a Tri Paw. See what I did there? Hopefully someone will want a cat with three legs.

I kind of don't see what you did there.

 

[slingfox]

The description and pictures look like dinos are in the mix. Keep the fight up. I went through a long ugly stage but kept at it and eventually my tank settled down. Eventually the ugly stage will end and you won't have much to do other than feed the fish, scrape the glass every few days, and do a water change every week or two. Here is a post I made in February 2024 when my tank was 6 months old. This was in response to another battle with dino thread:

"I feel your pain. I started my tank around the same time as you and fought a massive outbreak of dinos (all over the rock and thick layer of growth all over the sand bed) for 5 weeks starting in late October. I did almost everything commonly recommended. I believe the most important were running UV, dosing bacteria and silicate every day, and scrubbing the rocks and cleaning the sand every few days. Siphoning out the top layer of sand and rinsing it in saltwater multiple times until it runs relatively clear is important since that exports a lot of the dinos quickly. I probably had to do this siphoning and rinsing 8+ times during the height of the Dinos war. I did so with tap water but if I had to do it again I with salt water since that has a better chance of preserving more of the microbiome. Before adding the sand back into the tank I poured into the sand Microbacter7, Dr. Tim's Waste Away, or the Zeovit bacteria supplement (I had all three on hand).

Dinos decimated my copepod population. Before they were swarming all over my glass, even with limited Dino's now the pod population has not returned to the prior levels but that may be because my 4 wrasse keeping the pod population in check. Most of my snails died including the Nassarius which lived in the sand. I added Trochus during the Dino outbreak and some died and or spasmed when they touched the sand likely due to the Dino toxins. I had a few tester SPS and montis and they all slowly bleached then died. The only coral which survived are my torches and hammers and single mushroom coral. No fish died thankfully. I also had a strawberry conch which hid all day long. Once Dinos dissipated it started moving around a lot more. Most of my hermit crab population died but some survived. Urchins did fine since they seemed to just avoid Dino areas on the rock. I noticed that after a sandbed rinse and water change, my surviving snails and crabs would instantly appear and be much more active.

I have been mostly Dino free for the last two months or so. Even now though I see some growing on top of GHA. Those areas my CUC avoids like the plague. I tried putting three snails in an area with a mix of GHA + Dinos today. One snail would just detach from the rock and let the powerhead blow him to the sand. The other two got out of the area as fast as they could crawl.

Given my battle with dinos I have decided to only add soft corals for now. My tank is more stable (now dealing with GHA) but has a ways to go. Good luck with your Dino battle. Looking at your setup, I suggest rinsing out the top layer of sand. Then dose bacteria and silicate daily until the dinos get out competed. After my dinos got under control, I was hit by a cyano outbreak (more scrubbing of rock and rinsing the sand) which went away after two week, and then GHA took over. Since Dino's aren't killing my livestock anymore, I have been adding CUC which has done a great job at suppressing the GHA."

This is the scrubber I use to clean uglies off rocks. I don't have much uglies in the rock now but it comes in super handy cleaning the ugly growth that accumulates where the glass touches the sandbed. This is also super useful to clean frag racks, powerheads, weir, etc: https://a.co/d/2hDpwkZ

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

Why are you adding phyto, coral snow, hydrogen peroxide, and bottled bacteria?

Allow your tank to achieve its own equilibrium. I believe you should attempt to increase your nutrient levels further. That will assist with the dinos. Another option to think about is raising them with food rather than bottled nitrate and phosphate.

I understand that many threads promote adding all sorts of additives to a tank, but honestly, your tank should be allowed to settle on its own. When you begin forcing it, you are essentially battling against the natural order, and it will never achieve balance.

 

[PharmrJohn]

The ocean here is cold and full of human feces and needles. But I can grab a handful of of alki I guess. Easiest beach to get to. Ugh I hate driving through Seattle. The phyto I have is called Tommy's and I get it from bulk reef supply.

Alki is cool. Back in the VERY early 80's we used to 'cruise' Alki. A bunch of kids with 60's cars drinking and driving. We didn't drink, but were offered beer on a number of occasions! I LOVED the 70's and '80s!

 

[Devisissy]

I make my own water. I use a Spectrapure five stage. I have inline tds at all stages and have tested the water from the barrel. All 0. That's because all the filters are relatively new including the silica buster.

I am adding MB7,H2O2, and coral snow because that has worked for other people. It took consistent dosing over months. I noticed if I even skip a day problems arise. I turkey baste the rocks when lights are off dose the snow wait an hour then change sock.

Today I noticed snails are dying. I have noticed pods are dwindling too, but I have fish that eat them.

I had byropsis bad. It was one of those let's treat it now while I have nothing in the tank which caused the snowball effect. It was starting to get very thick. Then I got cyano and there isn't much that gets rid of that. So absolutely I caused all this but no matter what all these issues would have had to be delt with at some point.

I have tried the do nothing. It was much much much worse. I was scooping handfuls of muck out daily. So today is day 7of MB7, hydrogen peroxide, and coral snow with nitrate phosphate dosing and I can see parts of the sand! So I'm hesitant to quit.

I was doing weekly 20% water changes. Then I tried the do nothing, I ran out of salt which was nyos. So I haven't done one in a week. Everyone is out of nyos. So I ordered aquaforest just to get me by. It won't be here for another week.

I'm going to try a trick. I'm going to syphon my sand through a filter sock and pour the water back in tank and see how much of this I can collect.

I also bought silica. I haven't dosed it yet. If I do the dinox route then urchin has to go somewhere else.

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

Today I noticed snails are dying. I have noticed pods are dwindling too, but I have fish that eat them.

Test for ammonia and copper.