Frustrated

[Spare time]

Hello. So I thought what I had was cyano but nothing about it makes sense. It grows well in the highest flow areas of the tank. My nitrates were and are still on the higher end (now in the 20s) but phosphate at 0. My lighting hasn't changed. I havent added anything to the tank. I tried chemo clean and ultra life remover for about 90 gallons (tank is 75 plus 20 to 15gallon sump). I even did an extra 0.5 dose of ultralife red slime remover and it did nothing. I've siphoned the samd which gets tumbled all the time by the diamond goby and have done 20 gallon water change. I usually run carbon and gfo along with a refugium but only have refugium running for now as I do chemi clean for the 3rd time not including the ultralife. I did a hydrogen peroxide test and when I took it out of the water it look green so I tried 1.5x dose of chemi clean previously to attack it as if it was spirulina but again that did nothing. I'm all out of ideas. It grows on powerheads, sps (which have taken a toll from being smothered), sand, etc.

 

[Malifry97]

Looks like dinos to me

 

[Spare time]

Looks like dinos to me

The reason why that confuses me is that I've only ever had that in tanks with 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate and dont understand how it can come about in this tank being not super clean

 

[Malifry97]

The reason why that confuses me is that I've only ever had that in tanks with 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate and dont understand how it can come about in this tank being not super clean

I’ve had your same confusion, I had a tank with non zero nutrients before and had it. Dino’s are less from zeroing nutrient and more from not enough competition through lack of biodiversity. The confusion from the zero nitrate zero phosphate rumor is that yes most Dino’s do occur then because there is enough nutrients to allow other things to about compete the Dino’s. So to sum it up, Dino’s aren’t inherently caused by zero nitrates and phosphates but rather the lack of biodiversity caused by having those parameters being 0

 

[Spare time]

I’ve had your same confusion, I had a tank with non zero nutrients before and had it. Dino’s are less from zeroing nutrient and more from not enough competition through lack of biodiversity. The confusion from the zero nitrate zero phosphate rumor is that yes most Dino’s do occur then because there is enough nutrients to allow other things to about compete the Dino’s. So to sum it up, Dino’s aren’t inherently caused by zero nitrates and phosphates but rather the lack of biodiversity caused by having those parameters being 0

That's what my though was and hence why I started dosing eco balance by dr Tim's. Hopefully that will work. I think my phosphates were zero and that was the problem even though my nitrates were very high.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

I had a similar issue and I got out of it by pulling the phosguard I was running and dosing some bottle bac. My nitrate/phosphate levels were out of whack, which I think was my issue but they balanced out over about a month (I did about 10% water changes every Saturday for a month) and dumped 10 ml of Pristine in there twice a week. It just took a while. My issues started by ignoring my RODI filters though. They had exhausted and I didn't pay attention. First I had a GHA explosion, cleared that, then wound up with a red slime problem. My nutrients were swinging one way then another as the different nuisances waxed and waned.

 

[Malifry97]

That's what my though was and hence why I started dosing eco balance by dr Tim's. Hopefully that will work. I think my phosphates were zero and that was the problem even though my nitrates were very high.

Yes, raising phosphates will help. Also adding some other bottle backs and some macro algae will also help!