Now let's fast forward to today. A few months ago I noticed the dreaded dinos in my tank and I decided to dose some hydrogen peroxide to eliminate the buggers. At first it seemed to work but after a while I realized the problem was not going away. My next step was to do a three day blackout in conjunction with hydrogen peroxide dosing, a combination that eradicated the dinos for a number of weeks. But they persevered
Next up was raising the pH with kalkwasser. Well, the dinos just laughed this one off and kept spreading, while the kalkwasser seized up my pumps. I just couldn’t win.
I also tried to lower my nutrients by using GFO aggressively and skimming heavily. More frequent water changes were tried as well but the dinos seemed to get worse so I assumed they were feeding on the trace elements replenished during the water changes. Nonetheless, my SPS were stressed out from all these different treatments as well as the dinos covering their polyps. It was apparent to me I would lose them if things didn’t change soon so I tried some riskier approaches.
I decided to use Vibrant Liquid Aquarium Cleaner. I hesitated before using Vibrant since I was adding additional bacteria to my tank and had no insight into how it would effect my current bacteria bed. But I was desperate so I gave it a shot since I figured I had nothing to lose. After dosing for a couple of weeks the dinos did recede and eventually disappeared (at least to the naked eye), but the tank was overrun by a really bad case of cyanobacteria.
For a couple of weeks I tried everything in the book to rid the tank of cyano, relying on natural methods such as siphoning, nutrient control, more flow, etc, but to no avail. I reluctantly used ChemiClean to knock it out and it did work, although the dinos eventually resurfaced. Oh boy, what a vicious circle!
What to do now? Well, I heard some reef keepers had success using Seachem Metroplex, which apparently kept the dinoflagellates from reproducing. Despite these claims there was no real concrete scientific evidence this was true and that Metroplex was reef safe. But I was desperate so I gave it a shot. Unfortunately, after dosing Metroplex my dinos kept spreading and I soon started to lose a lot of SPS.
My last ditch effort was to go with the “dirty” method and add a lot of pods to the tank and to also raise nutrients. The theory here is that pods will help to consume dinos while additional nutrients will spur on algae growth, supposedly a plus since the algae would outcompete the dinos by consuming nutrients taken in by the dinos. In theory it sounds good but in my case it didn’t work.
As I surveyed my tank it was obvious to me it was time to start over since my corals had taken a lot of abuse from all of the different treatments. I have encountered a lot of problems during my twenty plus years keeping reef tanks, including the dreaded Acro Eating Flatworms, but in this instance a reboot made the most sense.
I am actually excited about starting over again. I get jazzed when I start up a new tank so I will use this as an opportunity to try some new things and learn from this bad experience. Resiliency is very important when it comes to reef keeping! I have some theories on how I can turn things around with the next version of this tank so I will be posting updates on my rebuild.
That is my story and I am sticking to it!
, so the tank is lit by two Giesemann Spectra 24″ fixtures (1 x Mogul and 4 x 24w T5s per fixtures). The two 400W Radium bulbs are driven by Luxcore 400w Dimmable Ballasts on the 400w Super Lumens setting.
