Hitting the reset button

Well all, my lfs had their annual sale on tanks... Except this year they did a BIG sale! So let's just say that I got a verrry nice tank for an even nicer price
Anyways, it's time to tear down and set up again. Here is my dilemma though...
I have had some junk growing in my tank for a while now. Literally nothing kills it, you name it and I have already tried it. I took some samples to the lab at penn state and examined them with the microbiology professor. We determined that the problem was some mysterious white bacteria that builds very complex biofilms which then fuel the growth of dinoflagellates as they eat this bacteria.
So I am starting the new tank from scratch to try and minimize this bad bacteria... Anyone care to lend suggestions how to minimize bacterial transfer?

 

Here are pictures for reference of the mysterious bacteria (as seen in grey). The orange organisms are the dinoflagellates feeding on the bacterial mass. This strain has out competed all of my beneficial fauna. These pictures are at 1000x but even at 2000x the best we could make out from the biofilm was an occasional nucleus.

 

I have to wonder what hydrogen peroxide would do. Treat all rocks and equipment and then use a coral dip like coral RX or an iodine for the corals.

You could not get a normal algae issue Trent? j/k

Congrats on the new system, that is always exciting.

 

Would the dino not exhaust it's food source ( said bacteria) if left untreated? Then you could treat for dino's?

Personally if not then I would transfer nothing from the infected tank.

 

Ohhh! This is going to be a great build! I love the level of care you take with your systems!

Wish I had more input on your alien algae. I would encourage the hydrogen pyroxide research. It seems to really be making some waves. But I have a feeling you have researched it better than I have already.

 

This is a rough situation. I had customers that always wanted easy fixes. They had cyanobacteria everywhere but they wouldn't buy a fluidized reactor. They also didn't want to buy an RO/DI unit and topped off with tap water. They wouldn't listen to me so their solution was to REPEATEDLY hit their tank with Red Slime Remover or Chemi-Clean. Over the course of a couple of years they bought so many antibiotics that they could have purchased their own RO/DI unit and phosban reactor many times over. It got to the point where the cyanobacteria was no longer fully going away and the rest was regenerating within less than 24 hours. They brought me a sample and I went your route......I took it to be analyzed at Washington University. I also experimented with it to seek how I could kill it. I couldn't.....at least not permanently.

Trent, obviously you are nothing like these customers. I experimented, experimented, and experimented. I don't have a clue how they did it, but they managed to create super-cyano. I finally did what your title suggested. It was time to hit the reset button. They were finally ready to listen to me. I put their fish and corals into the QT system at the store, threw their rocks on the back deck in the sun, threw out all of their sand, bleached the tank and plumbing, re-cured the rock, and gave them a loaner laundry bag filled with bioballs I had from my sump. For a couple of weeks, they had a completely empty tank (not even water), then for a couple of weeks they had sand, their corals, their fish, and a huge bag of bioballs. ;D Yep, I'm sure that was a conversation piece when their friends came over. LOL No rock yet. The new tank went up using RO/DI water from their own filter which they finally decided to buy, the rocks came back a couple of weeks later, and the tank looks great.

I just wanted to give you a little moral support. Sometimes one has to throw their hands up IN COMPLETE EXASPERATION muttering to themselves, "What on earth????", while kicking small dogs and stealing lollipops from babies.

 

Haha thank you all! I have experimented with hydrogen peroxide. These pesky dinoflagellates will die when h2o2 is around or ORP is kept excessively high. The mutant bacteria however... Just lives right on and even multiplies. The microbiologist and I are thinking that the visible biomass is a type of sheathing or almost crystal-like structure that is what is making them so good at surviving and so hard at dying! So needless to say, the dinos are only a secondary issue to my primary issue. The dinos consume the bacteria but not fast enough for the bacteria to be out competed. They reproduce crazy fast!

I currently have my corals and fish in a Rubbermaid 100g tub with 100% new water. I have ha them there for almost a week and see no signs of this mystery bacteria or dinoflagellates. Let's hope it stays that way......

 

Have you tried UV Trent?

 

So how big is your new tank??? PICS!!! ;D

 

I have not used them on my own tanks. Personally I am not a fan. I know too much about microbiology to see the usefulness in one. Could be wrong but they have never done much for the tanks I have cared for with them on either

Edit: but speaking of, UV is about the only thing that I didnt try on the old tank to control these little monsters.