Newbie 75 gallon

[Llorgon]

Originally Posted by Frogger

No the stuff i have is from a online fresh water fish guy in Richmond. I had to sign my life away to get it.

Filter socks don't filter down to a fine enough particle size to effectively capture all the microscopic dinoflagellates and their spores. Most filter socks are either 100 or 200 micron in size and are designed to remove larger particles.

The Magnum micron cartridge is 8 microns and dinoflagelletes are between 25 and 50 microns in size. It uses pump pressure to force the water through it, versus gravity.

Sounds like some serious stuff. Don't have the name of the guy or anything?


So are you saying get a magnum canister filter and use that to help remove the dinos?

[Frogger]

There is no right answer, it what ever works for you. I used the magnum micron filter combined with the uv sterilizer and that did the trick for me. Our tanks are different, mine was set up for 15 years before I had the dino bloom. About 3 years ago first I had Bryopsis (for years), treated that, then immediately followed by Cyano followed immediately by dinos. Dinos was the worst by far. So I had a ton of things happening in my tank. I don't want you to go out and spend a ton of money and then not have it work for you.

I had to change the micron filter daily when I first started, now I change it once a week. Rinse it off, dump it in bleach (for a day), rinse well and use again. I have several spare filters. I still use it. Now this is on a tank that I did not have a filter sock. This is why I still use it.

[chooch]

Canadian Aquatics. I think his name is Patrick. He carries potassium nitrate and potassium phosphate. He'll need a photocopy of your driver's license and you have to declare what you are using the potassium nitrate for. Required by law because it's a controlled substance.

My tanks is just over a year old so I'm pretty new at this. I was out of town for a week this summer and came back to a small dino outbreak. I think it was triggerred by the warm weather as I had the ac turned up while we were away. I dimmed down the white leds and got the temperature lower/stable as we had the ac set back to normal. It actually just went away on it's own in about 3 weeks. This just happenned by chance cause I didn't have time to deal with it actively. BUT cyano came in shortly after the dino was gone. I syphoned it out once and it came right back. I've always had high nitrates and phosphates in the past but I hadn't tested for it for a while. I never made much effort to reduce nitrates and phosphates as I never had any issues with the tank.
Decided to test, 0 nitrate and .5 phosphate on api testers. After some reading, I started dosing nitrates to maintain 10ppm. Syphoned the cyano again and only about 10% came back this time. Syphoned the remaining patches and what ever I missed just went away on it's own. There's still a little on my chaeto in my refugium but none in the display.

Sorry, got a little off topic with the cyano. I've noticed nuisance algae really likes white light so maybe it was a combination of cutting the white light and the lower stable temperature that took care of the dino. I don't know for certain. Maybe the chaeto is out competing everything now that there's plenty of nitrates.

Fyi, I don't run a skimmer, don't do scheduled/routine water changes, never clean my refugium and don't run any mechanical filtration.... because I am lazy and stubborn. All I have is chaeto, a little bit of rubble and half a large marine pure block in the refugium.

[Frogger]

Patrick that's the guys name. I have more of this stuff then I need come on by and I measure you up enough for a couple litres of each mixture.