Just the uglies? Anything I should be doing?

[Jared Bryant]

Looks like cyano to me. Suck it out! I have had probably 10 reefs in my life all of them cycled and matured differently. My current reef which I started half dry rock and half 10year old live rock and my uglies went for 6-8 months.

 

[MarsReefer]

Looks like cyano to me. Suck it out! I have had probably 10 reefs in my life all of them cycled and matured differently. My current reef which I started half dry rock and half 10year old live rock and my uglies went for 6-8 months.

Lights out or doesn't matter? I'm assuming I can just wait cyano out and don't need to do anything else.

 

[Jared Bryant]

Lights out or doesn't matter? I'm assuming I can just wait cyano out and don't need to do anything else.

No lights out are not going to fix it. You can ramp them down for awhile while you get everything in sync so your corals are not bothered. I always just up my maintenance when a tank is new or I am fighting an issue. Syphoning, changing socks, skimmer, water changes etc.

 

[MarsReefer]

Take some white light pics please.

Looks very much like the beggining of dino but will need clearer pics under white lighting to confirm.

@Jekyl
@vetteguy53081

Added some pictures at the bottom of page one, can you tell what it is from those?

 

[vetteguy53081]

To be clear the tank has been running for 4 months, the lights went on a month ago after running for 3 months with minimal light. I have a small CUC in QT, in a 20 gallon frag tank. Its a pretty small CUC to start, about 40 small snails total, not even enough to keep the 20g tank clean. I did the cycle with microbacter 7 about a month into the setup and the clowns got added right before the lights came on. They've been in there a month or so now, helping the tank to mature.

Below are some pictures of the algae. The first 3 images are actually from my frag tank where the CUC is. The water in the frag tank is the water that I change out of the DT, and I believe it is the same algae. It has the same slimy feel and forms stringy filaments after forming a slimy coat over the surface.

FRAG TANK PICTURES:

DISPLAY TANK:

yep - Dino and dino feeds off of light. With the presence of light they secrete mucus which adhere to any surface, including algae, coral and fish. They spend hours synthesising food and extending vertically in search of the light source (if we turn off the pumps in the aquarium we can see brown filaments grow towards the surface). When the light source disappears and can no longer synthesize food, it begins to diminish to none.
Prepare by starting with a water change and blow this stuff loose with a turkey baster and siphon up loose particles.
Turn lights off (at least white and run blue at 10-15% IF you have light dependant corals) for 5 days and at night dose 1ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide per 10 gallons for all 5 nights. If you dont have light dependent coral- turn all lights off.
During the day dose 1ml of liquid bacteria (such as bacter 7 or XLM) per 10 gallons.
Clean filters daily and DO NOT FEED CORAL FOODS OR ADD NOPOX as it is food for dinos.
Day 5,, you can start with blue lights - ramping up and work your white lights up slowly

 

[MarsReefer]

yep - Dino and dino feeds off of light. With the presence of light they secrete mucus which adhere to any surface, including algae, coral and fish. They spend hours synthesising food and extending vertically in search of the light source (if we turn off the pumps in the aquarium we can see brown filaments grow towards the surface). When the light source disappears and can no longer synthesize food, it begins to diminish to none.
Prepare by starting with a water change and blow this stuff loose with a turkey baster and siphon up loose particles.
Turn lights off (at least white and run blue at 10-15% IF you have light dependant corals) for 5 days and at night dose 1ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide per 10 gallons for all 5 nights. If you dont have light dependent coral- turn all lights off.
During the day dose 1ml of liquid bacteria (such as bacter 7 or XLM) per 10 gallons.
Clean filters daily and DO NOT FEED CORAL FOODS OR ADD NOPOX as it is food for dinos.
Day 5,, you can start with blue lights - ramping up and work your white lights up slowly

Should I keep dosing phosphates? I’ve been dosing 0.02 daily to keep them above 0 and 1 ppm nitrates every other day to keep it around 4 ppm.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Should I keep dosing phosphates? I’ve been dosing 0.02 daily to keep them above 0 and 1 ppm nitrates every other day to keep it around 4 ppm.

Either that or feed fish during this time. Feeding increases Phos but NO coral food for now

 

[MarsReefer]

Day 2 of my blackout, no huge change yet. Fish are very confused. Wrapped tank in a blanket to cut more light out.

nitrates at: 3.4
Phosphates at: 0.04

dosing phosphates daily, think the rocks are soaking them up. Dosing microbacter7 as my bacterial additive. I’ll update this again as I go.

 

[MarsReefer]

Day 4, seeing some significant progress. Pretty sure most of the Dino’s are dead at this point. They are no longer slimy, just brown and dead. I spent an hour blowing the gunk off the rocks then did an extra peroxide dose as everything was kicked up into the water column. Then swapped out my filters.

I ordered 4 jars of pods and multiple phyto containers to dose to arrive early next week once my peroxide dosing is done. I’m hoping that will help diversify and establish a healthier biome.

update again when I turn the lights back on.

 

[MarsReefer]

For anyone following this, I finished my 5 day blackout and peroxide dosing. I did a few extra double strength peroxide doses near the end, didn’t seem to bother the clowns. I have my lights on a 15 day acclimation mode slowly ramping up. I am still dosing microbacter7 daily and I added in 4 jars of galaxy pods today and have started dosing phyto as well.

I see no signs of living Dino’s anymore, just brown sludge that is in the hard to blow out of places from my rocks. My snails also came out of QT tonight so I added in about 60 snails of various types.

I’m hoping all of this is enough to keep the Dino’s away and have a healthier balanced tank.