Xmoji 57 Gallon Reef Tank

Dinos!

Ahhh what a nightmare!

I hope you all don’t have to deal with it and if you have I feel your pain. That’s what I’ve been dealing with. Good news is I was able to stabilize my tank, bad news is I lost a lot. When I say a lot I mean almost everything. It’s probably never gone but it’s currently not a problem. Let me walk you through this.

Looking back it seems that problems started back in October 2020. I didn’t catch anything totally off with my water chemistry during this time. My po4 and no3 never bottomed out. I didn’t change anything with my feeding or maintenance habits. It’s hard for me to say exactly how I think the dinos took off.

While the dinos was taking over my tank I tried several methods to remove or defeat them. I tried dosing phyto, vibrant, dino x, dosed mb7, tried adding pods and phyto, dosed stability, adjusted my lighting schedule.

After trying all of this I couldn’t defeat this stuff. All the while it was just ravaging all of my coral. I was losing stuff daily lps and sps were all being suffocated. Zoas wouldn’t open. Everything looked awful except for some zoas, duncans and my OG bounces. I noticed that the bounces were completely unaffected by dinos. It was odd, almost as if the mushrooms had some sort of defense against dinos. Dinos would grow all around them but wouldn’t suffocate them like it did with everything else. I never lost an OG bounce during this time.

I thought about tearing down the tank a lot. There were several times that I had to talk myself out of it and keep pushing through. A lot of people also told me to tear down also. To be honest it’s not the worst idea but I couldn’t let it win so I did a soft reset.

I took out a lot of old rock and even older bio media and bio blocks. I slowly removed my sand bed. I readjusted my light schedule and my feeding habits. I also am in the process of adding more fish. Finally the thing that really made a difference was adding a UV sterilizer. It was slow but the UV took care of the dinos and allowed my tank to look healthier and corals were doing good again. Recently I started noticing some dinos come back even while running the uv. I replaced the bulb and cleaned the sleeve which had some calcium buildup. Two days later dinos was beat back again.

I have been picking up some more coral recently and a couple of swaps and stores. I also haven’t lost anything since adding the UV which is awesome so I will continue with my current tank and just take it a day at a time.

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Glad to hear you’re beating the dinos. Were you able to confirm your no3 and po4 values while the dinos were thriving? While I know controversy exists, my experience is consistent with dinos thriving while no3 and or po4 is non-existent.
 
The tank looks good. I hope your major problems are behind you now. This hobby is crazy sometimes tank parameters too high problems and then too low problems.

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Mjl714 said:
Glad to hear you’re beating the dinos. Were you able to confirm your no3 and po4 values while the dinos were thriving? While I know controversy exists, my experience is consistent with dinos thriving while no3 and or po4 is non-existent.
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Yes I have record of my values and can go back to check. I was also dosing at times po4 and no3 depending on what was low.
 
Mpdan said:
The tank looks good. I hope your major problems are behind you now. This hobby is crazy sometimes tank parameters too high problems and then too low problems.

Sent from my motorola edge plus using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Very crazy, but I enjoy the challenge it gives me. I do think that the major issues are now behind me. I do need to be extra vigilant of my parameters.
 
Hey guys, I’m still here, the tank is still running and is still doing really well. My parameters have not bottomed out since I’ve been feeding a lot and added another fish. Corals are doing really well and I’ve been adding some new pieces to the tank.

Parameter have been a challenge to keep where I want but I have been successful in keeping my parameters at the levels below.

PO4 0.02-0.08. I aim to be at 0.06 and if I’m at 0.02 I’m trying to raise them.

NO3 2-10 ppm. If nitrates are around 2 ppm like phosphate I’m trying to raise them. However my lasts three tests have been consistent at 10 ppm.

DKH 8.1-9.1.Currently the tank isn’t too demanding but being how important alkalinity is I’m always monitoring.

Like I mentioned the corals have been doing really well. My og bounces are out of control! Huge bubbles and I have way too many right now. Im hovering around 25-30 bounce mushrooms. Sps are also doing well. I haven’t gotten too many high end pieces since I’m taking this “new/rebooted”tank slowly. Polyp extension is really healthy on the sps.

As for feeding I started to mix in some different dry foods. I started with a few Brightwell products. Reef Blizzard XC and LP. Not crazy about the LP my acans and Duncan’s don’t seem too interested. I also picked up Brightwell zooplankton. I’m feeding Zooplanktos S and L.

I still have my UV sterilizer plumbed in with no plans on removing. This was the key in fixing my major issues.
 
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