70g DIY Peninsula 40x20x20"

[NY_Caveman]

Current FTS.

There's nothing much to say. As you can see, tank looks terrible. Cyano is everywhere. NO3 and PO4 still undetectable.

I am dealing with the same right now. Big maintenance day on the tank which I am hoping will help.

 

[sikorskys]

In order to get nutrients back to detectable levels, I'm trying to feed more. More frequently.

This is how I'm going to do so It's cheap noname auto feeder, designed on the basis of an Eheim model, I guess.

 

[sikorskys]

Enough. After six months of waiting Red Sea salt mixes to get back to Ukrainian market, I give up. Now I'm switching to Aquaforest.

It's well known salt mix, lots of people use it with great success. It's two times cheaper of any other salt mix I would use (like Red Sea or Tropic Marin). And it's always in stock.

 

[sikorskys]

My cheap ATO pump has died after a month in use, so I had to top-off manually since then. I knew it will fail one day, but a month... Fine, lesson learned.

This one should last a bit longer, I suppose.

 

[count krunk]

how goes rasing po4?

 

[This guy is Extra Salty]

Try getting rid of the algae in your DT
Your tests and readings are false negatives
Do that first before you start dosing anything otherwise you’re going to have a bunch of other problems

 

[sikorskys]

how goes rasing po4?

I wouldn't call it "raising"

 

[sikorskys]

Try getting rid of the algae in your DT
Your tests and readings are false negatives
Do that first before you start dosing anything otherwise you’re going to have a bunch of other problems

I don't treat those results as "false positive", it's more like "there are no free nutrients available, limiting growth of everything including GHA". I feel bad about limiting growth of everything.

That said, I do have huge cyano outbreak at the moment and don't dose AF additives.

 

[sikorskys]

Current FTS.

Tank is recovering from being covered in cyano from top to bottom. Looks terrible, yeah.

BTW, my nitrates are 10ppm, finally

 

[acabgd]

This is how I test my water.

It's custom made magnetic stirrer. 3D-printed body, USB charging, controlled speed and backlight on a separate switch. Cost me $30.

And that's SOOO easier to do a titration test this way I can't believe they don't sell such stirrers everywhere.

I would soooo buy this immediately!

 

[acabgd]

That's a lot of changes, although your tank is pushing over 6 months old. I would expect for things to stabilise by now, but considering you added the lights and the skimmer only much later, it might be the case of nasties still doing their thing as with any new tank.

Maybe the rock that was "cured" by your LFS contained a lot of phosphates or other stuff that just keep leaching. Hard to say. I'd do many more regular water changes for a few weeks and see if that brings any positive changes.

 

[sikorskys]

That's a lot of changes, although your tank is pushing over 6 months old. I would expect for things to stabilise by now, but considering you added the lights and the skimmer only much later, it might be the case of nasties still doing their thing as with any new tank.

Maybe the rock that was "cured" by your LFS contained a lot of phosphates or other stuff that just keep leaching. Hard to say. I'd do many more regular water changes for a few weeks and see if that brings any positive changes.

It's not phosphates, it's me Too much light, too much feeding, too much chaeto, too much AF additives and so on. It's my bad, totally.

I'm over-reacting all the time, one way or another.

 

[acabgd]

I understand. Take it easy and good luck.

 

[sikorskys]

I understand. Take it easy and good luck.

Thank you

 

[sikorskys]

Current FTS. Cyano is gone but tank is covered with GHA, again.

Have added peppermint shrimp, six more blue-green chromis, foxface (no QT) and ten snails (to deal with GHA).

 

[sikorskys]

So, I've got dinos. Wish me luck.

I thought it was cyano, but it's probably not. It looks like dinos, it behaves like dinos, red slime remover has no effect on it, it's killing my snails and peroxide test confirmed it is dinos.

 

[sikorskys]

I've never had dinos before, so it's new experience for me. Should be fun

My assumptions are:

• Dinoflagellates are photosynthetic. Reducing light time should help against them
• Dinoflagellates thrive when there's no competition. Adding diversity at bacterium level should help against them
• Increased NO3 and PO4 levels help other microorganisms to thrive thus outcompete dinos. Elevated nutrients should help against them

So, that's how I'm going to beat dinos: less light, more nutrients and lots of bacteria. Further more, I'll be dosing Fauna Marin Dino X hoping it will help also.

 

[sikorskys]

Just for the record, this is my battle plan.

Day 1

• Stop doing water changes
• Stop dosing microelements (Red Sea ABC+ in my case)
• Remove as much of dinos as possible
• Renew activated carbon
• Remove all macro-algae out of fuge (chaeto & caulepra)
• Turn off DT lights for 3 days
• Turn off refugium lights

Tank looks terrible so far.

 

[sikorskys]

Day 4

• Add a vial of Prodibio BioDigest

It's the last day of 3 day blackout. It's not 100% blackout though since tank was still exposed to room ambient light (no cardboard cover or so).

 

[sikorskys]

Day 5

• Reduce photoperiod from 12 to 6 hours
• Turn lights on
• Remove activated carbon
• Remove GHA leftovers
• Start to dose Fauna Marin Dino X (12ml every other day) 1h after lights go off

It's the first day after blackout. Much of the problem is gone by now. The question is will dinos return and how fast?

Current params:

• Temp: 80.6F
• Salinity: 34ppt
• kH: 7.7
• Ca: 470
• NO3: 5
• PO4: 0.25