Dinos killing my fish!!

My tank has been up for ~2 mo. now - about a month ago it developed a dinoflagellate problem so I bumped the ph to 8.4 and stopped the lighting. The cycle was well over so I threw in 4 chromises.

Fast forward to this week, just got a new lighting fixture, a 350W T5 system and I gave the tank 2 days of full lighting thinking maybe nice new bulbs would be the right spectrum and not encourage the dinos... WRONG. Dinos have exploded all over the sand and rocks, blowing their devilish little bubbles.

Now, thats fine, as I am a patient man, but today I found one of my chromises was missing - found him in the sump stuck to the skimmer powerhead. Then, as I'm watching, one of the remaining chromies has an absolute **** fit, flying around the tank crashing into rocks before ending up laying on the sand upside down breathing heavily. Its like they're in his brain!

I haven't added anything to the tank except for the lights, so I'm inclined to blame the dino explosion for the death of the first chromis and the likely impending death of the second one.

SG/NH3/NO2/NO3 are 1.023/0/0/10

Just set up an algae filter to help with the latter.

What do I do??

 

IME with dinos, my fish actually ate the pieces floating by so the dinos likely aren't causing the fish to stress. Rather, the cause of the dinos is more likely the cause of the fish stress. This all points to the the abrupt addition of the 350 watter.
Tanks need to be acclimated to new lights, even when simply replacing old bulbs. Kill the lights for a few days, keep your ph where you have it until the dinos go, then slowly acclimate your tank to the new light. I recommend starting with 1/4 of the t5's bulbs in and adding 1/4 of the bulbs every 2-3 weeks. The slower the better.
Also, the best cure for dinos is time and good routine maintenance. My dinos lasted a MONTH before they left. But when they started to leave they were gone quickly and never returned.
Question, did you leave your light on for two full 24 hr periods? Or two 12 hr periods?

 

In addition amaurer questions and suggestions, I would like to know what is your water temperature?

I had a problem with my light at the beginning being so close to the water, the temperature was raising up to 81.3F.... my fish didn't like that at all. I was told once that the hotter the water, the less dissolved oxygen it will have. That would explain why your fish are breathing heavily.

Another big mistake I made at the beginning was to have my tank with lids, no sump and no skimmer.
Without a sump your skimmer may not be enough to oxygenate your water, and the lids will definitely impede your gas exchange, trapping all that carbon monoxide in the water.

If you have lids, take them off and aim a power head/s in an upward angle towards the surface to agitate the water and facilitate gas exchange.
Secondly, if your light is too close to the water (less than 8 or 9") I would urge you to find a way to hang them at 9" from the water surface. Chromises can be jumpers, so an eggcrate lid would be the best thing to do to facilitate gas exchange, while keeping your fish away from taking a leap of faith.

Another thing, if you have some sort of aireator pump, put it in too along with aiming the power heads towards the surface. Then, if your fish get better and you can remove it.

Hope they pull through!!

- Mag.

 

The lights were on for two 12 hour days - previously I had been turning my PC fixture on for only an hour or two a day to perk the fish up (they ate better when the lights were on, for some reason).

Temp is 78-80. Lights are about 8" of the surface of the water. No lids. Sump is a wet dry with a big skimmer in it, with the bio-ball chamber converted to macro-algae duty.

 

As you obviously have noticed already, everything points towards the lights being on for so long.
I also reduced my light schedule a lot. I was leaving lights on like you and just started with the cyano and GHA. I increased the flow by adding a power head and cut my light to no more than 6 hrs per day. That seemed to help a lot along with the religious weekly RO/DI water changes. Where are you getting your RO/DI water?

I would get a media bag and some phosphate absorbing media. That will definitely help.

- Mag.

 

i hate dinoit the devils algea lol

i had to nuke my entire tank bc of it good luck

 

By the way, how did you cycle this tank? Did you used any of the regular methods like the shrimp method or how was it done?

 

OK, we're back to low light for the forseeable future.

Also went to the LFS and had then test my water - salinity was wayyyy out, 1.028!! My hydrometer must be worthless, I tested again at home and got 1.023. So now I'm slowly bringing it down - is high salinity something dinos like?

The advice on the web alternates between do more water changes and stop doing water changes. My fresh water is not good, I don't have an RO/DI unit so I've been buying 2.5gal jugs of RO water from the grocery store (you have to choose, RO or DI, they don't sell RO/DI). For the time being I've been trying to clean up whats in there and not adding new water, but the salinity problem complicates that.

 

Oh, and I cycled with cured rock and sand from an established tank - 60lb of sand, 80lb of rock, 75gal tank.