My rant because no one else gets it

[reeferfoxx]

I used canned clams since those are a favorite f the worm. I tried several traps. The best was pvc, panty hose, and fishing line. when it stuck its head in you would sneak up and pull the noose. Otherwise super fast escape for any movement in or around the tank.
Removing the rock and nuking it is the only way to completely get rid of an infestation. Hence the dry rock this time around.

Shesh!! Best of luck on the dry rock.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Well, you did ask for it.

Enjoy.

I know I do. How boring would it be if the tank just sat there with fish and corals. Really. I'd rather learn something every single day.

I'll trade you tanks!

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I'll trade you tanks!

Lol. I have one ready for you to pick up! The weather is nice here....

 

[Potatohead]

Seems like I have a constant battle with cyano I feel your pain chemiclean world comes back used waste away and refresh cake back, vacuum sand comes back high flow check. Nitrates 0 phos 8ppb I’m about to kill it with fire and not in a good way my acros and zoa look great tho. Sand looks like poop.

Sounds familiar!

lol

 

[rtparty]

Seems like I have a constant battle with cyano I feel your pain chemiclean world comes back used waste away and refresh cake back, vacuum sand comes back high flow check. Nitrates 0 phos 8ppb I’m about to kill it with fire and not in a good way my acros and zoa look great tho. Sand looks like poop.

Have you tried raising the nitrates? How about switching salts? For 10 months I fought cyano in two tanks that were completely separate. Switched salts and within weeks it was gone.

 

[mcarroll]

Seems like I have a constant battle with cyano I feel your pain chemiclean world comes back used waste away and refresh cake back, vacuum sand comes back high flow check. Nitrates 0 phos 8ppb I’m about to kill it with fire

You named the problem.....N:0 and P:near-zero assures that nothing but brutal survivors like cyano and dino's will proliferate.

Cyano can make it's own nitrogen and carbon and has exceptional abilities to use phosphorus sources. Dino's eat...everything. All the good guys that you'd want to be happy and growing (corals, green algae, etc) require some dissolved nutrients.

If dino's have recently bloomed or are presently bloomed I would raise N and P "directly" by using fertilizers like Seachem Flourish or Brightwell's Neo line. DIY is a good option too. Target ≥0.10 ppm for PO4 and ≥5-10 ppm for NO3.

Honestly, every tank I've ever had has gotten dinos

Not everyone gets dino blooms – there's a pattern at work if it's that predictable.

I dont think dinos are just some thing that you can qt out or prevent.

Common misconception.

@BoomCorals and @PAXpress check out at least the first post of Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?.

 

[BoomCorals]

You named the problem.....N:0 and P:near-zero assures that nothing but brutal survivors like cyano and dino's will proliferate.

Cyano can make it's own nitrogen and carbon and has exceptional abilities to use phosphorus sources. Dino's eat...everything. All the good guys that you'd want to be happy and growing (corals, green algae, etc) require some dissolved nutrients.

If dino's have recently bloomed or are presently bloomed I would raise N and P "directly" by using fertilizers like Seachem Flourish or Brightwell's Neo line. DIY is a good option too. Target ≥0.10 ppm for PO4 and ≥5-10 ppm for NO3.



Not everyone gets dino blooms – there's a pattern at work if it's that predictable.



Common misconception.

@BoomCorals and @PAXpress check out at least the first post of Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?.

I know, I follow that thread regularly. My issues are usually my own doing. I know how to get rid of them but eventually I'll do something dumb and they might come back.

 

[Reefltx]

I'm all in with all the latest equipment.
I've bought my dream tank (redsea 525xl) and frag tank.
I've QT'd all my fish.
I RO/DI like Im supposed to.
I've bought tons of really nice corals...

I should be THRIVING. Really enjoying watching frags grow out. It's my time to share amazing FTS.

Nope. Somehow Dinos got in despite all my precautions. Instead Im dosing po4,no3/testing/blowing off sand and rocks daily, losing frags and have a generally ugly tank.

I'm not giving up. I've got this. (I think). It's just frustrating.

For the coders out there... </rant>

Im guilty. Reefers are impatient.
That’s what we expect after dropping so much money. But it’s never the case. A thriving reef takes time.

 

[srad750c]

After my bryopis , red fuzzy hair Alge took over. (Insert hulk wanna smash here), so I did nothing. :mad:Nothing. Just walked away.
:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:!

It's all gone now.

Same happened to me, I did a lot of 5% water changes for a month, got it under control. SPS corals started losing color, polys, mushrooms and LPS started looking very bad, some died off. Took me forever to figure out I had ULN situation. Tank has been setup up close to 10 years with 3-5 mg/l of NO3 and very low PO4Used a specific brand of coral care products and hair algae came back. Found out about dosing nitrates and amino acids, SPS colored up very quick. Other corals after about a year started coloring back up. Still have hair algae and ULN situation. Decided to break tank down after new year. Finally after a little more than a year algae is going away. Go figure. Reefs will drive you crazy sometimes

 

[40B Knasty]

Going through the same thing my fellow reefer and my conch just passed yesterday. The one thing that pounded algae hard. Picked a new one up same day. The dwarf blue legged hermit won't leave him alone to do damage! I just picked an acan enchilada haha whatever they are called and I see it in the morning and there is already growth of algae being on there. Oi!

 

[Jahalu]

In my current tank I battled cyano for over a year, just vacuuming and adjusting flow. Then I somehow introduced Ulva lettuce algae to my display. I nearly gave up, got lazy in my maintenance routine. When I finally checked my parameters again, I nearly fell over. I had 0 nutrients and hadn't done a wc in months. No more cyano. Now I just let the lettuce algae grow in clumps. It's easy to trim when it gets out of hand. I actually like the look of the little green tufts here and there. The tank looks great. Macroalgae is definitely your friend when fighting cyano, ime.

 

[rockskimmerflow]

Any idea on who sells these? I'm having a tough time finding any online.

I've had them forever in my systems -probably from a wild source, but I do remember that one of my customers already had them in his tank before I did a refugium critter transfusion from one of my established rubble rock fuges. I asked him how long he'd had them since I rarely see them in new tank situations that I come into, and he said they appeared after he added an Algae Barn mixed pod pack. Not sure which product it is or if they list munnid isopods included, but he said he definitely started noticing the 'centipedes' a few weeks after he threw in that pod pack. Maybe check with algae barn and see if they can hook you up with some even if they're not directly listed on any of their products. It seems like they have them in their systems given what my client experienced.

 

[Peng]

All these dino threads... and there is one with like 70 pages... my eyes hurt. Some company should really invest in finding a cure.

 

[reeferfoxx]

All these dino threads... and there is one with like 70 pages... my eyes hurt. Some company should really invest in finding a cure.

It's more profitable to create products that help dinos grow so that more products can be purchased

 

[Forsaken77]

static void PostMessage()
{
string comfortMessage = "I feel you man. My first tank I used tap water, changed water once every few months (if that), fed pellet food with a heavy hand and never removed any of the excess food. I had a single fish and freshwater gravel as a substrate. Not a lick of algae. I've had nothing but failure my last two tanks. RO/DI, weekly water changes, GFO, moderate feeding and removing excess food immediately, organic carbon dosing, and only moderate success after tons of hard work. I'm doing everything I \"should\" do, but still no joy. Fortunately, I have found a foolproof method to having a thriving, beautiful reef tank. The secret is as follows: ";

comfortMessage = comfortMessage + SecretToReefing();

Console.WriteLine(comfortMessage);
}

static string SecretToReefing()
{
//Todo: implement
return "";
}

I wonder is using RODI has something to do with enabling algae at all. Maybe the "stuff" in the tap water, besides chloromines, keeps algae from growing?

Because I also had a half-hearted approach and never had algae. Once I started using RODI, is when my algae problems started and never stopped. I never had Ph problems... NOTHING. I started using RODI and problems pop up. I mean there's 20 years between the 2 tanks, so there could be other variables. But maybe RODI isn't all it's cracked up to be. Maybe tap with a water conditioner has some merit as far as algae goes.

I know this is probably incorrect, but it's really the only significant difference between the two tanks I had.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

I wonder is using RODI has something to do with enabling algae at all. Maybe the "stuff" in the tap water, besides chloromines, keeps algae from growing?

Because I also had a half-hearted approach and never had algae. Once I started using RODI, is when my algae problems started and never stopped. I never had Ph problems... NOTHING. I started using RODI and problems pop up. I mean there's 20 years between the 2 tanks, so there could be other variables. But maybe RODI isn't all it's cracked up to be. Maybe tap with a water conditioner has some merit as far as algae goes.

I know this is probably incorrect, but it's really the only significant difference between the two tanks I had.

An interesting thought. I suppose there could be an element in tap water that inhibits the growth of certain algae species. It may even be one of the many disinfectants used to disinfect tap water. It's hard to say. What's in tap water varies widely by location and municipality. Different houses on the same street could have vastly different water quality due simply to the age of the pipes in the ground and in each individual house.

I think a bigger part with me was the live rock. I used really awesome nano "uncured" live rock from Live Aquaria. Uncured in this context means it has a ton of biodiversity and did not experience a lot of die-off during the initial shipment to LA or to me. This time I'm using dry rock. I cured it in-tank and used some rubble from a fish store, but I still don't think the rock is where it needs to be yet (almost 2 years after setting up the tank).

The tank in which I'm having the most success right now is my QT, which has next to no live rock (which was previously dry rock). It's hardly scientific, but I think for me the problem is at the very least my dry rock.

 

[RobertP]

Really enjoyed the coding humor. Good to see a few of us here. Was about to post some Salesforce apex code but its just not funny.

My tank has been running 11 months and feel like its only been stable the past 3 months. Fought cyano and worse was hair algae that takes forever to kill. Since I started dosing nopox the gha started dying.

You can do it just keep everything stable.

return null;

 

[ElGuapo]

Didn't have time to read through all the posts, but did you add sand recently? My tank had been up and running for about 8 years when I added a bag of sand to replenish whatever had been sucked out after repeated water changes. I used CaribSea live sand, which is all I've ever used. I believe best practice is to use dead sand when doing this, but I had done this in the past without issues so I just went ahead and bought a bag of live sand. A day or two later I got a dino bloom that lasted a couple weeks. Nothing else had been added/removed/changed other than the sand, and I hadn't had a dino bloom since my tank was new.