How long post black out do they usually re appear? Before the blackout I did 2 weeks peroxide dosing as well as adding new li e rock and getting nitrates and phosphates stable. I haven’t seen anything for 5 days
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
- Thread starter mcarroll
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Ziggy17
Active Member
Usually takes a couple weeks. When you black out, they cyst in the sandbed until the lights come back on. Then they slowly start re appearing. Before I found Mack’s Facebook page, I tried the blackout, peroxide and raising temp method. It’s about as useless as it gets. Problem is, because the dinos cyst and disappear, people post “they’ve beat dinos “ and propagate the nonesense. But then they forget to post when they come back so people are fooled into thinking it works….
What’s this Facebook page? From what I’ve gathered a black out isn’t a cure but a way to reach the end once you’ve accomplished other things. The peroxide maybe halved the Dino’s and changed their growth style. The raised nutrients allowed green algae growth. I noticed snails being more active and my tang picking at rocks again. I am hoping the blackout was the reset I needed
Ziggy17
Active Member
Black outs literally do nothing unless the Dinos are Ostreopsis or coolia and you are using it to get the Dino’s into the water column for the UV to kill them. Black outs in itself is like hopping on one foot while chanting shoo Dino don’t bother me… section 19 of the doc I posted to this thread explains it.
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Correct, but I would add Prorocentrum to the list. They are harder to get swimming, but they will and then they die.
BigMonkeyBrain
Active Member
I might just dose silicates and hope the diatoms bloom and out compete the dinoflagellates.
devlinsreef
Community Member
Fellow reefers in need of some assistance. Believe I have Dino’s which I thought was Cynao. Can you please help identify, thinking these are prorocentrum? Will try to get better pics as well and best steps to take on the battle would be awesome. @taricha
devlinsreef
Community Member
Thank you for your reply. I am going to take the following actions. Please let me know what else you would suggest or to do differently.
Going to knock out a water change to get my nitrates down a bit.. Start dosing sodium silicate, Start GAC from aquaforest, ordering a gallon of Copepods (or would you suggest more), going to place an order of live sand from Tampa Bay for extra beneficial bacteria?
Anything else you would suggest doing or not doing in order to beat them? I know UV is typically suggested as well. Just do not know if I have that in the cards budget wise at the moment to upgrade appropriately. @taricha
So I am Dino free three weeks post blackout. It seems blackouts are controversial in these parts but I did A LOT of work before the blackout to weaken the dinos. I haven’t done a water change in 4 months! I want to do one this weekend. Is there an increased likelihood of Dino’s to return?
Can someone post for me a work thread example where identification of dinos species lead to a high degree of fixes in the thread (meaning goes from dinos to clean/fixed, not dinos to cyano for six months to gha for six months then back to dinos, cyclically until we just don’t hear back from them)
This thread here is a very very very low cure rate, and a very very high tradeoff invasion rate such that it seems 80% of the after pics are still an invasion of some type
Can I see a link that shows several prorocentrum jobs completed outbound (in someone’s tank who posted in a thread, don’t want to see first person testimonies about cures in the home, those apparently don’t transfer very well when tested in 600+ page work threads so I’d like see examples where methods did work.)
How about a coolia work thread, something that shows a division in cure rates between unidentified tank invasions and identified ones
I feel the methods here are about as effective as taking no action, something has to explain the lack of simple fix pictures in a decade of work logged. There’s been time to modify means here into better methods and better outcomes than we have.
Pages 600-624 are absolutely no improvement over pages 1-10.
The reason this thread is a sticky is because of popularity gained from being a sticky; there aren’t actual cures being ran it seems literally in reading the jobs. I’m not seeing changes based on advice for this method, or an improvement in any implied outbound control of dinos for other people.
If, by page 1000 there is still no significant ability to impact dinos using the means here, will the thread still be stickied and implied as the go-to method for dealing in dinos?
This thread here is a very very very low cure rate, and a very very high tradeoff invasion rate such that it seems 80% of the after pics are still an invasion of some type
Can I see a link that shows several prorocentrum jobs completed outbound (in someone’s tank who posted in a thread, don’t want to see first person testimonies about cures in the home, those apparently don’t transfer very well when tested in 600+ page work threads so I’d like see examples where methods did work.)
How about a coolia work thread, something that shows a division in cure rates between unidentified tank invasions and identified ones
I feel the methods here are about as effective as taking no action, something has to explain the lack of simple fix pictures in a decade of work logged. There’s been time to modify means here into better methods and better outcomes than we have.
Pages 600-624 are absolutely no improvement over pages 1-10.
The reason this thread is a sticky is because of popularity gained from being a sticky; there aren’t actual cures being ran it seems literally in reading the jobs. I’m not seeing changes based on advice for this method, or an improvement in any implied outbound control of dinos for other people.
If, by page 1000 there is still no significant ability to impact dinos using the means here, will the thread still be stickied and implied as the go-to method for dealing in dinos?
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That diatribe above is prep for a thread I’m writing that states in the title ID bears little value in reef invasion work.
Don’t run off and spend $200 on a photo microscope to send pics here to gain an ID; that won’t improve your correction results we can see in pattern. It’s worth investigating as a reef misnomer based on actual results patterned here for six hundred works pages.
In that thread I’ll be presenting links to show a high % compliance rate across invasions that doesn’t use ID in any job, for any species at hand. I’d like to see the case made here by me seeing other peoples link groups showing it does.
I actually don’t think this thread should be unstickied yet; getting control over dinos where you can only act through the water, with chemistry adjustments such as really large tanks needs this type of development and it may take 25 years to change the % rate of sustained fixes. Actual changes in advice per job will have to evolve for results to evolve.
Where this thread is short changing readers is by it purposefully excluding from mention, and by link of examples on page one, a better management system for medium to small size reefs.
By advising readers for a decade now to treat all size tanks the same way, this thread has stifled evolution in reef tank invasion work and it doesn’t look like it’ll ever evolve to become better, this thread has really poor fix rates. All dinos threads do.
With any system of forty gallons and below, rip cleans will flip these cure rates opposite of what they are and we have links to show it. To suppress good info and elevate stagnant info is backwards from the best interests of dinos challenge works.
Don’t run off and spend $200 on a photo microscope to send pics here to gain an ID; that won’t improve your correction results we can see in pattern. It’s worth investigating as a reef misnomer based on actual results patterned here for six hundred works pages.
In that thread I’ll be presenting links to show a high % compliance rate across invasions that doesn’t use ID in any job, for any species at hand. I’d like to see the case made here by me seeing other peoples link groups showing it does.
I actually don’t think this thread should be unstickied yet; getting control over dinos where you can only act through the water, with chemistry adjustments such as really large tanks needs this type of development and it may take 25 years to change the % rate of sustained fixes. Actual changes in advice per job will have to evolve for results to evolve.
Where this thread is short changing readers is by it purposefully excluding from mention, and by link of examples on page one, a better management system for medium to small size reefs.
By advising readers for a decade now to treat all size tanks the same way, this thread has stifled evolution in reef tank invasion work and it doesn’t look like it’ll ever evolve to become better, this thread has really poor fix rates. All dinos threads do.
With any system of forty gallons and below, rip cleans will flip these cure rates opposite of what they are and we have links to show it. To suppress good info and elevate stagnant info is backwards from the best interests of dinos challenge works.
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AquaLogic
Active Member
I have yet to find any useful information on the internet anywhere that seems more than anecdotal for dealing with dinos. It feels mainly like the passing on of folk remedies, which isn't useful or helpful. Are you saying you have identified a method for dealing with dinos in smaller systems? If so I would like to learn of it, because i am dealing with dinos currently in a 9 gallon system. I have no plans to buy a microscope of any price.
Excellent. Agreed fully, dinos are so hard to control all we have is anecdotal work and that’s still helpful even if slow to evolve. Big tankers have no other option
But nano owners sure do
That nine gallon reef is exactly the subdivision of tanks suited to this method below, rip cleans.
Look at the before and afters in these two threads.
Not all of the first thread are tank invasions, many are, but not all. The point of the first thread is to see 100% perfect looking tanks within 1 day of presented for any reason in that thread.
1 day turnaround in all systems. not eight months
We do pico reefs up to 300 gallon tank moves there. And lots of simple invasion fixes, our fix rate is astounding.
Rip cleans accomplish skip cycle tank moves, upgrades and fixing invasions using the exact same steps for any tank, any size, any reason presented. Species of invasion was never a factor in earning these job outcomes. Work was the factor, a change from an attitude of allowance and passivity in the aquarist to one of pure resolve: I’m going to rinse this system until it complies.
Nine years of tracking those outcomes:
www.reef2reef.com
An actual rip clean thread, same steps as above, but focusing on nano invasion control only. Species never mattered. We never ID anything, we never took tank parameter readings and made guesses about N and P
***we never turned someone’s reef into a gha farm for six months, look at those patterns from the two threads
www.reef2reef.com
One rip clean doesn’t permanently fix your dinos but it’s the first move for all nanos because it’s easier to fight dinos when they haven’t been left to fully invade for months, and that’s what this thread here at 624 pages teaches to do. To NOT rip clean, and always work slowly from the fully invaded condition
This thread has advised partial manual removal to have less target mass, but clearly that isn’t working after 624 pages with no procedural updates. Our method is full tank surgery at the first sight of them, with much reduced lighting thereafter. Corals will be fine with less light- too much light is a top cause of dinos combined with passivity training from big sticky threads with incredibly low fix rates.
I noticed this thread doesn’t do much work in light intensity tuning afterwards. We do, hence the results.
This giant thread here would serve well being positioned as the preventative steps applied after the rip clean. Replace “manually remove some top growth” with “rip clean all smaller systems first, then apply changes listed here”
What isn’t working here is the status quo. My results show there is a certain subsection of reefing where a rip clean is so easy, and effective, the only reason to forego it is due to not being ever shown this method. Once shown, I don’t know how those outcomes results above are debatable
* let’s run your tank fix right here in this thread, for contrast. Post your tank pic, that’s all we need. Study those threads, know the work flow and small prep details, and we can run yours live time right here to test it among these 624 pages of current means.
But nano owners sure do
That nine gallon reef is exactly the subdivision of tanks suited to this method below, rip cleans.
Look at the before and afters in these two threads.
Not all of the first thread are tank invasions, many are, but not all. The point of the first thread is to see 100% perfect looking tanks within 1 day of presented for any reason in that thread.
1 day turnaround in all systems. not eight months
We do pico reefs up to 300 gallon tank moves there. And lots of simple invasion fixes, our fix rate is astounding.
Rip cleans accomplish skip cycle tank moves, upgrades and fixing invasions using the exact same steps for any tank, any size, any reason presented. Species of invasion was never a factor in earning these job outcomes. Work was the factor, a change from an attitude of allowance and passivity in the aquarist to one of pure resolve: I’m going to rinse this system until it complies.
Nine years of tracking those outcomes:
Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread
If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...
www.reef2reef.com
An actual rip clean thread, same steps as above, but focusing on nano invasion control only. Species never mattered. We never ID anything, we never took tank parameter readings and made guesses about N and P
***we never turned someone’s reef into a gha farm for six months, look at those patterns from the two threads
Algae Identification
Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?
www.reef2reef.com
One rip clean doesn’t permanently fix your dinos but it’s the first move for all nanos because it’s easier to fight dinos when they haven’t been left to fully invade for months, and that’s what this thread here at 624 pages teaches to do. To NOT rip clean, and always work slowly from the fully invaded condition
This thread has advised partial manual removal to have less target mass, but clearly that isn’t working after 624 pages with no procedural updates. Our method is full tank surgery at the first sight of them, with much reduced lighting thereafter. Corals will be fine with less light- too much light is a top cause of dinos combined with passivity training from big sticky threads with incredibly low fix rates.
I noticed this thread doesn’t do much work in light intensity tuning afterwards. We do, hence the results.
This giant thread here would serve well being positioned as the preventative steps applied after the rip clean. Replace “manually remove some top growth” with “rip clean all smaller systems first, then apply changes listed here”
What isn’t working here is the status quo. My results show there is a certain subsection of reefing where a rip clean is so easy, and effective, the only reason to forego it is due to not being ever shown this method. Once shown, I don’t know how those outcomes results above are debatable
* let’s run your tank fix right here in this thread, for contrast. Post your tank pic, that’s all we need. Study those threads, know the work flow and small prep details, and we can run yours live time right here to test it among these 624 pages of current means.
AquaLogic
Active Member
Thank you, that's all very helpful. I can definitely do a rip clean pretty easily as I have a multiples of the same 9 gallon tank. I will post back.Excellent. Agreed fully, dinos are so hard to control all we have is anecdotal work and that’s still helpful even if slow to evolve. Big tankers have no other option
But nano owners sure do
That nine gallon reef is exactly the subdivision of tanks suited to this method below, rip cleans.
Look at the before and afters in these two threads.
Not all of the first thread are tank invasions, many are, but not all. The point of the first thread is to see 100% perfect looking tanks within 1 day of presented for any reason in that thread.
1 day turnaround in all systems. not eight months
We do pico reefs up to 300 gallon tank moves there. And lots of simple invasion fixes, our fix rate is astounding.
Rip cleans accomplish skip cycle tank moves, upgrades and fixing invasions using the exact same steps for any tank, any size, any reason presented. Species of invasion was never a factor in earning these job outcomes. Work was the factor, a change from an attitude of allowance and passivity in the aquarist to one of pure resolve: I’m going to rinse this system until it complies.
Nine years of tracking those outcomes:
Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread
If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...
An actual rip clean thread, same steps as above, but focusing on nano invasion control only. Species never mattered. We never ID anything, we never took tank parameter readings and made guesses about N and P
***we never turned someone’s reef into a gha farm for six months, look at those patterns from the two threads
Algae Identification
Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?
One rip clean doesn’t permanently fix your dinos but it’s the first move for all nanos because it’s easier to fight dinos when they haven’t been left to fully invade for months, and that’s what this thread here at 624 pages teaches to do. To NOT rip clean, and always work slowly from the fully invaded condition
This thread has advised partial manual removal to have less target mass, but clearly that isn’t working after 624 pages with no procedural updates. Our method is full tank surgery at the first sight of them, with much reduced lighting thereafter. Corals will be fine with less light- too much light is a top cause of dinos combined with passivity training from big sticky threads with incredibly low fix rates.
I noticed this thread doesn’t do much work in light intensity tuning afterwards. We do, hence the results.
This giant thread here would serve well being positioned as the preventative steps applied after the rip clean. Replace “manually remove some top growth” with “rip clean all smaller systems first, then apply changes listed here”
What isn’t working here is the status quo. My results show there is a certain subsection of reefing where a rip clean is so easy, and effective, the only reason to forego it is due to not being ever shown this method. Once shown, I don’t know how those outcomes results above are debatable
* let’s run your tank fix right here in this thread, for contrast. Post your tank pic, that’s all we need. Study those threads, know the work flow and small prep details, and we can run yours live time right here to test it among these 624 pages of current means.
can't wait to see pics. it's relevant here because we can use their method as the prevention steps, afterwards, just not as the removal step. we should also reduce your lighting power and possibly white spectrum but we can get those tune approximations by the pics. pics also give other unspoken details we use to plan safe rips.
Hey got pics
What we should do is the perfect rip clean, then use methods from this thread to stop growback
If too many rip cleans are needed to enjoy clean running, then we should change your prevention approach.
I can't possibly state with more certainty how causative too bright lighting is for dinos jobs across tanks. Most/all systems are infected with invasive strains if we've installed any new corals last ten years. My tank in particular has them primed because I don't quarantine, but my whole lighting system is tuned muted and blued to just under their explosion needs. Corals adapt to high feed blue muted lighting, even some of the trickier acros
So just this week I did a huge feeding and never changed water, now the current levels aren't below explosion threshold with all the new fertilizer
Been too lazy and sick this week to do maintenance
So, I simply turned off one of my two lights. Cheated more days past due and the is now suppressive again, even with the blast of nutrients
This thread is missing that crucial advice for large tankers who can't rip clean at all
That mechanism was discovered using a tiny pico reef, but we are all in the same scale compared to oceanic systems anyway. The modeling works, it's the first thing we'll do after your rip
The absolute #1 undebatable cause for these extensive GHA and cyano months long counter invasions we see in the pages, the #1 outcome preventing this thread from collecting high cure rates, is failing to link light power modulation directly to the job at hand
Keeping power the same is literally ruining a high rate of tanks we can see.
This threads method would work ten times better where no target cells can be seen in the system, anywhere in the sand included
Only a rip clean does that, topical siphoning in a full running tank to remove a little growth is like doing nothing.
People here are jacking with nutrient levels but you and I will never factor them, it'll be a physical control base not a chemistry one.
And then your dinos will be under control like mine for the last decade
What we should do is the perfect rip clean, then use methods from this thread to stop growback
If too many rip cleans are needed to enjoy clean running, then we should change your prevention approach.
I can't possibly state with more certainty how causative too bright lighting is for dinos jobs across tanks. Most/all systems are infected with invasive strains if we've installed any new corals last ten years. My tank in particular has them primed because I don't quarantine, but my whole lighting system is tuned muted and blued to just under their explosion needs. Corals adapt to high feed blue muted lighting, even some of the trickier acros
So just this week I did a huge feeding and never changed water, now the current levels aren't below explosion threshold with all the new fertilizer
Been too lazy and sick this week to do maintenance
So, I simply turned off one of my two lights. Cheated more days past due and the is now suppressive again, even with the blast of nutrients
This thread is missing that crucial advice for large tankers who can't rip clean at all
That mechanism was discovered using a tiny pico reef, but we are all in the same scale compared to oceanic systems anyway. The modeling works, it's the first thing we'll do after your rip
The absolute #1 undebatable cause for these extensive GHA and cyano months long counter invasions we see in the pages, the #1 outcome preventing this thread from collecting high cure rates, is failing to link light power modulation directly to the job at hand
Keeping power the same is literally ruining a high rate of tanks we can see.
This threads method would work ten times better where no target cells can be seen in the system, anywhere in the sand included
Only a rip clean does that, topical siphoning in a full running tank to remove a little growth is like doing nothing.
People here are jacking with nutrient levels but you and I will never factor them, it'll be a physical control base not a chemistry one.
And then your dinos will be under control like mine for the last decade
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So my method seemed to work! What I did:
1. Add brightwell phosphate and nitrate to ato. Giving me a consistent .1 for phos and 20 for nitrates. Did this for about 2 months before trying anything else
2. Add 12 mL of peroxide to my 100 gallon system twice a day when lights are off. About a month of this
3. Add sleeper goby
4. Add 10 lbs of really established rock from a store near me that has vats of rock in a greenhouse that has been established for decades
Also, no WCs and skimmer and roller mat were off during this whole process
I saw SOME progress. Dinos began to become stringier and just seems less vigorous. Would take multiple hours to repopulate instead of basically instantaneously like before when disturbed
THEN a 72 hour blackout. I dosed18 mL twice a day of peroxide and now during midday I added 15 mL of microbacter7 and randomly dosed Phyto here and there. Thought process here was to really kicked them when they were down and now try and develop some good bacteria
It’s been 3 weeks and so far so good. Two days with lights back on I saw a little brown slime and it never came back after removal. Coralline has exploded, my CUC is way more active and my tang is back to picking at the rocks and glass.
My strand did not respond whatsoever to UV. I tried that for about a month and no success. All in all this took about 4.5 months . Killed some coral and a lot of CUC. I won’t vouch for this method to be successful but it makes sense from a biological perspective and what we know about when and how dino populations prevail. Give it a shot if nothing else works!
1. Add brightwell phosphate and nitrate to ato. Giving me a consistent .1 for phos and 20 for nitrates. Did this for about 2 months before trying anything else
2. Add 12 mL of peroxide to my 100 gallon system twice a day when lights are off. About a month of this
3. Add sleeper goby
4. Add 10 lbs of really established rock from a store near me that has vats of rock in a greenhouse that has been established for decades
Also, no WCs and skimmer and roller mat were off during this whole process
I saw SOME progress. Dinos began to become stringier and just seems less vigorous. Would take multiple hours to repopulate instead of basically instantaneously like before when disturbed
THEN a 72 hour blackout. I dosed18 mL twice a day of peroxide and now during midday I added 15 mL of microbacter7 and randomly dosed Phyto here and there. Thought process here was to really kicked them when they were down and now try and develop some good bacteria
It’s been 3 weeks and so far so good. Two days with lights back on I saw a little brown slime and it never came back after removal. Coralline has exploded, my CUC is way more active and my tang is back to picking at the rocks and glass.
My strand did not respond whatsoever to UV. I tried that for about a month and no success. All in all this took about 4.5 months . Killed some coral and a lot of CUC. I won’t vouch for this method to be successful but it makes sense from a biological perspective and what we know about when and how dino populations prevail. Give it a shot if nothing else works!
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