Diatoms and Dino's

[Tihsho]

In the process of getting my display tank up, I've been QTing inverts and coral in a 20 gallon long to keep an eye on the frags and inverts to make sure they are OK to move into the display post 76 days. Over the time of this tank being up (so at 2 months or so now) it started to go through the ugly phase with diatoms. This wasn't a big deal within the first month as there was nothing in there minus two pieces of seasoned live rock to jump the cycle up and two DIY frag racks. The tank is very minimalistic internally with no substrate. The hardware I had initially running on the tank were a AC50, AC30 (getting seasoned to use for my fish QT), Hydor Koralia nano (560gph) and a heater (100W). The tank is lit with a single Kessil A160WE that is set to ramp with a 10 hour light cycle and the peak lighting set to 80% with an hour and a half duration. Besides that the tank is usually only experiencing 40% throughout the rest of the day.

Once I started adding frags post the nutrient cycle completed I started to notice what seemed to be dinos starting to crop up and the diatoms started to bloom heavier with frag feedings (mysis for LPS and general dosing of Reef Roids for SPS every other day to get everyone fat and happy.) I knew I was over feeding, but generally I've had great success with this method when it came to LPS.

Now I'm coming to the start of month 3 and the diatoms and dinos are getting out of control. Every morning I have to use my feeding turkey baster to blow off the diatoms that encroach onto the frag plugs and on the rack. Once a week I go through and loosen everything up with the flow off on the tank and siphon about 30% of the tank out and get as much out of the tank as possible. I've since introduced a larger cleanup crew with the expectation that they can assist with extra food that the LPS don't eat as well as with plans to move them to the DT in the long run. So far Astreas have helped with the glass as well as a few Trochus, but the big help has been a conch (unsure of the type, it's definitely not a fighting conch) who has been mowing down the bottom glass and the sides of the glass his trunk can reach. Blue hermits did one heck of a job keeping the rocks clean since they have been added, but the frag rack, glass and the plugs have been the major location of where the dinos and diatoms have built up. I've even reduced the lighting duration through the day to 6 hours and didn't notice much of a difference.

With trying all that I can to manually keep the tank clean and actually cutting back feedings as well as having the cleanup crew, I didn't notice much of a change in growth. If anything it's still going strong as ever. I did notice that the growth onto one of my Monti Cap's had started to cause splotchy bleaching, so I went forward and introduced a reactor to the tank to run on the off cycle of the light as a cheato reactor as well as adding Phos-Guard and Matrix pads to the AC50 to see if it can help keep up. The additions of those seemed to help, but the problem is still there.

Any tips on getting this problem in check?

Test results are below:

pH 8.2
SG 1.026
Amm 0ppm
Nitrites 0ppm
Nitrates 0ppm (this is weird to me and was constantly at zero post the first water change after the cycle)
Ca 470ppm
Alk 7.4dKH

 

[RMS18]

Assuming you have dinos, it will be a tough fight depending on what strain you have. I had the hardest strain, they resided in the sand bed and were resistant to everything out there even experimental treatments like bleach and chlorine tabs. I can assure you my breakout was due to ULN. What are your po4 readings? Dinos also love drastic change. It will be hard to out compete them, it seems once they grasp a hold its hard to establish other algae that can pass them up in development.

If you have not already, i would determine what strain you have. Treatments like H202 have worked for some along with Metro and blackouts. Check this thread out if you haven't already and catch up on the recent updates:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates-my-experience-h2o2-reefing-tool.52084/

Plan B, tank tear down. This is what i did after 8 months of trying to fight them. I regretted not doing it sooner.

 

[Tihsho]

Thanks @Bmwm235i! I did actually read through this article. The issue is that everyone has different attempts at treating dinos, and this is probably related to different strains are more resistant to certain treatments.

I just want to add that my population seems to be receding *knocks on wood*. The only places I seem to still have it going strong is the frag rack. It seems that when I scraped the sidewalls of the tank and did my last big water change on Sunday evening (50% change to pull out all the floating dinos I could get) impacted the population hard. Previously I was just scraping and netting out the clumps and/or running a prefilter on a powerhead to pull out the particulates in between the 30% changes. This round and the large water change seemed to have knocked them back a good bit and I don't see additional growth.

I'll go through and give the h202 a shot, it might take out what I have left, but I'll see if I can save this for right before the next water change.

 

[vdubreefer]

Do you know for certain they are dinos ? Might want to try grabbing a lab scope to verify they are dinos what is your p04 at?

 

[Tihsho]

Currently don't know what my PO4 is at. I have a liquid test kit for PO4 somewhere but can't seem to find it. I need to order a Hanna ULR test.