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Refugium is about dead I think


Bpb

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Pretty much just as the heading says. Some of you folks may remember recently I've been posting about dinoflagellates and my battle with them. Well...I'm somewhat happy to report tha my display tank is DEFINITELY on the up and up and the Dinos are retreating quite a big. I no longer get any strands on my coral polyps or on the sandbed. Just one or two odd strands on the back wall and on the powerheads. Not sure what exactly did it but It may have been a combination of running Kalkwasser, increased gfo and carbon use, manual removal, and peroxide. Not the point here though

While the display appears to be nearly clear of it, my refugium seems to be harboring it quite a bit. Completely covers the glass and appears to have covered my chaeto so much to a point that it appears to be completely dead now. I've got some ideas on what my next step can be but I'm curious what y'all think. As it is, I've got a dinoflagellates refugium lol.

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Definitely considered that fact as well. If my reactor is killing the chaeto and algae is receding, then I suppose the reactor is working better than the chaeto was. I'm ok with that. It's more expensive, but more effective and I like what works.

I guess my question is, should I keep my refugium online and growing Dino, since its keeping it out of the display (almost like an algae scrubber), or if I just removed the whole thing would that cause it to flourish in the display again? By the way. My snails are eating this crap like theres no tomorrow, and theyre not dying. Some may say "well then you don't have Dino, must be something else" but it sure looks like every pic of Dino that I've seen. Slimy stringy brown lookin snot with bubbles in it

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Here's a couple pics since everybody loves pics. You can see the Dino covered mass of possibly dead chaeto floats to the top in one slimy mess due to all the bubbles. Covering the little thermometer. I put some Texas trash palys in there some time back just to see how tough they really are lol. Nobody wanted them and I couldn't bring myself to dry the rock out they were on.

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post-2651-0-19135500-1362928565_thumb.jp

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I wonder if a water change in the sump would make any difference.

Trash that clump of chaeto, I'm sure someone here can give you some. (I would offer, but I just got rid of my trimmings on Friday).

Turn off the returns, siphon out as much as you can, and replace with nice clean water. Is the sand covered too?

I made a siphon scraper once upon a time that was great for getting crap like that off the glass and immediately up the tubing. Not sure where it is though.

Doing it all in sump pulls out ALL that gunk, rather than a diluted version if the tank was still running.

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When I do my water change this week I'll do it from the fuge. I've scraped it clean a number of times and it tends to grow back. My fuge is separate of my sump and doesn't have sand. It's really just a chaeto growing vessel more than anything. Perhaps turn off my pump to the fuge, hit the refugium with a dose of peroxide, let it sit to kill everything. Scrape and siphon out everything, and then start again with fresh chaeto?

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Yeah, sorry I meant in the fuge.

And yes, turning off the pump so you contain everything you are scraping off within that one chamber and then suck it all out.

Might even do it a couple times, I mean how much water does it hold? Kind of to rinse it out.

Is it growing anywhere else in the sump? Or only where there is light in the fuge? I might get a new fuge bulb, possibly a slightly higher kelvin temp.

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It's a drilled 10 gallon water level about 1" from the top. Ive got a mj pump in the skimmer skimmer section which brings water to the separate fuge, and it overflows to the return pump section of the sump. Not growing anywhere else in the sump though. Just using a single 15 watt spiral bulb 6500k. It's pretty new too. Like 2 months old. Don't know of a higher kelvin bulb in that style. Haven't seen any 10000k+ bulb in that style.

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I think I'll just do what you guys suggested and try to get it super clean and dry and start over with fresh stuff. Don't know that I'll be able to get to that until next week but no big deal. This isn't exactly an emergency.

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