Dsb help

[ScoobyFish]

Hi all need some help here. Greatly appreciated. I bought a sand sifting starfish when I was a nun and asked the lfs person on what would be a great detritus and all around good addition to my tank. Long story short I had to give it away as it decimated the life of all the micro organisms in my dish. How do I replenish these asap? I've been noticing cyano and diatoms trying to bloom but I m on top of it daily, even adding mibrobacter7. I know it's cause of what the starfish did. It's only been gone for a week from my tank.

60 gallon corner tank, 20 gallon sump, 20 gallon refugium with miracle mud and chaeto.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

How deep is the bed in the DT and how old is it.

Are you feeding any phyto or zoo or marine snow?

Honestly I don't see that the removal of a star would result in blooms that fast.

I'm sure it's fine just have to work it out.
Fwiw it's likely not diatoms.

 

[ScoobyFish]

I don't think it was the removal of the star. I think the number the star did on my dsb is what's causing it since the blooms are here and there only on sand. I removed the star a week ago, the cyano and diatoms were here before. When starfish was small I had life in dsb, I could see them. I saw starfish couple weeks ago was missing 2 arms, looked like it wasn't getting enough food, and it must be I could not find a single worm under there. Increased flow, water changes, gfo, carbon. I'm battling it hard. Dsb is about 5-6 inches deep.

 

[ScoobyFish]

I do feed marine snow like once every month. Will dsb recover by itself?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I do feed marine snow like once every month. Will dsb recover by itself?

Yea it probably will.
How old is the bed. It's Important info.

One reason I went away from miracle mud and eco system method is does contain trace elements and is not as good as A Dsb for bacteria.
On thing to do is add calurpa to the fuge. Per thier instructions. It's a huge nutrient sponge much more so than Chato in my experience I have both plus dual Dsb in my 55 system

I'd stop the phyto and snow for sure for a while.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

And fwiw I run only carbon and a small skimmer and fuge.
18 months on the system feed pretty heavy many types of macro.
No cyano
No GFO

 

[ScoobyFish]

Yeah been pondering on removing gfo, even now am only using 3 tablespoons of it. The dsb is a year and half old. I also have a lot of live rock in system about 120 pads of it. Weird of it all is that scoreline algae grows like mad in my system. Thanx for the info bud.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Yea man. A lot of folks are totally freaked by a Dsb nowadays.
I'd bet you have more worms than you think. Really worms are the key of course. It's what keeps the water moving through the bed. Usually for maint and a new tank I take scoops of sand from the fuge and frocks I find the tube worms on an in to seed the bed. The spaghetti worms are trickier gotta catch and scoop those.

You might want to poke the sand with a stick now and again just to keep it flowing till the bugs recover. Maybe check a trusted Lfs or worms seeds.

Most of my export is in the sand rock and macros. My skimmer slowed way down last mint while I was away and nothing changed but I grew out the macros like crazy. Fortunately I had put in another bulb in the fuge before I left.

And double check the miracle mud. Still on the fence about that stuff.