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Dynoflagellates

Diana my lights are same as yours or similar and about 8 inches from surface.
David, I was just made aware as well that low nutrients cause dinos.
Do you suggest I cut back on the blue Chanel’s? I have channels for deep red, green, royal blue, white, cool blue, and violet.
 

diana a

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Blue channel is my ok. It shouldn't be the cause of the problem. Get your P and N to the correct level not below it
 
Yea. I agree. My n&p are nearly undetectable. I’ll work on those numbers, and get back to to you.
 
You can dose nitrates and phosphates to bring them up. It's to easy nowadays to have zero nitrates and phosphates. I don't run any gfo and feed my tank 5 times a day and phosphates are almost 0 and nitrates are usually around 1.
 
I hope I don’t speak to soon, but I think I’m starting to gain on this golden algae. I have some patches of bare rock showing. I think I might even see a few little spots of coralline algae.
 

MadReefer

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That's funny as I noticed today that much of the back wall algae is flaking off floating around the tank.
Sand bed still a bit dirty but not like before. All I did was add a bag of carbon 2 or 3 days ago.
 
I’m runing the tank dirtier. Took out the gfo, feeding more. I have got the nitrates up, to my target. The phosphates are still undetected. I also added some cuc. Some miscellaneous snails and a few blue legged hermit. Kind of ran with your suggestion with the p & n levels, Diana A. I just dumped some bought pods, cause I don’t see a bunch of natural ones. The tank is still young. I only set it up in June or july. Still needs to get some age to it.
 
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Bot587

NJRC Member
So I just had a battle with dino after I added some chaeto into a refugium to my system (stripped all the nutrients from my water 0 Nitrate and 0 Phosphate). I had it under control within a week by removing the chaeto, taking the light off the refugium, and stopping water changes. I ran a siphon (with a smaller tube attached to the end to increase flow velocity at the tip siphon. Each day I siphoned my rock with the output draining straight into my filter sock. As my water increase to 2.5 ppm nitrates, the dinos were out competed. Take this with a grain of salt, as I read a lot of articles and there are a heck of a lot of types of dinos.

My best advice would be to think back to what change you made prior to the dinos getting a foothold. Dinos are part of every ecosystem. Controlling them with natural means (bacteria, pods, other algae) would be my first choice of how to handle them. That said, don't change to many parameters at once, otherwise you will never figure out the domino you knocked over to give them a foothold.
 

MadReefer

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So I just had a battle with dino after I added some chaeto into a refugium to my system (stripped all the nutrients from my water 0 Nitrate and 0 Phosphate). I had it under control within a week by removing the chaeto, taking the light off the refugium, and stopping water changes. I ran a siphon (with a smaller tube attached to the end to increase flow velocity at the tip siphon. Each day I siphoned my rock with the output draining straight into my filter sock. As my water increase to 2.5 ppm nitrates, the dinos were out competed. Take this with a grain of salt, as I read a lot of articles and there are a heck of a lot of types of dinos.

My best advice would be to think back to what change you made prior to the dinos getting a foothold. Dinos are part of every ecosystem. Controlling them with natural means (bacteria, pods, other algae) would be my first choice of how to handle them. That said, don't change to many parameters at once, otherwise you will never figure out the domino you knocked over to give them a foothold.

Good point. I did take my small fug e offline last week too. No plans to add it back.
 

burrito

NJRC Member
it was news to me that a clean tank results in dino, yours doesnt look like it but i hit zero for no4 and po4 and BAM dino. had to cut back on water changes, my fuge lighting and make my skimmer super dry, i also added UV and my dino went away. hopefully the algae is easier to get rid off
 
Yea. Now a days, with modern equipment and reefing techniques, it’s easy to run too clean. I never thought it would be a problem. I can get my no4 up, but my po4 remains low. If i try to push my po4 up, my no4 will get too high. It seems to be slowly getting better, so I’m going to leave it alone. It’s realy hard to measure low level po4, anyway. I have trouble reading between 0, and 0.05. I’m yet to find a test kit that is is distinguishable in that low range.
 

burrito

NJRC Member
im using the newer ULR hanna checker i get results now slightly better than zero, .03-.06 range. my no4 is still undetectable but my suspicion is my fuge takes all the nitrates up, i still have very minor algae here and there so i know there's nitrate in the water
 

MadReefer

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I have been toying with getting a UV. Not much space in my sump or cabinet. Saw an 18w for $50.
 
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