Dinos? live rock vs dry dead rock

[Lasse]

As always - I use a mix of dead and live rock when I started my last tank. No problem with dino or cyano during start up period (not after either)

Sincerely Lasse

 

[John3]

Not under a scope so I don’t know what strain. Def Dino’s though. I have some pics of it around here somewhere.

 

[chefjpaul]

Yes. Both.

Dinosporin

 

[Rewd]

Here's my experience so far, having done both:

2004: started my first reef tank. 75 gallon tank using 120 pounds of premium uncured fiji live rock. And an 80/20 mix of dry aragonite sand and live sand. This tank was amazing, within 2 months I had pods everywhere, micro stars, bristleworms (the good kind), and coraline algae out the wazoo. I never had a SINGLE issue with this tank and never a pest to be found, except for a single black crab. I never figured out what kind of crab that was and it never caused any issues that I could see. My biggest issue running this tank was how often I had to scrape sheets of Coraline
algae from the front glass lol. This tank ran beautifully, huge zoa colonies, euphilias, and other misc softies/LPS until 2011 when I got out of the hobby.

2021: starting my first reef tank in 10 years. 90G reef ready, not overly unlike my 75 gallon of old just slightly bigger. Since Fiji premium rock is no more, I decided to try a dry start with bacterial starter culture. Used 80 pounds of caribsea life rock with maybe 60 pounds of dry sand. I love the aquascape I was able to do with this liferock as opposed to monolithic rock wall of my original tank. Anyway, this tank was started back in February and I have literally dealt with every single pest that I read about previously but never experienced. This includes aiptasia, bubble algae on frags, monti eating nudis, cyano, Lyngbya (I never even heard of this crap before!!!!), and finally, and completely overwhelmed by, amphidinium dinos. My tank is absolutely covered in this stuff--it's completely taken over and smothered out all of my SPS frags, torches and hammers all closed, not a single zoa survived, acans are starting to look bad; it's a total disaster. I've never experienced anything like this in all of my fish keeping years. Nothing is working--I've raised and maintained my phosphates around 0.03-0.08, raised my Nitrates from 5ish to 10-12, have tried adding TWO UV sterilizers, but it's not the water born kind, tried dosing microbactr7 to see if new bacterial colonies could establish to outcompete this stuff, but it's hopeless. My next thing is to try hydrogen peroxide dosing.

I'm close to throwing in the towel on this tank. Since almost all of my corals are gone, I am contemplating throwing all of my fish in to a Brute container for a few months while i totally break this system down and start from scratch with maricultured live rock or rock from an established system. From my OG system in 2004 to this new tank in 2021, the ONLY major changes I made were to use dry rock/sand vs live rock and sand, and instead of T5s/Halides I went with T5 retro/Kessil LEDs. I just can't help but think the total lack of biodiversity is what has allowed all of these pests to totally overwhelm my system. There was just nothing there to keep them in check in a dry system, even with using bottled bacteria. Nothing in a bottle can replace the SHEER amount of biodiversity you get in porous ocean-cured live rock, imo.

 

[dwair]

Problem is most people try to do a heavy in heavy out system and don't have enough going in. There are TONS of exports in this day and age with equipment and people go overboard. This leads to Nutrient deficiencies and therefore Dinos. Don't think its so much with dry rock/live rock. Yes it helps, but you wait long enough and be patient with dry rock and you'll be successful without dinos as well.

 

[burningmime]

If diatoms can come out of dry rock , I’ve wondered if Dino’s do as well.

A classic case.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/n...-with-a-29-biocube.366073/page-2#post-4577803

Do diatoms come out of dry rock (moreso than live rock)? I thought they came from silicates in the water, which would be mostly from plastic (eg PVC pipe) and sand.

 

[Lasse]

Dry rocks content Si too. IME anaerobic conditions make Si leak out from siporax - maybe the same with calcium carbonate dominated rocks too?

Sincerely Lasse

 

[attiland]

Here's my experience so far, having done both:

2004: started my first reef tank. 75 gallon tank using 120 pounds of premium uncured fiji live rock. And an 80/20 mix of dry aragonite sand and live sand. This tank was amazing, within 2 months I had pods everywhere, micro stars, bristleworms (the good kind), and coraline algae out the wazoo. I never had a SINGLE issue with this tank and never a pest to be found, except for a single black crab. I never figured out what kind of crab that was and it never caused any issues that I could see. My biggest issue running this tank was how often I had to scrape sheets of Coraline
algae from the front glass lol. This tank ran beautifully, huge zoa colonies, euphilias, and other misc softies/LPS until 2011 when I got out of the hobby.

2021: starting my first reef tank in 10 years. 90G reef ready, not overly unlike my 75 gallon of old just slightly bigger. Since Fiji premium rock is no more, I decided to try a dry start with bacterial starter culture. Used 80 pounds of caribsea life rock with maybe 60 pounds of dry sand. I love the aquascape I was able to do with this liferock as opposed to monolithic rock wall of my original tank. Anyway, this tank was started back in February and I have literally dealt with every single pest that I read about previously but never experienced. This includes aiptasia, bubble algae on frags, monti eating nudis, cyano, Lyngbya (I never even heard of this crap before!!!!), and finally, and completely overwhelmed by, amphidinium dinos. My tank is absolutely covered in this stuff--it's completely taken over and smothered out all of my SPS frags, torches and hammers all closed, not a single zoa survived, acans are starting to look bad; it's a total disaster. I've never experienced anything like this in all of my fish keeping years. Nothing is working--I've raised and maintained my phosphates around 0.03-0.08, raised my Nitrates from 5ish to 10-12, have tried adding TWO UV sterilizers, but it's not the water born kind, tried dosing microbactr7 to see if new bacterial colonies could establish to outcompete this stuff, but it's hopeless. My next thing is to try hydrogen peroxide dosing.

I'm close to throwing in the towel on this tank. Since almost all of my corals are gone, I am contemplating throwing all of my fish in to a Brute container for a few months while i totally break this system down and start from scratch with maricultured live rock or rock from an established system. From my OG system in 2004 to this new tank in 2021, the ONLY major changes I made were to use dry rock/sand vs live rock and sand, and instead of T5s/Halides I went with T5 retro/Kessil LEDs. I just can't help but think the total lack of biodiversity is what has allowed all of these pests to totally overwhelm my system. There was just nothing there to keep them in check in a dry system, even with using bottled bacteria. Nothing in a bottle can replace the SHEER amount of biodiversity you get in porous ocean-cured live rock, imo.

For this you UV doesn’t help. Look into silicates dosing. Worked for me. Stop microbacter 7 too.

 

[attiland]

Here is what I my take based on the research while I was dealing with dinos.
1. all system have them but in systems some never blooms due to conditions
2. competiton is the key to keep them in check.
3. nitrate and phosphate levels are not the course more like symptom. In no3 and po4 deprived system they get advantage more likely. (Doesn’t mean you don’t have to fix it)
4. killing them is not the solution as they will get back sooner or later . Competition is the key. Competition can come in a number of sources like mud, mature live rock, bacterial products ( types live in the aquarium long after dosed )
5. Finally it is not really dry rock vs live rock question. While live rock helps it is competition beat them not the live rock.

 

[Clarkjw2002]

Same experience for me. Took a break from 2003-2014 as the Army was moving me too much and did the dry rock route w/ LR seed when I came back. Took 3 yrs to get past the Dino phases and they were exacerbated by me trying to rid the tank of nutrients--GFO and Chaeto reactors. I stopped running GFO (the Pukani did leach for a year or so) and macro and everything fell into line. Took about 6 months so patience was really what was needed.

 

[Dan_P]

I’m curious as to the statistics of reefers who have had or have a dinoflagellate bloom. Biodiversity seems to be a key to keeping this nuisance algae in check. I started reefing in 2001, every tank I’ve ever kept was started with high quality live rock. In August 2016 I started a new tank after being out of the hobby for a few years. This tank was started with dry Pukani rock. I’ve had two dino blooms in two years. I’m curious as to others experiences.

Interesting question. There could be many factors behind persistent dinoflagellate growth, but there is an idea in the hobby that the loss of easily available live rock is an important factor. The thinking goes that we are starting aquaria with less of a diverse microbiome and somehow that makes persistent dinoflagellate growth possible.

Two other changes in the hobby are also candidates for persistent dinoflagellate growth: rapid stocking and coral frags. With the advent of bottled bacteria, establishing a nitrifying biofilm can now occur in days. This plays into our impatience to start stocking the aquarium almost immediately. This in turn provides little time for a mature biofilm to form, especially without the addition of live rock. The new aquarium is primed for an algae biofilm to dominate: bright lights, plenty of nitrogen and phosphorous and plenty of virgin surface area to settle. And the photosynthetic settlers are introduced in the millions riding on the coral frags, fish and clean up grew that rapidly accumulate in the new aquarium.

The proliferation of coral frags over wild harvested organisms is possibly the other big change in the hobby that is a source of nuisance photosynthetic organisms. As factory farming is a breeding ground for virus and bacteria potentially harmful to humans, coral farms and private fraggers are likely breeders of nuisance organisms. These suppliers are likely inoculating aquaria all over the world with what has become just a handful of pests. Being an unregulated business, there are no rules about minimizing pathogens or nuisance organisms when selling a coral. And whether preventive measures are successful on the customer end to remove pathogens and pests is unknown.

Starting an aquarium with live rock might not be a cure all solution these days.

 

[Clarkjw2002]

How are diatoms introduced?

Airborne spores.