Dinos and lowering phosphates

[brrdawg]

So I have large cell amphidinium. I have had them for about 2 months. I have kept them kind of in check. Lost an sps and 2 fish which has been a bummer. I found out I had them and took to the forum to ask. Was told I needed to dose microbacter7 and hydrogen peroxide. So I did that yesterday. my Dino’s were covering about 30-40 percent of my sand bed yesterday and PO4 was .09. Today after dosing yesterday it’s bloomed to probably 80-90 percent. And my PO4 is now at .17 according to my Hanna checkers. Obviously I am going to stop dosing. I don’t want to do water changes. I have been using phosguard to try and keep my phosphates down but doesn’t seem to be working. Also my nitrates have held steady around 1-1.5 which is why I have this problem to begin with I think and know I need to raise. I do have neonitro as well. Just wondering what to do. What’s the best way to get phosphates down without water changes?

 

[Spare time]

Put a pinch of gfo in a bag. That will lower phosphate pretty easily. I also would caution against dosing peroxide. I am not a fan of just freely dosing an oxidizer and hoping it kills what you want it to kill. I would also dose microbacter clean instead of microbacter 7 but thats just a guess as to what might be better since no one knows what causes dino blooms. The best thing with dinos is to just throw a bunch of random stuff at them and see what works. In this case, raising phosphates wouldn't do much, and I doubt lowering them would either. If it were me, I would just try and add different cocktails of bacteria (pns probio, maybe aquaforest mud, etc.) just to see if that might help.

 

[brrdawg]

So I have large cell amphidinium. I have had them for about 2 months. I have kept them kind of in check. Lost an sps and 2 fish which has been a bummer. I found out I had them and took to the forum to ask. Was told I needed to dose microbacter7 and hydrogen peroxide. So I did that. Yesterday my Dino’s were covering about 30-40 percent of my sand bed. PO4 was .09 yesterday. Today it’s bloomed to probably 80-90 percent. And my PO4 is now at .17 according to my Hanna checkers. Obviously I am going to start dosing. I don’t want to do water changes. I have been using phosguard to try and keep my phosphates down but doesn’t seem to be working. Also my nitrates have held steady around 1-1.5 which is why I have this problem to begin with I think. I do have neonitro as well. Just wondering what to do. What’s the best way to get phosphates down without water changes?

Put a pinch of gfo in a bag. That will lower phosphate pretty easily. I also would caution against dosing peroxide. I am not a fan of just freely dosing an oxidizer and hoping it kills what you want it to kill. I would also dose microbacter clean instead of microbacter 7 but thats just a guess as to what might be better since no one knows what causes dino blooms.

Thanks for the reply I am going to siphon out all the Dino’s through a filter tonight. Whatever I did last night was the opposite of what I wanted to accomplish. I might just take it easy with dosing even though I haven’t done much of it. Any good brands of GFO?

 

[Spare time]

Thanks for the reply I am going to siphon out all the Dino’s through a filter tonight. Whatever I did last night was the opposite of what I wanted to accomplish. I might just take it easy with dosing even though I haven’t done much of it. Any good brands of GFO?

Eh I just use whatever gfo is cheapest. I wouldn't bother with the "high capacity" gfo

 

[TokenReefer]

Try throwing some flow at them. That'll make it harder for them to group together and may help. Good luck!