Dino bloom gaining sudden strength after dosing nitrate - is it normal?

[Ironic_Water]

I've been trying to raise my nutrient levels after bottoming them out and causing a dino bloom.

I imagine what is happening is that my sudden increase in nitrates is fueling some dino growth - after dosing nitrates its covering every square centimeter of my tank.

I'm trying to grow competing algae so I don't want to stop raising my nutrients... is this an expected stage in the dino fight, or is it a red-flag that I'm fighting dinos wrong?

 

[strich]

Your instincts are great - The sudden dino bloom after dosing nitrates is a common, expected stage in the battle against dinos. As long as you're ensuring a balanced nutrient ratio and promoting competing algae growth, this should be part of the normal progression. However, monitor the situation, and adjust nutrient dosing if dinos continue to dominate over time.

Dinos are often the first to respond to increased nitrate availability. I believe you can curtail it a little by ensuring your phosphates are also in a good balance, which will help other algae better out-compete them.

 

[taricha]

... is this an expected stage in the dino fight, or is it a red-flag that I'm fighting dinos wrong?

it's a plausible thing that can happen, but what it tells you is that raising nutrients alone will not quickly solve things. You'll need to do a good bit of manual removal to keep the dino population down while your system adjusts to not being N & P starved.

 

[KTTX]

Is there any way to ensure frags you by are clean and don't have dinos before adding it to your tank?

 

[MissMolly]

Is there any way to ensure frags you by are clean and don't have dinos before adding it to your tank?

As I have understood there’s dino in many tanks without you ever knowing. BRStv has a great series on this amongst other things about biomen… If the biomen is diverse and tank is balanced an introduktion should not cause a bloom. I have read a lot about dips lately and hydrogen peroxide is the one to go for to rid mainly the plug from pest algae. Many do 3 % directly on the plug. And diluted on the whole thing - or nothing. You can find a guide in here. But I don’t know if it will kill all strains of Dino. You could also cut it off the plug.