karimwassef
Active member
Is it just cost that drives a preference for the dirty method over the clean method?
Dinoflagellates.
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DNA
New member
I disagree.
UV has pros and cons.
The water column gets pristine because the UV kills all the plankton in it.
High power UV and max efficiency with slow flow is certain to leave nothing alive coming out of it.
It's use on reef health has been debated for decades and I have nothing to add to that.
I'm glad it seems to have worked for you but what happens when you turn the UV off for a week or two?
karimwassef
Active member
The water column isn't pristine. I have more plankton in this tank than I've had in any other. At night, I shine a flashlight into the water and I see a cloud of reflective creatures wriggling towards the light source. I have multiple videos of broods of shrimp nauplii, pods and fish fry.
It has nothing to do with the UV. Dinos are free floating at night and I zap enough of them that they cannot win. I zap others too but it's slow enough that the rest of the plankton that's alive feeds on the dead. It's no different than adding one big plankton predator... It just keeps them in check without destroying the population.
Most of my plankton is likely juvenile stages of benthic adults. So, the parents continue to pump babies and some don't make it. It doesn't kill the chain. More babies keep coming.
What did the most damage to the dinos was the three days of dark with UV. They had nowhere to be safe. They were exterminated along with some good guys. But the base of plankton didn't die. It just got a massive advantage.
By the way, the single biggest reason I have so much plankton is the absence of mechanical filters - no socks, no sponges, no bags. These are the real plankton killers. They destroy the mid tier plankton base and turn their bodies into local waste for bacteria and dinos to feed on. If you clean them often, that's good housekeeping and avoids bigger problems but it's just another way to throw plankton away.
Just my view based on what I've experienced.
It has nothing to do with the UV. Dinos are free floating at night and I zap enough of them that they cannot win. I zap others too but it's slow enough that the rest of the plankton that's alive feeds on the dead. It's no different than adding one big plankton predator... It just keeps them in check without destroying the population.
Most of my plankton is likely juvenile stages of benthic adults. So, the parents continue to pump babies and some don't make it. It doesn't kill the chain. More babies keep coming.
What did the most damage to the dinos was the three days of dark with UV. They had nowhere to be safe. They were exterminated along with some good guys. But the base of plankton didn't die. It just got a massive advantage.
By the way, the single biggest reason I have so much plankton is the absence of mechanical filters - no socks, no sponges, no bags. These are the real plankton killers. They destroy the mid tier plankton base and turn their bodies into local waste for bacteria and dinos to feed on. If you clean them often, that's good housekeeping and avoids bigger problems but it's just another way to throw plankton away.
Just my view based on what I've experienced.
garygonzales
Member
i did the 3 day black out twice with peroxide dosing,,,it seems to be at bay now ..i also turned my leds down a bit and it think that helped alot too....so far so good
karimwassef
Active member
Maybe there's an opportunity to create a heavy peroxide reactor where the water is cleansed without releasing peroxide into the tank.
Billybatz9
New member
DInos are no longer on sand bed, but on rocks. Red Slime is growing on two of my corals (Acans). How should I go about cleaning them? Water change? I haven't done a water change in 3 - 4 weeks. Should I do chemi clean? I did chemi clean last time and dinos exploded (I think). Not sure what to do
karimwassef
Active member
red slime needs increased flow and more water changes. It also should be manually removed or siphoned since the slime is really a poisonous biproduct of the bacteria, not the bacteria itself.
BigJohnny
Active member
Anyone have experience with this?
bheron
Active member
Originally Posted by BigJohnny View Post
For everyone running/who ran the dirty method, how high did your nitrates and PO4 get and did you lose any sps corals?
BigJohnny, I just thought of this as well. I've been running dirty method for months now and kept worrying about the same. I dont have any SPS to worry about but I wanted to test NO3 and PO4. I was SURE they're be off the charts. What did I find to my surprise?
NO3 = 0.1
P04 = 0.00
I've been overloading with food, no water changes, no skimming for months. I do have a functioning DSB that I give credit to the low NO3
For everyone running/who ran the dirty method, how high did your nitrates and PO4 get and did you lose any sps corals?
BigJohnny, I just thought of this as well. I've been running dirty method for months now and kept worrying about the same. I dont have any SPS to worry about but I wanted to test NO3 and PO4. I was SURE they're be off the charts. What did I find to my surprise?
NO3 = 0.1
P04 = 0.00
I've been overloading with food, no water changes, no skimming for months. I do have a functioning DSB that I give credit to the low NO3
Quiet_Ivy
New member
Sorry I've been AWOL, all my elderly relatives are deciding to climb up ladders and fall into the rhubarb.
Using dirty method, dosing nitrates to ~5ppm, phos is .03. Feeding a rotation of frozen mysis, emerald entree, heavy doses of phytofeast, ROE, NLS teeny pellets and oyster eggs. No water changes. Running minimal carbon, mechanical filtration at night. No skimming or water changes. I think my tank may be turning a corner.. I have had a couple of snail deaths which is worrying, but the other inverts are ok. Having a lot of cyano in the one corner where a crab and shrimp molt wound up but otherwise I see a whole lot of green algae, diatoms (weirdly). Still seeing at least 2 genera of dinos under the microscope but I can't scrape enough off the glass/filter socks to get Sommus' test to work.
@bigjohnny I have a load of corals from my bro in law's tank which exploded near the beginning of the month. Includes 2 palm sized Monti caps and 3-4 unknowns. The fuzzy sticks actually look really happy, with good PE. They are very brown, but the bleaching from the shock of being dropped onto the floor is actually reversing. I also have crap lights compared with bil. 2 monti caps, seem ok but one has a white margin I'm not sure about.
@bheron the carbon is more to soak up toxins. I run it since I have toxic Ostreopsis and have had a lot of deaths. Skimmer did nothing for me but some people have had good results. Dinos suck up *insane* amounts of nitrates and phosphates. I have had to actually dose nitrates to maintain a reading.
@billybatz Glad to hear you're getting somewhere! I would try to gently suck the cyano up with a turkey baster. Water changes don't do much for cyano (imho) because it can fix its own nitrogen anyway.
@karimwassif I think dirty vs clean is where one is on the ocd scale.
Some people are driven insane by algae patches and want tight control of what goes on in the tank. People like me are kinda lazy, like the idea of random critters and aren't going for a TOTM aquarium. There's probably a correlation between having sps and getting dinos; I just got "lucky".ivy
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Quiet_Ivy
New member
Good paper on blackouts and dinos!
Good paper on blackouts and dinos!
I found this fascinating paper on using blackouts to kill dinos! (Hey Google, why on earth didn't you kick this up in the gazillion previous searches I've done??) 3 day blackouts are *not* effective, it has to be at *least* 5 days, 8 for total kill.
From: Mortality in cultures of the dinoflagellate Amphidinium carterae during culture senescence and darkness Daniel J. Franklin and John A. Berges (pdf file)
found during a search for photoperiod and cyanobacteria of all things.
Ivy
Good paper on blackouts and dinos!
I found this fascinating paper on using blackouts to kill dinos! (Hey Google, why on earth didn't you kick this up in the gazillion previous searches I've done??) 3 day blackouts are *not* effective, it has to be at *least* 5 days, 8 for total kill.
A maximum of 75% of the cells were found to be dead"”according to the Sytox staining technique"”after 5 days in darkness. Duplicate sub-cultures from 3 day dark cultures resulted in regrowth of vegetative cells, after a short lag period. By contrast, duplicate sub-cultures from 8 day dark cultures produced no detectable growth (increases in fluorescence) over a three week monitoring period.
From: Mortality in cultures of the dinoflagellate Amphidinium carterae during culture senescence and darkness Daniel J. Franklin and John A. Berges (pdf file)
found during a search for photoperiod and cyanobacteria of all things.
Ivy
BigJohnny
Active member
Depends on the species and stage of development/colonization. I know people who have had success with 3 days
garygonzales
Member
ive have success with 3 days also...
I agree that the study covers only one species of dinoflagellate. I don't know how common that particular species is, but I think it's interesting that it took 8 days to kill it off. Maybe a longer dark period would be a good idea for tanks that show no effect from a shorter period.
Billybatz9
New member
Can corals and anemones go 8 days without light? What about fish?
DNA
New member
I'm too lazy to read through my own posts right now, but I did 5 days if I remember it correctly and the effect it had on Ostreopsis was just like pressing pause and it was an automatic resume after the light came back on.
They are mixotrophic meaning lights out are not a problem for their energy needs and then there are the cysts.
They are mixotrophic meaning lights out are not a problem for their energy needs and then there are the cysts.
PorkchopExpress
New member
the longest i was able to go was 5 days before my sps started dying (my goal back then was 7 days)...i had to do 3 days, then 1 day of reduced light, then 2 days before i started noticing some stn and i stopped...of course back then my sps stn'ing could have been a multitude of other factors such as H2O2/UltraAlgaeX/Dinoxal dosing and many other things i was trying
i can do 3 days with absolutely no problem, in fact they seem to actually like a 3 day lights out once in a while - when i uncover the tank their polyps are all out, no signs of color loss, and they've continued to grow during the lights out
fish are fine depending on what you have...i have anthias so when i do lights out, i will turn on the blues every 2nd night for 15-30 minutes just to feed him and any others that want to eat then cover the tank again...but generally they are fine for a few days without any food
ps - as mentioned above, i've found blackouts to be temporary bandaids...they always came back afterwards, sometimes stronger than previously although i never tried more than 5 days...i suppose if you blackout for long enough, anything photosynthetic would die including most dinos
i can do 3 days with absolutely no problem, in fact they seem to actually like a 3 day lights out once in a while - when i uncover the tank their polyps are all out, no signs of color loss, and they've continued to grow during the lights out
fish are fine depending on what you have...i have anthias so when i do lights out, i will turn on the blues every 2nd night for 15-30 minutes just to feed him and any others that want to eat then cover the tank again...but generally they are fine for a few days without any food
ps - as mentioned above, i've found blackouts to be temporary bandaids...they always came back afterwards, sometimes stronger than previously although i never tried more than 5 days...i suppose if you blackout for long enough, anything photosynthetic would die including most dinos
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DNA
New member
I would like to point out that filter-socks used in dino infested tanks could be a health risk after washing and drying.
They can potentially collect a lot of toxins in a few days of use in the tank. The toxins are not neutralized with boiling and the little that did not get washed off can easily get airborne after the sock dries.
A solution could be to store them in a salt bucked.
They can potentially collect a lot of toxins in a few days of use in the tank. The toxins are not neutralized with boiling and the little that did not get washed off can easily get airborne after the sock dries.
A solution could be to store them in a salt bucked.
