Dinos and Nutrient dosing

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hi all. I assumed I had Dino’s as this was what they appeared to be with there stringy snot and bubbles on the end initially. However, the reddish brown stains still plague my sand bed.

Recently, I’ve noticed that the red/brown stuff got on a rock, and it looked matted like cyano. I’ve heard it’s quite possible to have both in some cases.

It may very well be that most or if not all the Dino’s are gone but still have remaining cyano. It’s just some reefer said it still looks like Dino’s during one of my Reddit posts and I just assumed it was still this. Either way, it’s still a nutrients issue.

Sorry if I have wasted anyone’s time.

But I still have some questions. If nutrients make them worse, and i starve my tank to get rid of them (only thing that has ever made progress) won’t they just come back if the nutrients are raised again? Seems like a losing battle lol.

I’m just thinking if I starve the bacteria out, that just starves the beneficial bacteria right? So to my basic understanding, that would be a waste of time.

I am not sure how, that logically, raising the nutrients for good algae will do anything but fuel the cyano/dinos. Which will out compete the good algae. But if starve the tank, nothing will grow lol.

Seems to me I am at a stale mate unless someone has other information or can explain what I am not understanding.

To my understanding, I need enough nutrients to grow good algae. But my only logical thought on this would be that there has to be more good algae in the tank than cyano or Dino’s, that the majority competes against the minority. Would physical removal of the Dino’s be my only option to create this environment?

My recommendation for cyano is manual removal, organic reduction, and higher flow. Cyano is about the only organism in a reef tank that can get N from N2 in the air, making nutrient reduction a seemingly poor for it.

 

[Radicalrob1982]

Hi thanks,

I do however need to feed. This is inevitable. However, my only coral food is reef roids. This stuff makes cyano/dinos explode and have been refraining from using it. Just the slightest bit that escapes the corals makes the bad bacteria have a graduation party lol. Should I opt in for phyto or musics? Will this be a better option?

I have 1 turbo snail plus a tuxedo urchin. They have been pretty valuable in keep the rocks clean but don’t spend much time on the glass lol. I also have 3 or 4 various snails including a couple of ninja hermits.

I haven’t done a water change in quite some time due to low nutrients. However, since the seachem remediation lowers this stuff and is aiding my solution, I may start 10 to 20% water changes per week and try to starve it out further.

I really think my only viable solution left is to try and siphon out as much cyano/dinos as I can weekly and pray in time that leaving the good algae will one day outcompete the bad stuff.

Has anyone had any luck with Sunny’s calcium carbonate water clarifier with bacteria method?

 

[Radicalrob1982]

Hi thanks,

I do however need to feed. This is inevitable. However, my only coral food is reef roids. This stuff makes cyano/dinos explode and have been refraining from using it. Just the slightest bit that escapes the corals makes the bad bacteria have a graduation party lol. Should I opt in for phyto or musics? Will this be a better option?

I have 1 turbo snail plus a tuxedo urchin. They have been pretty valuable in keep the rocks clean but don’t spend much time on the glass lol. I also have 3 or 4 various snails including a couple of ninja hermits.

I haven’t done a water change in quite some time due to low nutrients. However, since the seachem remediation lowers this stuff and is aiding my solution, I may start 10 to 20% water changes per week and try to starve it out further.

I really think my only viable solution left is to try and siphon out as much cyano/dinos as I can weekly and pray in time that leaving the good algae will one day outcompete the bad stuff.

Has anyone had any luck with Sunny’s calcium carbonate water clarifier with bacteria method?

I just wanted to add that I may first try recycling the water through a filter sock. This way I still leave some nutrients for the good algae but remove as much cyano as possible while helping the good algae get a foot hold

 

[CHSUB]

Hi thanks,

I do however need to feed. This is inevitable. However, my only coral food is reef roids. This stuff makes cyano/dinos explode and have been refraining from using it. Just the slightest bit that escapes the corals makes the bad bacteria have a graduation party lol. Should I opt in for phyto or musics? Will this be a better option?

I have 1 turbo snail plus a tuxedo urchin. They have been pretty valuable in keep the rocks clean but don’t spend much time on the glass lol. I also have 3 or 4 various snails including a couple of ninja hermits.

I haven’t done a water change in quite some time due to low nutrients. However, since the seachem remediation lowers this stuff and is aiding my solution, I may start 10 to 20% water changes per week and try to starve it out further.

I really think my only viable solution left is to try and siphon out as much cyano/dinos as I can weekly and pray in time that leaving the good algae will one day outcompete the bad stuff.

Has anyone had any luck with Sunny’s calcium carbonate water clarifier with bacteria method?

an example of my experience: i feed reef Roids 1/8 of a tsp with Red Sea AB+, reef frenzy and a few large pellets of coral food every other day directly to corals. Feed fish daily 1/2 cube of frozen and currently have zero nuisance algae and “excellent” color and coral growth. I don’t believe your problem is what you add, it’s what you don’t remove? Yesterday my ICP tested po4 and no3 was .009 and .1 ppm. Today I’m cleaning the glass, blowing the rocks and cleaning the sand with a 6 gallon weekly WC that visually doesn’t seem needed. Don’t make this more difficult than it is, feed your animals and remove the waste products including po4 and no3 which is technically only algae food.