Another Help with Dinos/diatoms post. Microscope pics attached.

[Arsenix2001]

75 gallon with 30 gallon sump, exactly 1 year old. All contents came from a 1 year old 38 gallon. Sand was new, coralife live sand I believe. Reef octo 150ss 6" skimmer. Filter socks, no prefilter. Running a 1/3 cup worth of activated carbon. 4 kessil 160's running 60 percent blue ramping to 80% intensity for 4 hours and total on off time 10 hours. Par meter giving me 150-180 par on sand bed.

100lbs live rock
Large mass of cheato growing in sump (like 2 gallon ziplock bags worth)
2 clowns
One coral beauty
One watchman goby
Fireshrimp snails urchin and crabs

Cal -460
Alk -8.7
Ph - 8.3
Water temp 76.5
Nitrate 0-2 ppm
Phosphate undetectable

Dose with reef fusion 1/2. Trace and plus

I didn't feed very heavy, maybe flake/pellet or mysis 2 times daily.

3 month ago atarted noticing small light brown patches, only on sand. Continued to get worse till last month I changed all RO media and DI resins, upped water changes and seemed to keep getting worse. Reef plus and trace seem to fuel the fire. Last week finally got bad enough that I saw stranding and bubbles at the tips. It quickly blows apart with a baster in the sand and does not appear to be on the rock. Comes back after stirring within the hour. Still there with lights off, gets worse with lights on. Im leaning to Dinos. Have a bottle of biospira and brightwells nitro and phos to try and raise nitrate and phosphate. Ive turned off the skimmer yesterday and quit doing water changes. Been feeding heavier. Should I do a major cutback of my cheato? Do these look like Dinos? Any help appreciated.

 

[Arsenix2001]

Bump

 

[Lavey29]

I'm no microscope expert but if your nitrates and phosphate are bottomed out you will have tank problems and coral decline. I had to double dose neophos and neonitro daily to get my numbers up and mitigate the algae that was taking over. Cut your lights to 6 hours, no whites.

 

[Arsenix2001]

Corals have been doing well, birdsnest and monti growing rapidly. GSP quit growing but doing well. Ill shorten the light span as well. Thanks

 

[Arsenix2001]

Bump again... Anyone good with ID scope pictures?

 

[Arsenix2001]

I identified them myself since wasn't getting much help. They are prorocentrum. I am dosing phos and nitrate, biospira and adding a green killer UV temporarily. Running blue spectrum light. Should I remove alot of my cheato to keep it from stripping nitrate?

 

[thedon986]

That is my guess as well. One of those cells looks like it might have the "beak" that large cell amphidinium has. Not surprising to find both together. I have both, plus coolia. Prorocentrum tend to stay more motionless under the scope. Large cell tend to do the "roomba" dance. Treatment large the same for both.

 

[thedon986]

Btw that first scope pic, the perfectly round cell, might be coolia. I have found they show up more red than brown when they are grouped up. They also seem to move much faster.

 

[Arsenix2001]

Btw that first scope pic, the perfectly round cell, might be coolia. I have found they show up more red than brown when they are grouped up. They also seem to move much faster.

Thanks, they move around slowly almost just vibrating/fluttering. Definitely stays brown when clumped with string bubbles in the densest section. Ordered a ton of pods and phyto which will be here hopefully by Monday. Uv sterilizer and hanna checkers for phos/nitrate be here tomorrow. Going to cut the white out of my lights today. Keeping fingers crossed.

 

[thedon986]

Also look at silicate dosing via SpongExcel or water glass. Growing diatoms helps fight them too. Don't run GFO if you dose that though because it removes silica.

 

[Arsenix2001]

Also look at silicate dosing via SpongExcel or water glass. Growing diatoms helps fight them too. Don't run GFO if you dose that though because it removes silica.

Thanks for the tip!

 

[Arsenix2001]

I have a huge mass of cheato, like 12x16x5" thick. Should I thin it out to aid it and raising nitrates?

 

[thedon986]

Possibly. I always found thinning my cheato encouraged it to grow faster. I use NeoNitro and NeoPhos to raise mine, made by Brightwell.

 

[Arsenix2001]

I finally got my Hannah testers, high range nitrate and phosphorus, after the initial doses of neo nitro and neo phos, I am reading 0.0 nitrate, and 28ppb phosphorus which converts to .086ppm phosphate.

Is phosphate ok? I will be dosing more nitrate to get to 3-4ppm and removing 1/2 or more of my cheato.

 

[thedon986]

Phosphate is good right there. Try to hold it as best you can, higher being better. You'll need to daily test both for a while so try to stock up on reagents. Luckily the phosphate reagents are cheaper because you'll need more of them. Once I got my nitrate up it stayed relatively stable but phosphate kept dropping really fast.

Also, your water volume is about the same as mine, I had to dose about 15mls of Nitro to raise it 2-4ppm. It is definitely less potent than the Phos.

 

[Arsenix2001]

Thanks for the info, will check again tomorrow. When I thinned out my Cheato, I had no idea how huge it had gotten. I easily took more than a gallon Ziploc bag stuffed tight and there is still a fair amount left.

 

[Arsenix2001]

Dinos just seem to be getting worse. Im up to .07 phosphate and struggling to stay at 1.5-2ppm nitrate. Been dosing biospira and just started microbactr7 in its place. Green killer UV running at night. I have tigriopus and tisbe bimin pods along with live phyto from pod your reed coming tomorrow. The mats are like thick brown now and if I stir them they come back within 30 minutes. Starting to lose hope

 

[ClutchCityReefer]

Don't lose hope. Perhaps try to introduce silicates like mentioned above.

I too was struggling with dinos after zeroing out my phosphates and nitrates. The dino was seriously irritating some zoas and I was able to get my phosphates up but my nitrates were still at zero, so a bit of cyano started to grow. In other words, I was extremely depressed and had a twofer - both cyano and dinos.

I thought this was a disaster but fast forward a week and a half and the cyano completely took over and no more dino. Not perfect, but at least it was more manageable and did not irritate my corals. Even better, the cyano was pretty easy to knock out through aggressive manual removal and dosing bacteria (Vibrant or in my case waste away).

Long story short, I definitely can add to the anecdotal support that combating dinos with another form of nuisance can be a huge positive. Since when you stop adding silicates the diatoms will vanish quick it should be even easier to manage this way than what I dealt with with cyano.

I am far from an expert but if I were you I would focus on dosing nitrates and phosphates until you get consistently solid non-zero readings and would at the same time dose silicates to induce a diatom bloom to combat the dinos. I would also be sure to have a stock of waste away or vibrant to add to the tank after your diatoms successfully outcompete the dinos.

 

[Arsenix2001]

Thank you for the encouragement. I forgot I did order brightwells sponge feed and have dosed 4 drops silicate now for 3 days. I will order vibrant right now to have on hand.

All of my corals seem to be doing pretty well with the exception of a torch. It has retracted quite a bit since all of this dosing began. And I noticed when I blow it off I see a lot of fine torch tips coming off. I do not see any evidence of nudibranch like I usually do every once in a while. I was thinking about dipping it again but I'm not sure if it's parasitic or not and don't want to stress it out even more if it's already stressed from parameter changes. I just don't get it because my hammer and all of my birds nest mushrooms other soft corals are doing just fine.

 

[ClutchCityReefer]

Yea I wouldn't stress it. I understand that torches can have a lot of pest problems so if you've seen issues from nudies in the past I'd be willing to bet that is causing the issue again (not the dosing, especially if your other euphyilia are doing well). My issue was dinos settling on my zoa polyps and needing to brush them off in order to get them to open again.

Have you successfully induced a diatom bloom yet with the silicates? I am not an expert in reef chemistry but I bet @Randy Holmes-Farley may have some good advice on how to best handle it (i.e. how many PPM of silicates to introduce to day, etc.).