So a couple months ago my tank became over ran with dinoflagellates. It stripped almost all of my sps of all color with the exception of beautiful �� brown.
I kept hoping it wasn't dinos and continued to do big water changes and trying to get my nitrates down. They were staying around 20. I was vodka dosing and skimming heavy and not feeding much.
All the while my po4s were non existent. I was getting about 3 gallons of nasty skimmate every 4 to 5 days. Sometimes I would clan up the what I thought was just algae sometimes I wouldn't. I was and am still running filter socks. They would need to be changed every the days. I run 3 four inch socks on my sump after the skimmer section.
None of this was working! Go figure. So I started reading and found an unbelievably great thread here in rc about dinoflagellates. I read through I think 80 odd pages of great information. I decided I was going to vinegar dose heavily while peroxide dosing while doing 3 days lights out.
At the end of the lights out I scrubbed all the dinos off of everything they were still on and watched my filter socks fill up. I changed them 3 hours after that and they were full. I also started to feed a ton and dose twice as much Aqua vitro fuel as per directions. I was hoping to get some po4s in System. After 2 days of this I got my first po4 reading of anything on my hanna ulr meter. They were high but I wanted them so I started to run 2 tablespoons of gfo. This lowered them to exceptable levels.
Here are some pictures from yesterday. I'm trying to keep po4s between .02 and .01 and nitrates just detectable.
FTS for reference.
My CBB is a ham for the camera.
Here you have some Oregon Tort, SSC, pink digitata, and some ORA piece I have forgot the name to. Maybe when I get color back I'll remember the name.
Well I took quite a few pictures today. I think I'm heading in the right direction still.
I'm going to try and take a picture of these corals as some kind of base line.
I bought this piece brown but I think it has some potential I was told that it came in with bright pink tips.
Tyree Pink Lemon aid I am see great growth and the color is just started to come out.
Here are some montipora. Jason Fox Mystic Sunset, Superman, reverse superman, pink sand dollar and other acros.
This frag is really cool to me. When I bought it. 7 months ago it was white with blueish purplish polyps. It then went dark on me and stayed encrusting. About a month ago I moved it to this system and it had taken off. The new growth is almost as beautiful as when I purchased it.
Continued on next post.
I bought this piece off of Jason on here and I think he said it was Raspberry lemonade. Correct me please Jason as I can't remember for sure.
Here is a pale Reeftech Starburst Monti. There is also a JF Mystic Sunset coloring back up too.
One of the many ugly brown ones now that has a lot of potential.
And that's all for today. I'm still trying to dial in the dosing pumps as I'm increasing them by 5 seconds everyday just to try to keep up with demands. Everything is loving this clean more stable environment!
Well some how yesterday while messing with my dosing schedule on my apex I some how messed up the alkalinity dosing time. I'm just happy I caught it a day later as it took a nose dive over the course of 24 hours. It's also been a couple days ago I'll post up some shots of the same corals. I think I might be boring �� people with the same pictures over and over but oh well.
I think this pink lemonade is coloring up fast.
Will that's it for today. I think things are getting more color. They are also exploding with growth. I plan to get my CA reactor online soon as I don't like mixing 2 part. Have a great night and don't forget to feed your fish.
