General Observations
The tank is now 1 year old!  Unfortunately it is not a completely happy birthday.  About a week ago, the tank has suddenly had an outbreak of dinoflagellates along with some cyanobacteria.  Cyano doesn't worry me as  I have had it before in other tanks and there are a number of ways to control it.  The dinoflagellates have me a little more worried as I have not had to deal with them before and they seem to be one of the more difficult pests to eradicate.  So far, none of the tank inhabitants appear to be adversely affected.  

Current water parameters:

Deaths/Specimen Problems

Tank problems and opportunities for improvement.

As noted above I am struggling with an outbreak of dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria.  Dinoflagellates are a single-celled organism of the family protist with a whip-like flagella and is generally considered a member of the algae family.  Dinoflagellates constitute a large family with both good and bad members including the symbiotic algae found in corals and clams as well as the ones that cause the infamous red tides.  Some can be poisonous in the reef tank and cause the death of snails and fish that consume them.  There have been a couple of things that may have contributed to the outbreak:

1. I have cut back on my water changes to every other week allowing organics to increase undetected.
2. As reported last month, I had a major drop in alkalinity and have overcompensated by cranking my calcium reactor up quite a bit.

When I have a system health 'problem' to resolve, I typically take a couple of standard steps first whether it be a hair algae problem, cyano, some unknown tank malaise, etc.  These steps include:

1. Increase my water changes to help dilute anything that may have accumulated in the water or in case the water chemistry has gotten out of whack for any reason.
2. Add Phosgard to remove any phosphates or silicates that have accumulated in the system.  I never have measurable levels of these in my tanks, but they can still be present, just tied up in biological cycle.
3. Refresh the GAC (carbon) with a good quantity of high grade carbon.  Helps to pull out any misc. impurities that may exist.
4. Crank up the skimmer to skim ideally about a gallon of skimmate a day to help reduce the bioload on the system.
5. Reduce feeding of the tank to about half of what I normally feed to further help reduce the bioload on the system.
6. If the problem is visible i.e. hair algae or similar - remove as much as possible to help keep the problem under somewhat under control while waiting for the other measures to kick in and to help export whatever the stuff is living on.

In the case of dinoflagellates, I am only half hopeful that this strategy will give me a final solution.  I will try it for about 2 weeks and if it is not resolved or if it starts to look like it might otherwise start to get completely out of control I will try one or more of the following approaches:

1. Reduce light to zero for 24 hours.  I am not a big fan of depriving my reef of light, but 24 hours should not hurt anything and this is a known method to reduce dinoflagellate growth.
2. Drip kalk at night to raise the pH to a target of 8.2 at night and 8.4 - 8.5 during the day.  This has been suggested by several authors and knowledgeable hobbyists to help with dinoflagellate outbreaks.
3. Add a UV sterilizer unit to the tank.  This has been used by others with success.  A unit will cost about $150, so I do not want to take this approach unless it seems absolutely necessary.

I will update this page with any current results.

Maintenance 

I have changed my water changes to two 15 gallon water changes or so a week until I get a leg up on the current problems.  I will then probably resume a 15 gallon a week change schedule once things are under control.