Are these dinos?

[road_runner]

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[helms20]

I read that dino predators cant survive without phosphates and nitrates. I have read many posts where people claim to have beaten dinos this way, but not 100% sure to be honest.

 

[helms20]

Predators might be incorrect. At any rate something else will out compete the dinos.

 

[road_runner]

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[helms20]

I have no corals in my tank yet just fish, inverts, and an anemone. I dont mind trying something and documenting it. I think the idea is to keep no3 and po4 just slightly above 0 to help deal with them, but I will refer to others on that.

 

[taricha]

@Dom and @taricha do you think I should start dosing? I ran another PO4 test tonight and still not getting any phosphates even with overfeeding. I'm also not even washing my frozen foods to try and get a little bit in there. Turning the lights back on tomorrow after 3 days and while they are diminished I expect them to return if I dont fix the issue.

I think your system is young and ignoring everything bad and chalking it up to the uglies is a sensible approach until tank matures.
If I were going to go aggressive against dinos, I'd install a UV unit and possibly dose P. Don't overfeed. It's unpredictable and takes a really long time to work if at all.

 

[road_runner]

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[4FordFamily]

Looks like dinos to me..

 

[Dom]

Should I keep overfeeding?

Keep overfeeding and turn off the skimmer. Just because it's breaking in, doesn't mean it isn't doing its job. It just isn't as efficient during the break in period.

You can turn on the skimmer again and break it in at a later time.

 

[taricha]

Also if increasing po4 so much would help, what's the plan later when you want to run low nutrients so you add coral?

Later, you can gradually increase the export, don't drop nutrients by starving the input.
Besides I wouldn't aim for PO4 higher than 0.10 anyway, corals generally are not unhappy at those levels.
Running low nutrients but not starving anything is a balancing act. Need to understand system dynamics better than just numbers in a test kit to make it work.
Just my $0.02

 

[road_runner]

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[helms20]

Ok I'm turning off my skimmer now and going to see if I can get a po4 reading later, but ran out of reagent last night so ordered more. I should have it early next week and can run tests then. We will see how it goes. I didnt have this issue in my 45 but my rocks were leaking po4 like crazy until about 9 months into it. After that everything balanced out.

 

[helms20]

Ok I'm turning off my skimmer now and going to see if I can get a po4 reading later, but ran out of reagent last night so ordered more. I should have it early next week and can run tests then. We will see how it goes. I didnt have this issue in my 45 but my rocks were leaking po4 like crazy until about 9 months into it. After that everything balanced out.