Is my tank crashing? help!

[tech_reefer]

Hi All

I’m panicking because I lost corals and two anemones. My tank has been running for about 8 months now. I check my parameters and they are the following

Ammonia- 0
Nitrate - 2 salifer test - 0.3 Hanna checker high range
phosphate- 0.03
alkalinity - 7.3

I usually do a water change ever two weeks,
I’m not sure what this brown thing is. I had cyanobacteria and use the slime away product did a water change and this came back. Any idea what it could be?

 

[HeyLookItsCaps]

Might want to add what it was like before including parameters, and what they are now.

looks pretty rough from what I can see here but I have nothing to compare it with

 

[brandon429]

No it’s dinos, a crash kills the shrimp first then the rest. Tank invasions rarely kill the animals, that’s a dinos outbreak.

too bad that tank is too big to rip clean, we can fix nanos like that overnite.

run this on it anyway, don’t let some work deter you from saving the tank as shown. Sometimes having a large tank isn’t an advantage, but you’d press it into shape anyway, large tankers blues.

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

your tank will look that great upon outcome

 

[kittenbritches]

How long have you had this algae bloom?

How old is the tank?

How often are you doing water changes?

What are your water parameters?

 

[Wasabiroot]

I think this is maybe salvageable? What are your parameters? I'm not quite sure what kind of algae that is, but you don't appear to have a very large CUC. Some turbo snails would do a surprising amount of work likely. If your nutrients are way up some water changes might help.

 

[tech_reefer]

I have update the thread with the parameters

 

[tech_reefer]

that’s what it look like before

 

[brandon429]

Those pics look like our after pics in the fix link above, consider that option it beats five months of upcoming toil. that reef has really nice corals, the dinos are hitchhikers it can happen to anyone, it’s not a parameter issue. Unlucky import


they rode in physically, we clean them out physically above. Overnite.

that live rock you have has good coralline potential it just needs manual control to unconver it.

Gators reef from my link above has rocks exactly like yours. He shows update pics where that coralline finishes taking over after force gardening.

 

[Danroo]

Seems like Dino’s, increasing the flow on the sand bed will help and as soon as possible grab a UV sterilizer.

 

[tech_reefer]

Those pics look like our after pics in the fix link above, consider that option it beats five months of upcoming toil. that reef has really nice corals, the dinos are hitchhikers it can happen to anyone, it’s not a parameter issue. Unlucky import


they rode in physically, we clean them out physically above. Overnite.

that live rock you have has good coralline potential it just needs manual control to unconver it.

Looking at the link, what can I do to fix the dinno issue? I posted my parameters and my phosphate and nitrates are not bottom out

 

[tech_reefer]

Seems like Dino’s, increasing the flow on the sand bed will help and as soon as possible grab a UV sterilizer.

I have a 25-watt UV running in the system should I increase the flow??? I currently run it at the lowest speeds for parasites

 

[brandon429]

After reading the 4x complete fixes in the link with updates let me know if you feel your tank wouldn’t look brand new after being #5

your parameters didn’t cause this, unlucky hitchhikers and no quarantine of hardscapes caused it. Anyone can catch dinos as they add in bunches of new corals frags and fish to a new system.

Fish themselves bring in dinos when moved tank to tank, stuck to slime coat.

you have a way to stop the issue as soon as you’re ready to though. Of all the rip cleans we’ve done, try and find one that didn’t work

that’s how you know the link above is a great option.

this 120 gallon reef did a rip clean too, each thread is literally showing how you clean off rocks and sand and the whole reef all at once. Jon proves that gallons doesn’t matter, resolve to own a clean reef matters.

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Rick's Reviews]

Hi All

I’m panicking because I lost corals and two anemones. My tank has been running for about 8 months now. I check my parameters and they are the following

Ammonia- 0
Nitrate - 2 salifer test - 0.3 Hanna checker high range
phosphate- 0.03
alkalinity - 7.3

I usually do a water change ever two weeks,
I’m not sure what this brown thing is. I had cyanobacteria and use the slime away product did a water change and this came back. Any idea what it could be?

Great looking aquriam, maybe a good scrub up will help to please the eye but your inabiants are loving it I assume

 

[brandon429]

the final fix recommend after instating the completely clean condition is a uv sterilizer far bigger than the current one, you have the top hardest to control invasion in reefing so that hardware upgrade will be indicated. Large reefs have challenging cost factors agreed but that’s a worthy one.

increasing flow will make the undersized uv work less well vs better, need stronger uv

buy one thats rated for a tank four times more gallons than that one, Amazon has them for about $150 because they’re not lab quality. They’ll save your tank though if installed after a rip clean and not before one, can’t avoid exporting all that mass allowed to grow, it’s reducing your biofilter efficiency by plugging small pore structures. If you kill it in tank to avoid export work it’ll chemically soup the setup

all counter measures are to be applied in the clean condition not the invaded condition.

 

[Danroo]

I have a 25-watt UV running in the system should I increase the flow??? I currently run it at the lowest speeds for parasites

Increase the flow and point them downwards on the sand bed. Use a toothbrush on your rock and siphon as much as you can with your next water change. If it comes back you’re dealing with Dino’s. If it doesn’t then it was probably an ugly stage and hopefully won’t be coming back. Manually remove as much as possible.

 

[Hind]

I may offer some advice. The pics of the dino's don't appear to have blossomed overnight, this has been an issue for a while. UV sterilizer alone IMO won't resolve this issue as UV will only destroy microbes that are in the water column (what flows through the light), and this algae issue is also on surfaces, where UV cant get. Unremarkable parameters may present normal as the algae are consuming them, you basically have a refugium as your display tank. As others have mentioned , I would scrub as much as you can off surfaces, take the rocks out of the tank and scrub and rinse them, clean the glass, vacuum the sand. But, you need something else to compete for the nutrients to starve out the dino's.

Here is a nice artice on identifing Diatoms vs Dino's and associated treatment ideas.

Diatoms Vs Dinoflagellates (Reef Tank) Identification and Treatment | Reef Tank Resource

A common problem in aquarist's reef aquariums is the presence of brownish algae coating everything from the sand to the live rock to the glass. It can look

reeftankresource.com

Since personally speaking with and attending Dr. Tim Hovanec's lectures about the role of bacteria in reef aquaria, I really think this is the missing link in our hobby and is under utilized/apprecieated. If what you have is Dino's, he has a treatment regimine along with two type of bacteria that will get your tank back on the right track.

https://www.drtimsaquatics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Dinoflagellates_prescription_recipe.pdf

This problem took weeks I'm guessing to get to this point; fix slow problems slowly. Hope these resources help, let us know if you have resolved the issue.

 

[Wyvern]

Fighting some now.
Winning but still a nucence.

I dose food grade Hydrogen peroxide, run UV and have ozone, blast rocks with baster before lights out.