Instant Ocean and diatoms

[GoVols]

with topoff water yes I believe that Govols

ok, w verified topoff water next caveat, wal mart distilled heh

you can tell Im isolating away from brand of water being causative but yep I gotcha

I don't know about distilled water.
I use RO/DI for my weekly water changes and top off water too.

 

[brandon429]

distilled is what I use, no way to mess that one up but too costly for non picos yes

 

[LoneStarReef]

What do have in your sump any cheato? Do you run gfo? If so stop for a while

I don’t run GFO but I do have an oversized skimmer and plenty of chaeto that has no problem growing. Which one should I stop? Skimmer would be easier to shut down for 1/2 a day but then I have problems with rising water levels in sump which will affect my ATO.

 

[taricha]

I'll just say again nothing I've seen particularly points to diatoms, and everything so far is consistent with dinos.

....
As to the question of my tank parameters, I am at 0ppm phosphate and my nitrate is 0 as well. Alkalinity is 8.4 and pH is roughly 7.9 to 8.

these pics consistent with dinos.

I think you posted but can’t find it now that you phosphates and nitrates were at zero. This can cause a Dino out break.

what he said.

Just guessing, but I'm doubting you're experiencing a dinoflagellate bloom given the lack of stringy, gooey, bubblyness... I hope I'm right because they can be a real pain.

I loved this post by the way, the cyano and Si (anti-)connection is not something that seems widely known but totally fits what I've seen with Si dosing in my tank.
Anyway, although most common kinds are bubbly and stringy, amphidinium dinos are brown and dusty, and like to hang out with cyano and in similar areas...
See this post below for how amphidinium often looks...

Here us a picture from a few weeks ago. I've been busy moving to the new house. I removed 75% of sand for the move. When I set back up, I added 20lbs of live sand back into it. I'll try to get more details for you soon.

And here's microscope confirmation of Lowefx's brown dust being amphidinium dinos.

I'm sure they're dinos still existing from before the move. Here is my video of them under microscope.

 

[GoVols]

@taricha
I'll admit that I lost track.

Did they scope out to be dino's from low nutrients?

 

[taricha]

@taricha
I'll admit that I lost track.

Did they scope out to be dino's from low nutrients?

Pretty much, yeah. To oversimplify a bit, the issue is that under very low P & N, other algaes disappear- the things that graze on them disappear, dinos have little competition, and no grazing pressures, and they have ways of dealing with the low nutrients.
So outbreaks of brown gunk that we can't starve out with GFO etc. usually turn out to be dinos.

 

[GoVols]

Pretty much, yeah. To oversimplify a bit, the issue is that under very low P & N, other algaes disappear- the things that graze on them disappear, dinos have little competition, and no grazing pressures, and they have ways of dealing with the low nutrients.
So outbreaks of brown gunk that we can't starve out with GFO etc. usually turn out to be dinos.

If they've been scoped and confirmed dino's, then that's an entirely different thing...

 

[taricha]

If they've been scoped and confirmed dino's, then that's an entirely different thing...

Sorry, I misunderstood. to clarify, Lowefx's brown dusting had been microscope confirmed as dinos.

I was making the point that the OP's brown dusting presents itself similarly. It hasn't been confirmed as dinos yet.

 

[biophilia]

Anyway, although most common kinds are bubbly and stringy, amphidinium dinos are brown and dusty, and like to hang out with cyano and in similar areas...
See this post below for how amphidinium often looks...

Interesting. Thanks for the heads up! I wasn't aware of that genus of dinos.

I think you touched on this in the thread I just found googling amphidinium:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0044848602003733

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like if OP is in fact dealing with an amphidinium bloom, feeding more may make the problem worse because of the known connection between increases in ammonium and amphidinium forming cysts (not sure if I'm reading that right), whereas dosing nitrate directly in the form of potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate might be a safer way to elevate NO3 without adding an additional ammonia source to the system.

... and it seems like dosing some reasonable amount of silica probably allows either cyano or amphidinium to be out-competed so would "cover both bases" if OP chose to go that route.

 

[brandon429]

One or more of these tanks is a nano/accessible in ways huge reefs are not

If any of those tank owners are fed up with being invaded, let's do a rip clean series here and see how it responds. Not a tricky technique:

Remove your entire sandbed all at once, don't put it back until you are sustained Dino free/diatom /cyano free and sterilize it before you do, if ever.

Rinse your rocks externally with saltwater and dislodge them of plugged detritus and mass blanketing previously allowed. Re establish porosity which helps your micro animals work better by opening housing and flow and access

Depending on pre pics, we may spray with peroxide before the rinse, we w work around your sps and non targets as your rocks sit in your kitchen sink in the air, unharmed. Squirt the good parts in sw if it helps to seem nicer

Turn down white lights use blues mainly now for a while, easy for nanos

 

[Night Reefer]

Here is a pic of my issue that I resolved on a few pages back. See here: also had lots of bubbles
https://www.reef2reef.com/attachments/89b91176-99eb-4c9d-b5e1-48d4b1e253af-jpeg.768170/

 

[LoneStarReef]

So as an update, I am pretty sure my problem is Cyanobacteria. As the Cyano got worse, it looked less powdery like and more stringy. (Huge shout out to Meredith @melypr1985 for your help).

Therefore, I have done a few things to hopefully stop the outbreak:

1) Stop the auto feeder. Since I travel quite a bit for work and have been gone for vacation more than usual this summer, I bought an Apex auto feeder. While I thought I had dialed it in and it wasn’t feeding too excessively, I suspect it was contributing to the problem. Not sure what to do with this long term now. Any suggestions?

2) Replaced my RODI filters and added a silica buster. I realize silica wasn’t my primary problem, but it definitely was time to change out my pre filters. And it never hurts to increase water quality.

3) Dialed my lights down a bit.

4) Increased flow with WAV’s and even added additional small powerhead.

5) Lastly, I added Chemiclean about 15 hours ago. The lights aren’t on right now (it’s 6:45am) but from what I can tell it looks a ton better.

Hopefully enough has been done to correct this for the short and long term!

 

[brandon429]

Did you remove the clouding waste from the sandbed, got a tank pic we can see real quick

Having no clouding waste anywhere in the tank will supersede those prior options for effectiveness, and that action helps you against future invasions not related to chemi clean. Since sb cleaning is the hardest work option it’s done the least, which is why cyano and similar invasions are often recurring even after an initial kill

Cyano get in the tank regardless of quarantine, so a chemi clean treatment kills the first round, but the cloudy feed remains for r2

Of all the invasions a tank can catch in reefing, 98% are required vectored imports (meaning we cause them by purposefully bringing them in on unquarantined hard scape material and your tank nutrients never were the cause) but this doesn’t apply to cyano and spirulina associates, they’re under most of our fingernails as we speak unless we are ocd 10x day hand and nail scrubbers. Cyano routinely exchanges between the world and our tanks, every day, anywhere there is moist dirt we have some requisite monerans

This is why I love the sand rinse thread so much, 12 pages never having to ID anything, nor ask for nutrient measures. We just clean tanks for the willing and post em fixed up

Try to find any pico reef on any forum that has a cyano or diatom or dino invasion and post back, they’re darn hard to locate for a reason even though there are thousands of pico reefs. pico reefing itself was built on no cloud setups and forced tank compliance so it doesn’t matter which board you scope, theyre pretty much all being ran the same because the technique on how to run them gets around just like the installation/salinity controls...But if we want to find a large regular sandbed tank with such an invasion, that’s daily on every forum, due to water only actions and massive cloud storage within the tank, every single time

 

[LoneStarReef]

Did you remove the clouding waste from the sandbed, got a tank pic we can see real quick

Having no clouding waste anywhere in the tank will supersede those prior options for effectiveness, and that action helps you against future invasions not related to chemi clean. Since sb cleaning is the hardest work option it’s done the least, which is why cyano and similar invasions are often recurring even after an initial kill

Cyano get in the tank regardless of quarantine, so a chemi clean treatment kills the first round, but the cloudy feed remains for r2

Of all the invasions a tank can catch in reefing, 98% are required vectored imports (meaning we cause them by purposefully bringing them in on unquarantined hard scape material and your tank nutrients never were the cause) but this doesn’t apply to cyano and spirulina associates, they’re under most of our fingernails as we speak unless we are ocd 10x day hand and nail scrubbers. Cyano routinely exchanges between the world and our tanks, every day, anywhere there is moist dirt we have some requisite monerans

This is why I love the sand rinse thread so much, 12 pages never having to ID anything, nor ask for nutrient measures. We just clean tanks for the willing and post em fixed up

Try to find any pico reef on any forum that has a cyano or diatom or dino invasion and post back, they’re darn hard to locate for a reason even though there are thousands of pico reefs. pico reefing itself was built on no cloud setups and forced tank compliance so it doesn’t matter which board you scope, theyre pretty much all being ran the same because the technique on how to run them gets around just like the installation/salinity controls...But if we want to find a large regular sandbed tank with such an invasion, that’s daily on every forum, due to water only actions and massive cloud storage within the tank, every single time

If I have a recurring problem, I will consider. For now I will proceed as planned. Thanks!

 

[brandon429]

Got a pic of the full tank?

helps on ID for others to see how it expresses/pigmentation/can appear to be both cyano or diatoms depending on timing

Helps others going through sustained challenges to see where the invader expresses relative to places in the tank/shows lighting details and hue these tie into big picture to help others compare with their tanks

Even a before and after pic of a single chemi clean run is helpful