alilogan1983
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- Joined
- Jun 17, 2020
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- United Kingdom
Hi All, first post on here... I’ve got a feeling I’ve had these for a while and assumed they were diatoms as the tanks only 5 months old.. pretty much cleared for a few weeks but then dosed a little Red Sea AB+ over a couple of weeks and they exploded on the sand bed and now spreading to the rocks. (I've stopped dosing AB+ now)
I had a microscope delivered a couple of days ago and through discussion with Jason Mack on a facebook group we have ID'd them as Prorocentrum (See image below) and come up with the below plan.
Just some detail about the tank
Tank is a red sea reefer 250 cycled back in January 2020 using ATM colony and after 4 days nitrate reading was seen, I've been running rowa since the start really just to make sure I didn't get a GHA explosion (I realised now that I've no doubt stripped the tank of phosphate due to this) I have a red sea 300 skimmer and I've been running that skimming pretty wet (again to make sure I didnt get a spike in levels)
phosphate and nitrate have never bottomed out usually around 5ppm nitrate (salifert test kit) and phosphate has never been below 0.03 (hanna ULR checker)
My current readings are nitrate 10 and phosphate 0.03..
Current Plan of Attack
1. Keep phosphate reactor off - Done
2. Keep skimmer running dry - Done
3. Complete small 5l water changes to clean sand bed? just read a thread that there is no point running through a sock as the dinos just bypass the socks?
4. Dose x3 100ml lots of copepods weekly - On Order - hopefully here tomorrow
5. Dose phytoplankton daily - Started today
6. Dose silicate to introduce diatom bloom - hopefully here tomorrow
7. Run UV in tank only while lights are off - Started last night
8. Test nitrate and phosphate daily and dose if required to get levels to nitrate 5- 10 and raise phosphate to 0.05 and 0.1 - Started today - Phosphate 0.06, Nitrate 10
Has anyone got any experience in defeating these if so can you please share your methods?
Only been at this a day to be fair and going to give the above a blast for a good few weeks to see how it gets on, I'm just after a general feel for how others have won against these monsters
I had a microscope delivered a couple of days ago and through discussion with Jason Mack on a facebook group we have ID'd them as Prorocentrum (See image below) and come up with the below plan.
Just some detail about the tank
Tank is a red sea reefer 250 cycled back in January 2020 using ATM colony and after 4 days nitrate reading was seen, I've been running rowa since the start really just to make sure I didn't get a GHA explosion (I realised now that I've no doubt stripped the tank of phosphate due to this) I have a red sea 300 skimmer and I've been running that skimming pretty wet (again to make sure I didnt get a spike in levels)
phosphate and nitrate have never bottomed out usually around 5ppm nitrate (salifert test kit) and phosphate has never been below 0.03 (hanna ULR checker)
My current readings are nitrate 10 and phosphate 0.03..
Current Plan of Attack
1. Keep phosphate reactor off - Done
2. Keep skimmer running dry - Done
3. Complete small 5l water changes to clean sand bed? just read a thread that there is no point running through a sock as the dinos just bypass the socks?
4. Dose x3 100ml lots of copepods weekly - On Order - hopefully here tomorrow
5. Dose phytoplankton daily - Started today
6. Dose silicate to introduce diatom bloom - hopefully here tomorrow
7. Run UV in tank only while lights are off - Started last night
8. Test nitrate and phosphate daily and dose if required to get levels to nitrate 5- 10 and raise phosphate to 0.05 and 0.1 - Started today - Phosphate 0.06, Nitrate 10
Has anyone got any experience in defeating these if so can you please share your methods?
Only been at this a day to be fair and going to give the above a blast for a good few weeks to see how it gets on, I'm just after a general feel for how others have won against these monsters
