Update here on my thread, I must proclaim; I've nearly beaten the dinos totally!!!!! Just a few little strands on one coral left. Everything else has been recovering and pretty much dino free for a week at least now.
Solving the problem:
I ran upon an interesting article about some types of dinos that thrive in nitrogen poor water, and the solution was simple. Stop doing water changes! I finally received my Sailfert test after stopping water changes for a couple of days, and was preparing to hold off for a few weeks. I checked the low range NO3 kit and low and behold there was NOT A TRACE! Down to ultra low <0.1ppm, almost non existent. No phosphate, and whatever trace elements (organic or inorganic..IDK) are in fresh salt mix they (the dinos) were thriving on.
So I skimmed wet, blacked out the tank for a couple of 48 hour periods (which really killed me!), and resisted the urge to do weekly 10% water changes (that wasn't hard), boosted pH a little ~8.3-8.4, boosted dKh to 10 (from 7), AND started feeding like crazy again (held off on the AA's), additionally I changed activated carbon out every two days to remove any organic/humus in (and dissolved throughout because of) the new sandbed (possibly) feeding the beast. Two, maybe three weeks later now I'm dino free.
(Disclaimer
Apparently not all types of dinos respond to this type of treatment! But if all else fails give it a shot! Especially if it's onset is associated with a new or enhanced carbon/bacteria/zeo dosing routine.
Moving forward:
I'm going to take a more careful measured approach to ULNS and make sure that my nitrates are still detectable, maybe go to every other day carbon dosing, a little more frequent or heavier coral feeding. Prior to this dino incident I have to say I've never seen PE like this in my life!!!! It was unreal, I had been feeding corals every other night with oyster eggs, AA's, concentrated zoo/phyto, and rotifers. All of these acros had more massive PE at night than in the day! One piece is just this fuzz ball! Like a freaking LPS or something, it was seriously unreal. When things get back to that I will take some night pix!
Right now I'm trying to get my CA rxr dialed back in as I am increasing daylight period back to normal.
I'm switching to 250watt Radiums on Galaxy dimmable ballasts. For energy savings and to re-adjust my color specturm. I want a bulb that leaves a little icy blue behind, it might just be the insane intensity of these 400watt XM 20k's and they're pulling out coral colors for sure, but they just don't give me the overall look that I want.
Who knows when I might post again!? You know...I'll shoot for this time next week, by then I'll be done with this slough of exams this next two weeks!
cya,
Andy
