Boomer's IM 20G Nano

[Nick Steele]

Yeah, i think that's where we part. I think dinos like low nutrients or very high nutrients when you don't have coral/macro established.

I have been feeding very very heavy after my dino outbreak, to a point it seems ridiculous, in the same 20 gallon tank... and the dinos went away...

If he does the deep clean and cleans the sand too well--the uber low nutrients could just bring back the dinos with vengeance IMO.

Also i think stability is key and dino's will love any major change. the deep clean is a big enough change. Washing away all the beneficial bacteria and detritrus in the sand bed i think is just too much change all at once if he's putting the corals/fish back in...

Personally, i would just scrubb the rocks, rinse the sand lightly (if at all), clean the tank lightly, do a big water change marching salinity, temp, and alkalinity perfectly, put the corals back in, and keep dark for three days while running UV, keep running UV, add a refugium (very minimal macro algae though--maybe golf ball size chaeto to start), add copepods and dose phyto every night, and add some hearty corals like shrooms, ricordia, leathers, zoos, euphilias, xenia, etc.

I did the deep clean in my tank for Dino’s. I removed all my sand and did all step I listed above and it’s been just about two weeks with zero signs of Dino’s and I’m starting to see algae on my glass for first time in months! The point of the deep clean is to rinse away all unwanted organisms (algae/Dino’s/ detritus etc). I stand behind cleaning the sand if he wants to go down this route.

Also @Mywifeisgunnakillme if you haven’t read the sand rinse thread I posted above go check it out might show you why rinsing sand is well worth it.

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

I did the deep clean in my tank for Dino’s. I removed all my sand and did all step I listed above and it’s been just about two weeks with zero signs of Dino’s and I’m starting to see algae on my glass for first time in months! The point of the deep clean is to rinse away all unwanted organisms (algae/Dino’s/ detritus etc). I stand behind cleaning the sand if he wants to go down this route.

Also @Mywifeisgunnakillme if you haven’t read the sand rinse thread I posted above go check it out might show you why rinsing sand is well worth it.

i hear you on the philosophy advocated ... And i am not saying its a bad way to go. There's 100 ways to skin the cat in reef keeping to get to a balanced system that doesn't have unwanted algae take over.

I just don't happen to agree that its the way to go for this guy under these circumstances as i understand them... .

Sand beds don't have "all unwanted organisms" IMO. They have, well, life, and all that comes with it. The question is whether that life is more helpful or less helpful on balance to rid him of dinos (and keep this corals and tank alive thriving). One reason newer tanks struggle with dinos is because of this lack of diversity and buffering and substance for bacteria and the like to grow on. That sand bed is likely the one thing that gives his stability.

In sum, it's risky to not helpful IMO to remove an entire sandbed in a matter of an hour or so, scrub clean rocks (removing not just dinos but nitrafying bacteria), and then put corals and fish right back in. I don't think its necessary nor helpful, and could lead to some die off of sensitive corals...

 

[Nick Steele]

i hear you on the philosophy advocated ... And i am not saying its a bad way to go. There's 100 ways to skin the cat in reef keeping to get to a balanced system that doesn't have unwanted algae take over.

I just don't happen to agree that its the way to go for this guy under these circumstances as i understand them... .

Sand beds don't have "all unwanted organisms" IMO. They have, well, life, and all that comes with it. The question is whether that life is more helpful or less helpful on balance to rid him of dinos (and keep this corals and tank alive thriving). One reason newer tanks struggle with dinos is because of this lack of diversity and buffering and substance for bacteria and the like to grow on. That sand bed is likely the one thing that gives his stability.

In sum, it's risky to not helpful IMO to remove an entire sandbed in a matter of an hour or so, scrub clean rocks (removing not just dinos but nitrafying bacteria), and then put corals and fish right back in. I don't think its necessary nor helpful, and could lead to some die off of sensitive corals...

See that is what you are missing scrubbing rocks will not remove nitrifying bacteria it actually just rids the tank of unwanted things when I did it I could literally see Dino’s being washed off my rocks. There are way to many places that bacteria thrive in a tank it’s not just on the outside of the rock there’s all those little pores and places where you can only think of getting. And yes you might lose some organisms in the sand but that is a small price to pay if you’re at your wits end fighting Dino’s or algae.

Plus he’s done all of the normal things for fighting Dino’s besides a blackout (which won’t completely get rid of them). I just gave him another option that cost nothing but time and the cost of making 30ish gallons of water.

 

[boomeraudio]

I did the deep clean in my tank for Dino’s. I removed all my sand and did all step I listed above and it’s been just about two weeks with zero signs of Dino’s and I’m starting to see algae on my glass for first time in months! The point of the deep clean is to rinse away all unwanted organisms (algae/Dino’s/ detritus etc). I stand behind cleaning the sand if he wants to go down this route.

Also @Mywifeisgunnakillme if you haven’t read the sand rinse thread I posted above go check it out might show you why rinsing sand is well worth it.

I vacuumed the sand bed and that’s when this breakout of dinos started :/ I think I removed too much bacteria.

 

[Nick Steele]

I vacuumed the sand bed and that’s when this breakout of dinos started :/ I think I removed too much bacteria.

I doubt it was you removed bacteria but maybe more so your water was too clean. Lacking phosphate or nitrate instead.

I hope you figure out your Dino’s soon as it’s the last thing I hope anyone to go through cause it sucks! I did a 2-3 month battle and now I’m finally over it.

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

There is just few reasons to disturb a shallow sand bed IMO.

 

[boomeraudio]

I doubt it was you removed bacteria but maybe more so your water was too clean. Lacking phosphate or nitrate instead.

I hope you figure out your Dino’s soon as it’s the last thing I hope anyone to go through cause it sucks! I did a 2-3 month battle and now I’m finally over it.

Yeah, I believe the vacuum along with the water change lowered the nitrates and phosphates too much. I was just doing weekly maintenance too trying to be diligent with my system. I've read a lot that says don't skip water changes. Turns out, I should've ha ha.

Either way, I'll come out of this on top. I'm determined. I won't give up. Hoping I don't lose much alont the way because everything was THRIVING.

 

[Nick Steele]

That’s the spirit! Keep at it and you will overcome Dino’s and get the tank looking better!

 

[boomeraudio]

That’s the spirit! Keep at it and you will overcome Dino’s and get the tank looking better!

dang you're up early ha ha. So here's where we are at.

Today is the 2nd day of the blackout.
Dosed 2ml peroxide at night. 2ml bacter7 during the day (day 2 today).
Changing the filter media daily. Cleaning the filter for the UV sterilizer daily too.
Tomorrow I'll turn on the lights with a low blue and continue to dose.

I'll test tomorrow evening and see where we are at. Sand bed looks better already but I need to get those corals happy.

Hoping this works.

 

[Nick Steele]

Yeah I start work at 7am which sucks but is what it is.

After the blackout make sure to keep an eye on nutrients daily and don’t let phos/nitrate go back to zero. Mine stayed steady for a week then I didn’t test for 2 days then bam Dino’s were back so I tested and 0/0 again.

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

I've read a lot that says don't skip water changes.

On a nano, small tank, water changes IMO are key. But you don't need do anything other than the water change when doing the water change. This isn't just my opinion, but guys like Jake at reef builders has said the same thing.

No need to vacuum a shallow sand bed. Leave it. Manually remove things like green hair algae or other nuisance algae before the water change. But try not to scrub the rocks unless you really need to (granted you doing a major deep clean right now and that's okay because the system is way out balance). By scrubbing (when the system is not way out of wack) you're actually creating an area for nuisance algae to gain a foothold.... When water parameters are where you need, within that range where corals and coraline outcompete it generally, the nusiance alage will die off. That's where water changes really help. they remove the dying plant material to prevent the tank from going out of balance and the cycle happening again....

5% or 10% a week or about 20% a month, weekly or monthly, water changes, and that will keep the water parameters from skewing over the long haul.... It will remove the dying dinos and nusiance algae without a major disruption. Skipping these water changes will lead to problems at some point, especially with a nano IMO.

Make sure you have proper/plently of flow and a nice skimmer too. Run some carbon.

In sum, don't go from one extreme to another constantly. Do your deep clean, then adopt a reasonable water change schedule. Act like a tang and remove nusiance algae manually, but don't go crazy with scrubbing rocks or sucking up the sand bed. Just do reasonable maintenance, keep up the water changes, and the tank will mature and you'll be make it through ugly stages. If you don't keep a routine for a few months, consistently, your preventing the tank from maturing and sorting these things out on its own.

Edit: don't chase numbers, there is no need or worse over react to them. Just be consistent as stated above. If you notice phosphates way high, run carbon, dose a simple product like "Tropic marin elimi-phos rapid"--per instructions only! Be patient. Your tank will be fine. The above is a tried and true recipe for success.

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

Was randomly listening to this BRS video and the head hancho's advice was "don't ever remove your sand bed...." as stares at a messed up tank...

@20minute mark

 

[boomeraudio]

On a nano, small tank, water changes IMO are key. But you don't need do anything other than the water change when doing the water change. This isn't just my opinion, but guys like Jake at reef builders has said the same thing.

No need to vacuum a shallow sand bed. Leave it. Manually remove things like green hair algae or other nuisance algae before the water change. But try not to scrub the rocks unless you really need to (granted you doing a major deep clean right now and that's okay because the system is way out balance). By scrubbing (when the system is not way out of wack) you're actually creating an area for nuisance algae to gain a foothold.... When water parameters are where you need, within that range where corals and coraline outcompete it generally, the nusiance alage will die off. That's where water changes really help. they remove the dying plant material to prevent the tank from going out of balance and the cycle happening again....

5% or 10% a week or about 20% a month, weekly or monthly, water changes, and that will keep the water parameters from skewing over the long haul.... It will remove the dying dinos and nusiance algae without a major disruption. Skipping these water changes will lead to problems at some point, especially with a nano IMO.

Make sure you have proper/plently of flow and a nice skimmer too. Run some carbon.

In sum, don't go from one extreme to another constantly. Do your deep clean, then adopt a reasonable water change schedule. Act like a tang and remove nusiance algae manually, but don't go crazy with scrubbing rocks or sucking up the sand bed. Just do reasonable maintenance, keep up the water changes, and the tank will mature and you'll be make it through ugly stages. If you don't keep a routine for a few months, consistently, your preventing the tank from maturing and sorting these things out on its own.

Edit: don't chase numbers, there is no need or worse over react to them. Just be consistent as stated above. If you notice phosphates way high, run carbon, dose a simple product like "Tropic marin elimi-phos rapid"--per instructions only! Be patient. Your tank will be fine. The above is a tried and true recipe for success.

Good advice here. Still having issues in the sand and hitting it with a turkey baster daily. Changing filter pads every couple days. Running a skimmer and UV sterilizer. Dosing Bacter7 (2ml daily).

Tested this morning.

Nitrate: 10ppm
Phos: .03ppm

Haven't done a water change because I'm afraid of going LESS nutrient and then allowing the dino's to present themselves more. The numbers seems to line up with staying on schedule with what I'm doing but I'm not sure.

Funny you posted that video about not removing your sand bed. I just watched a different video about how removing the sand bed slowly over time is a good way to go - so there are two sides. I'd love to keep the sand though.

Outside of testing the water parameters, I'm truly not sure of where to go next. I want to keep the AI Prime running but it seems to feed the dinos. Not ready to give up yet but this sure as hell is frustrating.

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

Keep on keeping on. Reduce light to a few hours, add live phyto, pods, nitrifying bacteria, and manually remove dinos.

Black out periods here and there if gets bad.

Large water changes okay after manually removing dinos to clean water column but test new water to match salinity, alk, and temp.

Hangon refugium with macro i think helps. Encourages nuisance algae grow there not tank. Easy to remove to clean.

It will take time to find the tanks balance.

Some say dose silicates to encourage diatoms, out compete dinos. Not a bad idea IMO.

When i brew beer as an analogy, i want one or two sometimes yeast cultures to outcompete wild yeast and bacteria.... things go awry when then latter take over.. you just gotta encourage what u want to grow to out compete dinos and deprive the dinos of their numbers and what they need while they fight to survive ...

No quick answers if UV wont work... but sounds like like your doing just fine. I think the sand bed removal disrupted the balance in favor of dinos, but the bacteria and such removed beating dinos back will repopulate over time.

 

[boomeraudio]

Keep on keeping on. Reduce light to a few hours, add live phyto, pods, nitrifying bacteria, and manually remove dinos.

Black out periods here and there if gets bad.

Large water changes okay after manually removing dinos to clean water column but test new water to match salinity, alk, and temp.

Hangon refugium with macro i think helps. Encourages nuisance algae grow there not tank. Easy to remove to clean.

It will take time to find the tanks balance.

Some say dose silicates to encourage diatoms, out compete dinos. Not a bad idea IMO.

When i brew beer as an analogy, i want one or two sometimes yeast cultures to outcompete wild yeast and bacteria.... things go awry when then latter take over.. you just gotta encourage what u want to grow to out compete dinos and deprive the dinos of their numbers and what they need while they fight to survive ...

No quick answers if UV wont work... but sounds like like your doing just fine. I think the sand bed removal disrupted the balance in favor of dinos, but the bacteria and such removed beating dinos back will repopulate over time.

Alright so after further visual inspection, it seems like my Monti has started to bleach a little. I tested EVERYTHING with Hanna. Here's what I got and cannot begin to explain why this is all happening at this point.

ONLY SALIFERT TEST Nitrate - 10ppm
Hanna Alkalinity - 7.336 dKH
Hanna Calcium - 403ppm
Hanna Phosphate - .17ppm

So the nutrients in the tank should be out competing the Dino's at this point shouldn't they? I'm really at a loss for what to do now. Algae has started on the rocks because well, excess nutrients (Nitrate/Phosphate). I don't want to start dosing nopox because that's going to mess things up and bring dino's back. Maybe a 5% water change will do the trick.

 

[Nick Steele]

I’d say if you got algae growing let that grow for a few weeks. Algae is much easier to manage then Dino’s.

After my Rip clean i had algae growing all over the place rocks glass you name it. Snails and hermits don’t mind. I accidentally let nutrients drop to 0 again and Dino’s started to show up again (really need to test daily!). With the algae growing the only place I can see any Dino’s are on the seams of my glass. I’m fine with this.

As for your lights maybe drop down to 5-6 hrs max and cut out all white light as well. I’m doing this and on day 3 I noticed not as many Dino’s.

 

[boomeraudio]

I’d say if you got algae growing let that grow for a few weeks. Algae is much easier to manage then Dino’s.

After my Rip clean i had algae growing all over the place rocks glass you name it. Snails and hermits don’t mind. I accidentally let nutrients drop to 0 again and Dino’s started to show up again (really need to test daily!). With the algae growing the only place I can see any Dino’s are on the seams of my glass. I’m fine with this.

As for your lights maybe drop down to 5-6 hrs max and cut out all white light as well. I’m doing this and on day 3 I noticed not as many Dino’s.

Just removed the white. Running full from 11a-4p with a blue/uv ramp from 9-11a and ramp down blue/uv 4p-6p.

11-4a
UV 110%
Violet 79%
Royal 80%
Blue 86%
Greed 1%
Red 1%

What you think?

 

[Nick Steele]

Should be good. If it doesn’t work you could also do acclimation mode to let it re ramp up.

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

My thought is that dinos like ultra low nutrients where phosphate and nitrates are out of whack and also like systems where nitrates and phosphates are very high and out of whack.

...it seems like my Monti has started to bleach a little....

Todayish:

ONLY SALIFERT TEST Nitrate - 10ppm
Hanna Alkalinity - 7.336 dKH
Hanna Calcium - 403ppm
Hanna Phosphate - .17ppm

Early january (last year):

Ammonia: 0.5ppm
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5ppm
Phosphate: 0.33ppm

later in january (last year)

Salinity - 1.025 d SG
Temp - 75.6 F
Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - 0 ppm
PH - 7.8
Alkalinity - 7.728 dKH

later in january (last year)

Ammonia: .5 ppm
Nitrite: .25 ppm
Nitrate: 7.5 ppm

later in january (last year)

Salinity: 1.025
Temp: 78.2 - just raised it up a bit more
PH: 7.8
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0* big problem here
Alk: 7.896
Phosphates: .08

in feburary (last year)

0 ammonia
0 nitrites
nitrates 5ppm
1.025 salinity
78 degrees temp

later in february (last year)

Parameters -
Salinity: 1.025 ppm
Temp: 80.3 degrees (lowering a bit)
PH: 8.0
Ammonia: .25 ppm
Nitrite: .50 ppm
Nitrate: Approx. 30 ppm
Phosphates: .04 ppm
Alkalinity: 8.064 dKH

No sure of numbers in 2020, but likely not stable for a while and then stabilized somewhat when things were looking up??

Then dinos hit this winter... after removing sand... changing ratios and balance and now dinos continue when phosphate 0.17 and nitrate 10ppm...

If following redfield ratio it's less about the numbers--its more about the ratio of the numbers --16 part nitrate to 1 part phosphate or god knows what, but some like ratio is likely where tanks are balanced and dinos are not a problem:

In my opinion, your issues have to do with stability. I would put the test kits away for a little while or don't react to them.

Don't chase these numbers. Just look at your tank, and take reasonable, slow, actions.

In other words, your monti isn't bleaching because of your light. It's bleaching because its SPS and your water parameters are not stable. Changing your light is going to make this worse---your changing yet another thing and destabilizing the system more.

IMO, your nitrates now (10ppm) and your phosphates (0.17) are out of whack (redfield would say aim for 2.72ppm nitrates with 0.17ppm phosphates (0.17 x 16 = 2.72)).

The nitrates you have are exponentially higher feeding nuisance algae. You don't have enough life/corals to eat up the rest of the nitrate and its feed nuiance dinos, etc.

I would not heavily feed, feed reasonably. Physically remove dinos during water changes. Do black outs as you absolutely need to kick the dinos in the pants. Add live phyto, copepods, maybe some bacteria, and an hang on refugium with macro algae---these things proliferate and create stability--so that feeding inputs by us and exports by us change the balance of the system less (diversity of life is like alkalinity buffer for nutrients IMO....you add more food and life eats and aborbs it, the balance doesn't change; you add less food, and population of life can sustain itself for while and the balance doesn't change...t= the goal is not some particular number or test result--the goal finding a balance and keeping it stable... stability is king for corals and balance is king for keep nuisance algae/dinos at bay and out competed by other life we like...). Reduce light to like 4-6 hours a day--if corals react poorly, lean toward six, if they are fine, lean towards 4 hours.

Do 20% water changes weekly. Run a skimmer. Run some carbon. Do this for another two months or so--consistently. I would not even bother testing.... See where you are at then....

Bottom line is that you need stability... not more change... Do things to bring those nitrates down so that not exponentially higher than phosphates... But this does not mean you need to test constantly. You've diagnosed the problem IMO. Just give your tank what it really needs--slow changes towards nitrate/nutrient control. You don't have enough corals to justify the heavy feeding approach...that just adds more nutrients that are still out of balance..

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

Your rocks still look new. I would say give your tank time to mature and try not to panic and make any sudden changes.

yes. I can tell the tank new in terms of maturity, regardless of its actual "age" in months because Coraline algae is not taking over. You could dose some of that as well.