JD’s 180g

[project1004]

If you have the old drain system with one drain and return on the two side of the tank maybe the reason why one is coming down faster and stronger than the other one which may need to travel longer to drain. Also if this is the case, float valve won’t work.

I mean for you to put one like this down under the water line well below~

You can also lower the rerun flow rate to slowdown the drain.



Edit: Gate valve and not float valve.

 

[cbj25isback]

More flow for dinos or just use a small power head to periodically blow off your rockwork. Also, get a heater for your mixing vat - salinity, ph can be thrown off by temp, additionally you don’t want to dump a bunch of cool water in your tank, as you’ll stress out coral/fish.

Good luck bud, heading in the right direction!

 

[jd22]

I took a multifaceted approach to the Dino’s. I dosed neonitrate, microbacter 7, added some copepods, cut the photo period and moved to very blue coloring. It was difficult to raise the levels I had to cut out water changes until just recently I did a small change as the Hanna checker showed nitrates of 13 ppm and phosphates of 0.5.

It might be hard to tell from the photos how bad they got and how much better it looks now but the Dino’s have pretty much fully retreated. I credit the increased nutrients so thanks for that tip I had never heard of this.

I ordered a new CC now that the Dino’s are mostly gone, I was kind of worried they might be toxic so was waiting, hopefully they’ll be able knock back some of the remaining diatoms while I’m on vacation and I can transition into some corals

 

[jd22]

After being out of town a couple of weeks and no water changes for the last month I expected the tank to increase nutrients and start to get past the dinos but while I'm starting to see some more green algae, my nitrates and phosphates were really low which led some increased dinos. While I was gone nitrates went from 11 to 1.5 and Phosphate from 0.8 to 0.4. I'm going to start dosing nitrates again to see if I can get past this. My alkalinity has taken a hit with no water changes and I'm going to start dosing All For Reef.

I also think I'm going to switch lighting and go with the Radion XR15 instead of the cheaper Amazons.

Any other thoughts on how to get past these dinos? I'd like to start getting some corals but I'm afraid with the Dinos they could perish pretty quickly.

 

[shanepike]

Any other thoughts on how to get past these dinos?

Which type of dinos did you determine you have? Did you follow the guide for how to combat those?

 

[jd22]

I have not done that yet as I thought maybe it was resolved. I’ll give that a shot.

 

[jd22]

Well I’m still battling dinos and have yet to order a microscope but I feel like I’ve tried all the tricks and still have them regardless of type so I may just try Dino x and see what happens. I did start to install the radion xr15 blues which maybe can help (?). I mainly made the switch because I like controlling everything through the Apex/phone and the Amazon lights were unreliable if there was a power outage plus have very primitive controls. I was surprised at how big of a difference it made. The left side has three of the Amazon lights vs just one of the radions on the right. I’ll hang the middle light tomorrow and then order the final radion next week.

Having one side brighter than the other has made for a cool effect and I think once I have all radions and they can be controlled easily I’ll make a sweeping sunset and sunrise.

 

[project1004]

I think what you are going thru may be a DIATOM instead id dinos. Which is first part of tank maturing... And can take months to go away...

NVM, i wnet back and noticed you already went thru diatom phase...

And radion will definitely speed up the process but it can also lead to algae bloom if your nutrients is not controlled.... But you will definitely love the radions compare to more lights out there.... Do you have corals in there?? If not, you dont need intense lights and having intense light is not reccommanded at the beginning of the tank systems.

 

[jd22]

No corals yet. I was hoping to try and beat this algae before but I think I’ll probably try and get some easy corals in there and see what happens. I’ve also run into a couple of issues with the radions. One keeps disconnecting from the apex controller and says missing based on my reading online it’s usually from a power supply being cutoff or possibly interference on the mxm module. The power is always on to them so I think I just need to relocate that mxm module. The other one was blinking red straight out of the box so I need to return it for a fresh one.

 

[project1004]

It’s going to be lots of manual removing but you should beat it in due time.

I would just say to use mobius app for the radions. Maybe after initial setting with mobius, you may want to go with apex?!?

I’ve never hooked up my ecotech products to apex. Möbius app is really easy to use. Mom maybe an issue with programming or the connection like you say. That’s just extra item that can cause problems?

 

[jd22]

After really reading up and looking at the algae I think this has now morphed into Cyanobacteria now that my nutrients are up. My nitrates are ~17 and my phosphates are .02 which I guess is kind of still low but looking at photos online it is really starting to look like Cyano with lyngba. It seems this can be common after raising nutrients for Dino’s.

I’m going to start dosing some bacteria, add in some chemipure and purigen and start manually removing it slowly as it seems it could be toxic.

 

[project1004]

It’s hard to say but I’ll considering this as still early stage of your tank. You are still going thru ugly stage. Manual remover and keeping things rolling maybe best idea instead of dosing chemicals into your tank making it more unstable. No need water changes. No need chemicals. Just let your tank settle down. In mean time, you keep adding good stuff like cuc and proper feeding. keeping your mechanical filtration clean and at least don’t do any carbon dosing.

 

[jd22]

Been a while since I’ve updated. I’m still new to the larger tank, automation, and making my own water and had my first flooding which could’ve been worse. I did a water change and after I was done, I turned the pump off but forgot to close the flow to the tank off. I have a timer to circulate the water so it doesn’t sit idle for too long and it pumped about 30 gallons out. My Apex notifications werent tuned in properly but I check a lot and imagine my shock when my sump said it was full! Luckily I was home, the sump has a good bit of head room and the trash can wasn’t full. I’m guessing maybe 3-5 gallons made it to the floor. Tank is in the basement on tile so was pretty easy clean up and I put three fans circulating all under and around the tank to dry it out really well. Lesson learned. It definitely forced me to learn the ins and out of the Apex so happy with that.

I’ve grown very tired of the algae which I do again believe is dinos, likely Amphidinium. I still haven’t microscoped it but I have tried everything. Dosed silicates, parameters are good, dosed all sorts of bacteria, added pods, added phyto and After thinking it was cyano I cleaned the tank real well and dosed chemiclean which did actually clear up the tank some but dinos came back.

I couldn’t wait any more plus wanted to try and some other diversity in the tank so I’ve started to put some corals in which are actually thriving despite the algae. I’m starting to see a good bit of hair algae which I welcome as the 4 tangs, rabbit fish, and angel all eat. I’m very close to trying Dino X but I happened to come across a YouTube video about raising the tank temp to 83 so that’s what I’ve done over the last two days

I cleaned the dinos real well again so we will see in a couple days how things look. So far no ill effects on the livestock. The zoas I just added today thanks to @shanepike so haven’t fully opened yet but are look really nice.