Yes, the other thread we'd kinda like to keep it to tried and true, whereas here - with this strain being unresponsive to UV there's a bit more justification for experimentation. Maybe the Si will turn out to be a key, maybe it'll be a slightly helpful tool among many, or maybe a complete dead end. We'll see!
This is a very astute point. I pegged nutrient competition and allelopathy as separate possible mechanisms, but they are very likely connected - competition triggering the allelopathy. Where I would dissent slightly is that I feel like we know what happens under P limitation - many systems have traveled that road, and the dinos do quite well at causing lots of problems. For that reason I'd lean toward keeping P, N, and Si all very available until the growth plateaus from having consumed some more minor element (like Fe or B12 etc.)
Anything for a fellow AP Phys teacher
Your oddball invert crew sounds weirdly like mine! holothuria, conch, limpets, chitons - I also got lucky with a large Cerith that laid eggs immediately, blessing me with a million tiny ceriths all over the sand. If you had an urchin and emeralds - we'd be almost totally in sync there.
Since you have filamentous algae (I'd call it green but you say brown - probably because of what covers the algae and not the filaments themselves) and diatoms, and your system has held stable elevated P and N for over a month now with very slow progress, and you have quality herbivores that'll actually eat diatoms, I'd say go for adding Silica. Check my comments linked at the first post, I think 1ppm Silica is a fine upper end target if you actually have a test kit that can read it. (Salifert failed me - I'll review Hannah as soon as mine arrives). Also the microscope will be crucial since you'll need it to tell what's going on - diatoms or dinos. You might even find the diatom competition suppresses new growth or reduces the filamentous algae too.
@Waterbourn it sounds like some of this discussion with dwest may apply to you too. If not, kinda give us a description and shots of your tank status outbreak, and microfauna report like dwest did.
I second dwest on "no way to tell from that pic"
yep! That paper is what we are using as a playbook for the Si approach.
That's an interesting paper. A couple of takes from it. It seems to specifically suggest that high levels of Organic N favor Dino bloom more strongly than the levels of N (or P - they didn't really look a P much) overall. It's another piece pointing to the notion that dinos are well equipped to thrive on organic nutrients while simple inorganic nutrients favor growth of other classes. That idea form several published papers is the basis (along with hobbyist experience) for advocating P & N dosing as helpful vs heavy feeding as unproductive.
Hard to say yet. A couple of possible successes, some no effects, most not enough info to say yet.
Very little data and it's inconclusive.
Update: sand samples show only a few Amphidinium Dino’s, good population of diatoms. I had some concerns about a few areas but the color is more of a golden brown. Silicate still around 2ppm. I’m thinking we always have some dinoflagellates in our tanks, the only time we see them is when a bloom occurs. There are a lot of people on here that are more expert than I that maybe able to expand on that subject.
Pictures show what my tank looked like on 1/18/18 when I showed up here and what it looks like today, that’s less than 30 days. I have not vacuumed the sand since Saturday, lights are up to almost my normal intensity and color.
The methods for controling Dino’s in this thread goes against what a lot of us have been told for the last couple of years but they work!
