Mike's 360G Dream Tank, Dream Box Build

joseserrano

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#81
I call browned out SPS mystery SPS, sometimes you can see hints of what they can be, but sometimes they are a complete surprise. Fun experiments.
 

Smite

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#86
Someone posted a test for dinos here a while back. Drawing a blank on the user name but its was a simple test. Siphon the algae through a clean filter sock into a bucket (preferably white). You then place the bucket outside in sunlight for a few hours. The filtered water will start off pretty clear but dinos will start to "regroup" in the bucket pretty quick in the sunlight. I'll try to find the post because it also went into detail about how he kills most strains of dinoflagellates by maintaining a high pH level for a few months.

I've had both cyano and dinos in my past systems. Dinos appear more brown and stringy. They also form bubbles, sometimes so many they lift off if in a mat form. They are sensitive to blackouts (total blackout, no ambient light). There are several strains of dinoflagellates from what I've read on forums, some harder to get rid of than others.
 
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#90
I've been sucking it out into a sock. Spend about an hour or more trying to suck it all off the sand and rocks. Within two days, it will grow back to the same amount that was previously sucked out.

Looks like I might be losing my tono wrasse. I spotted it swimming funny just right now and doing barrel rolls. I just netted it and put it in an acclimation box. I hope it pulls through but I doubt it. In past experience, once a wrasse starts swimming funny, it's a goner. It's either the dinos or possibly swim bladder affecting the wrasse.
 

lowbudget

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#92
i had that brown slimy algae looking thing i just let it run it course. the more water i change the worst it gets
 

Smite

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#93
I've been sucking it out into a sock. Spend about an hour or more trying to suck it all off the sand and rocks. Within two days, it will grow back to the same amount that was previously sucked out.

Looks like I might be losing my tono wrasse. I spotted it swimming funny just right now and doing barrel rolls. I just netted it and put it in an acclimation box. I hope it pulls through but I doubt it. In past experience, once a wrasse starts swimming funny, it's a goner. It's either the dinos or possibly swim bladder affecting the wrasse.
Here is a post from sonnus explaining why trying to filter dinos with filter socks doesn't work:
http://www.socalireefs.com/forums/s...t-dinoflagellates/page2&highlight=dino+sonnus

There are posts on reef2reef about dosing hydrogen peroxide and having really good success and it appears some what reef safe. I haven't done it myself though.

If you can't get it under control and it continues to get worse do a full blackout for 3 days, where you cover the glass of the tank. I use black plastic trash bags and tape them up. Minimize ambient light in the room if possible, skim heavy and run fresh carbon to pull toxins from the water. Siphon as much out as possible before you start. I've done this on a few different tanks and it works well. It knocks it back completely and allows other algae like your macros to take over. Just be sure to turn that fuge light off as well during the blackout. Feed less if at all during that time to try and minimize nutrient spikes as it dies off and stops consuming everything. Dinos grow so fast my nutrient levels have always read 0/undetectable when its present in the tank. Ease back into your lighting cycle over a day. If you do a water change and its getting worse silicates might not be getting removed by your RO/DI water, or mixed salt?

I've done this in tanks that have sps, lps and inverts. I've lost 2 pieces of sps one time but i didnt do a great job siphoning before the black out and beleive i had a nutrient spike. I will say i never really had to battle dinos in my 100g and for whatever reason that system consistently ran around 8.6 pH, probably from my oversized skimmer. So that route may work as well.

Best of luck. It can be very frustrating.
 
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#94
I haven't updated in awhile. There were a lot of uglies going on for several months with the tank. Dinos hit and pretty much smothered most of my corals. Hit the tank with DINO-X and it wiped out the dinos. Then came cyano and a couple weeks or dosing KZ zeozyme, coral snow and zeobak took care of the cyano. Then came the GHA and that took awhile to get rid of.

The arid reactor wasn't enough to keep nutrients down. Nutrients were climbing to no3 100ppm and po4 .31. So I added a Avast marine vibe reactor to run KZ zeolites to help bring down the nutrients some more. The zeolites were able to drop nutrients down to no3 25 and po4 .16 and it's been stuck there for a couple months now.

I just started dosing some redsea nopox at half the recommended dose to try and lower it some more. Some of the corals are doing well but others are suffering. Most likely due to the elevated nutrients.

Here's a huge picture dump. I had photoshop auto correct these pictures via the curve option. I don't know how to work photoshop so the majority of these pictures are true to life while some are a little off. Some of the blues and yellow is hard to capture.

 

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