Dinoflagellates, one more time.

[Ben1]

I am really at a loss here. It seems I am doomed to a life with brown slime. This stuff literally grows so fast I can blow it all away witha turkey baster and it will grow back in 2 HOURS. I have dealt with all the other problem algaes and never had to fight like this. I am at a total loss here. I cant get it to go away.

I have lost a few smaller corals but it even grows on my large porites colony during the day. I left the lights off for 2 complete days and weened them back on only to have a hugh come back. I think the come back was worse then the first battle.

I hate my SPS clam tank now, HATE it. I go upstairs and stare into my 40 gallon reef with the solid pink walls and at my seahorse tank and relaxe. Then I see my 75 sps clam tank and cringe. I cant stand this anymore.

I am thinking of a total revamp. Ripping the whole tank down and starting from stratch. I just dont know what to do its terrible. I moved all the rocks yesterday broke the porite colony off the glass it enrusted and cleaned all the ditritus off the rocks and sand. I stirred the top layer of the sandbed about 1/4" down.

I have done tons of water changes and run carbon, polyfilters, and stopped all trace element additions. I have had no luck!

Would these thing work:

Adding a UV steralizer untill the algae is gone.

running my skimmer only at night a euroreef cs8-3

Adding a new snail package or would they all die?

replacing the hood, its made out of particle board that may be getting wet on the sides.

Adding more kalk besides the nielson reactor that does all top off?


Any HELP PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I dont want to see anmore brown frown. I have lost 2 fish a cinnomin clown I had over 5 year and a copperband butterfly. I cant deal with this anymore. Sorry for the blabbing on and on.

 

[Anonymous]

What kind of water are you using?

I have been using well water and I seem to have dino appear everyday. I am going to go with the RO/DI units and I think that will clear mine up. Tanks looks wonderfull in the morning. Later in the day, even with directed flow, I get some dino.

 

[Ben1]

top off through nielson reactor from liter meter. Liter meter pulls water from 15 gallon resevoir that stays full via float switch controlled ro/di.

I also use this water for water changes atleast 20% bi weekly. Using IO salt mix. I changed all the ro/di units carts and membrane recently.

I use two 400 wt mh 65k and 3 x 100 wt actinics over my 75 gallon. I use a mag 9.5 return trough a seaswirl and 3 hagen 802 powerheads on all the time. (since my wave maker zapped my last week.)

I skim 24/7 with a euroreef cs8-3. I usually add 5 scoops of tropic marin bio calcium daily and add strontium once in a while. I had to add magnesium to keep up my calcium levels but havent for a while. I stopped all trace element additions though.

Right now fish are one foxface and one three stripe damsel. Not much else to say. All parameters are perfect with new salifert test kits.

I am going to post some pics to give you fellow reefers a look at this nasty tank.

 

[Tinker]

I know it's not the same scale but I just beat dinos on a nano.

I did the following over about 4 months:
Added a skimmer and ran it 7x24 cleaned every 3-4 days
Ran charcoal 7x24 and changed it at least once a week
20% water change every 4-5 days
Reduce light to 10 hours a day
Replaced PC bulbs
Vacumed up as much of the crap as possible when changing water (seemed to help a lot)
Added 100% more snails and hermits. I now have about 12+ hermits and 12+ snails in a 7 gal tank
Added a small yellow sea cucumber (sand sifter)
Cut fish feeding back and fed LPS corals less often
Tried to keep the alk and ca right

As I look at the tank the sand is almost white. I have a little dark green stuff in one corner but it's not the snotty dino crap. I guess i'll deal with that next.

Good Luck!

 

[Ben1]

8O :!:

 

[Ben1]

can anyone see the pics?

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry on two accounts Ben. 1: No I do not see any pictures and I am looking at this thread in both Mozilla on a Linux machine and IE6 on my Win XP machine. The XP machine has the little boxes with a red X in them.

2: My problem is Diatoms, not Dino. I got confused!

I had a little dino in my 29gal months ago. But it has a lot of water movement and it was gone pretty quick. Wish I could help.

 

[samm]

I had a brown dino problem for a long time and then lowered my temps from low mid 80s to 70s F and it's gone and has not come back for months. I had tried everything.