melev

easy to tell if they are dinos by blowing off the rocks etc. If it goes into suspension, and then reappears on the rocks the next day, that's dinos. If that is the case, STOP doing water changes. BTW, the one small issue with the Red Sea Coral Pro salt, is that it does have a small amount of silicate in it, which fuels dino growth. That shouldn't matter except in the case of a new or re-established tank, as is the case with yours. Otherwise that salt is pretty good, and you can use media to absorb the silicates. I would bet you are having a cycle.

I don't use that salt any longer. I'm using Sybon salt. And these brown things appear very very fast, within mere hours the stringy stuff wraps around various items. Here's a picture I took of a gorgonian that was in trouble last week.

Should you be really, adding more things, when stuff is dying. I think it best to get things settled down.

There's a ton of life in the tank. But as usually, I share the good as well as the bad. That way it allows me to think about what is going on to isolate the problem, and others can chime in if I'm missing something. I'm not seeking out more livestock necessarily. The fish I mentioned were purchased at once, were in QT for 10 days, and then went into the tank two weeks ago.

I'd not had a featherduster in over 10 years, and wanted to try one out again. I don't have any idea why it was unhappy.

When it rains it pours! Thanks for sharing the bad things that happen with your reef. It helps us realize that even the more experienced reef keepers face the same challenges as everyone else. I believe far too many people hide the downward swings in their tanks while only sharing the good... which is no way to help others in the community.

Randy Holmes-Farley has an article about dinoflagellates and proposes using eleveated pH to combat the problem. The link: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-11/rhf/index.php

Marc, I don't recall seeing a post of your tank parameters recently. Does everything seem to be in-check?

-James

did you have dino's before your trip to Florida? Im wondering if you brought it back with all the frags you bought.

Hey Marc I thank you too for telling us about the good-times and the bad-times. Can you tell us more about the dosing of Hydrogen peroxide or direct us to some good articles? I hope everything clears up for ya Marc! I'm battling the red slimy algae right now. It's not bad yet though and I want to keep it that way. I remove what I can "see" myself everyday. (On substrate in front of tank/I'm blind) Also, my oldest daughter remove it on rockwork during the weekly water change.

James & Henry - I've read that article a few times over the years. And I wasn't positive this is what has been in my tank for the past 6 weeks or longer, but it definitely made me nervous on several occasions. Since it was just a bit here and a bit there, I hoped to stay ahead of it. But as you can see in that one picture above, it was really getting out of hand on that one coral. It was pulled out of my reef, then put in QT with Chemi-clean for a few days to let it clean up and recover. Which worked. It's back in the tank again.

However, the big Gorgonian I got in Florida two weeks ago went through QT and dips nicely, then in my tank with 6 hours was coated with brown stuff that covered 60% of it. It was very strange. I took it out of the tank, shook it off in a bucket of tank water, and this brown stuff swirled around in the water. I have a picture of it, probably on my iPhone. (Wish I could use it with this site, but alas not yet.) The coral was nice and clean, purple showing up nicely. Another frag had a bit of string appear from under the plastic frag plug base. Again, within mere hours, it had brown stuff stringing along the 1.5" length, coating it like a web. Nasty stuff, and fast moving. Picture a spaghetti worm's tentacles, it looked like that, but brown and with no host.

About two months ago, while reading some posts on Reef2Reef (one of our sponsors, thank you!), I saw a thread about using H202 to treat dinoflagellates in the tank. 1 ml per 10g of water volume, dosed daily for about a week. During the past 12 months or longer, H202 (Hydrogen peroxide) has been recommended with pest algae on frag plugs. You can dip the frag plug in the solution, carefully making sure the coral doesn't touch the stuff -- just the base plug. Any algae turns white and dies, and your clean up crew will pick it off in the next couple of days. One speaker suggested using a Water-Pic (the thing we used to use for dental hygiene) to blast off nuisance stuff in corals or frag plugs.

Today, I dosed it again for the third time, and the gorgonian looks better yet. Each time I dose, the ORP rises for a little while, then drops again over the next few hours.

n8rad - Yes, this has been going on for some time now, but it is limited to specific spots. If you've looked at the recent pictures, all the corals are looking quite clean, and most of the rockwork as well. It's just hints of it, but I'm just prone to notice stuff like that and dwell on what it might be and how to solve it before it gets out of control.

hope its not the sybon salt cause i just ordered 36 bags!

No, it's not the salt because I have a 250g barrel running at all times and that stuff hasn't shown up in it in 4 months. When we used 200+ gallons at Next Wave, the vendor's tanks didn't have that issue either. I kind of think it may have to do with running biopellets, but that's merely a theory.

I've got 9 boxes on hand myself.

fewwww... thanks for telling me that. Speaking of pellets..you are now the 3rd person i know that this has shown up in their tanks also running pellets.

Well, it may be a side effect. I'm not sure. I'm not dosing anything, and have the calcium reactor keeping the Alkalinity right around 8 dKH. I've not tried leaving the lights off since I know that won't help with dinoflagellates (unless you leave them off for weeks).

Seeing 0 NO3 and 0 PO4 makes it almost worth it. If the H202 gets rid of this stuff, even better.

Definitely keep us updated Marc. I remember battling this stuff awhile back when i was dosing MB7 with vodka..once it started showing up i stopped and it took a good month and half to finally subside.

Do you think you have enough macro growing to possibly take the pellets off-line and see what happens if the peroxide doesnt work? BTW does your euroreef have 2 or 3 eheim pumps? Im just curious because i know this is the same skimmer you had on the 280 and going to 400+ with your sump is a huge upgrade. Im just hoping your skimmer is still large enough to keep up. But on the other hand your bioload is so small right now I wouldnt think its the skimmer....I dont know just throwing out thoughts

I'd rather not take the biopellets offline and end up with dead bacteria and decaying media. I've been watching that media gradually evaporate from the Nextreef Reactor.

I got some MB7 while in Florida, and dosed once already. It's about time to dose once more. I read repeatedly how MB7 helped people with cyano issues.

The skimmer has two Eheim 1262 pumps, and is pulling out a little waste each day. Nothing amazing, and like you said the bioload is less than before. I may have to upgrade it later, but currently it's more than enough to do the job.