Dino outbreak?

[~MD~Reefs~]

What is a RIP cleaning? Is it like a special thing or just deep clean?? Never heard of that before

Break the tank down, sanitize, start over. I think it goes more into detail in the thread attached above

 

[UnnamedReef]

Essentially you remove live rock and fish/coral/inverts, keep them in water removed from your tank. Drain the tank, remove the sand bed and rinse it many, many times. Then you clean the glass and inside of the tank, baste off your rocks, and put everything back in. You don't sanitize the rocks, the goal is not to restart your tank but to safely deep clean with fish, coral, and inverts removed.

Take a look at my thread or the ones Brandon directed you to. They go over theory and practice really well.

 

[Spare time]

What is a RIP cleaning? Is it like a special thing or just deep clean?? Never heard of that before

Tbh I disagree with their advice. You'd end up possibly ridding yourself of things that eat dinos in the sand and lowering phosphate with the addition of new sand. Trust me that swapping the sand out is not a guarentee to have no more dinos. In fact, last time I did a tank transfer, which used all the old rock, biomedia, and equipment but new sand, I instantly had persistent dinos worse than I have ever had them before and it ONLY existed on the new sand.

What you need to do right now is just tell us the phosphate values. It is ridiculous that people are telling you to nuke the tank when it might be as simple as raising the phosphate and giving it time.

 

[splunty]

Tbh I disagree with their advice. You'd end up possibly ridding yourself of things that eat dinos in the sand and lowering phosphate with the addition of new sand. Trust me that swapping the sand out is not a guarentee to have no more dinos. In fact, last time I did a tank transfer, which used all the old rock, biomedia, and equipment but new sand, I instantly had persistent dinos worse than I have ever had them before and it ONLY existed on the new sand.

What you need to do right now is just tell us the phosphate values. It is ridiculous that people are telling you to nuke the tank when it might be as simple as raising the phosphate and giving it time.

Agree with this.

Lower silicates and raise po4 and get them stable. Dinos will disappear.

 

[Dou g]

I struggled with dinos for a long time, likely from no phosphates or nitrates, tested 0 at the time. I did extra feedings, added bacteria, and tried to promote algae and diatom growth to outcompete the dinos without much apparent success. I don't have any difficult coral so did no light period of 5 days, did a water change and removed the mats of dead algae on my sand bed. I've since lowered my lights intensity and it's been a couple months without any signs of dinos. I still feed heavy to keep nutrients from bottoming out. Not sure if they would come back overnight if I turn the light intensity back up.

 

[cillam]

I just fought and won my first battle with Dinos around 6-8 weeks ago, my tank was around 14 months old at the time.

I used my kids microscope to identify the Dinos as Ostreopsis, which go into the water column when lights are out.

My Phosphates bottomed out, so i dosed Neophos twice a day at .022PPM (5ml) per dose.
I got a 36W UV sterilizer, which is a little over kill for my 60G display, and ran that for a full 72 hours.
I did a full blackout for the first 24 hours covering all sides and the top of the tank in cardboard, after the first 24 hours, i took the carboard off the top of the tank, and just ran blue and UV light from my tank light as i was afraid no light would stress out the coral and BTA which split during the blackout.

After 3 days of the UV Sterilizer running, the 24 hour total blackout and 48 hours of "hybrid blackout" I see no more Dinos.

After i noticed no more Dinos and took the cardboard off, left my refugium off, did a water change after 4 weeks instead of 2, and still dosed Neophos, my UV sterilizer is now on for around 9 hours a night, which i plan on reducing to 6 hours.

I have noticed no more Dinos.

My advise would be to identify the type of Dinos you have, and check your phosphate levels, if they are at or near 0 then start dosing phosphates, and if you have the type of Dinos that go into the water column on a night time do a blackout, and if possible get a UV Sterilizer.

If you do get a UV sterilizer you will need 1 watt per 3 gallons of water, so a 15 gallon tank will need a 5W UV sterilizer. You also need to turn over the full tanks water volume every 20 minutes, for a 15 gallon tank you need the pump to do at least 45gph.

 

[UnnamedReef]

That's the thing about dinos: what works for one does not work for all, even amongst the same strains. I really, really tried to avoid a rip clean and tried every method I could for 6+ months for my Prorocentrum. For me, it was the only remaining solution and since I took it very seriously and carefully I was successful and my outbreak has subsided and my tank is so much better off.

All the above strategies are good advice as well. One size does not fit all, try what you think is best but do extensive research so you're making an informed decision rather than a hasty one.

@Spare time I'm not sure what you mean by "things in the sand that eat dinos". If we had a known dino predator, that would be fantastic but I couldn't find any info on that. Just other things like various bacterias and algaes that outcompete for food. What organism truly eats dinos?

 

[brandon429]

right now my old reefbowl would be dinos soup were I not rip clean cheating it lol into total submission occasionally.

since I don't have a better way, I'm very glad brute force works.

cause for me: I had stopped stocking my reef in about 2009 and didn't add corals for years, this was pre-dinos era or just at the outbreak in the hobby for my area so it ran stable with not one dino cell as a challenge. total balance.

I moved to austin in 2022 and started stocking my reef, like a party lol and that brought dinos in, and I knew the risk at the time darn it. doesn't look like they're going to abate soon, but they're not stronger than my will to keep a 19 year old system alive that's for sure.

 

[Spare time]

That's the thing about dinos: what works for one does not work for all, even amongst the same strains. I really, really tried to avoid a rip clean and tried every method I could for 6+ months for my Prorocentrum. For me, it was the only remaining solution and since I took it very seriously and carefully I was successful and my outbreak has subsided and my tank is so much better off.

All the above strategies are good advice as well. One size does not fit all, try what you think is best but do extensive research so you're making an informed decision rather than a hasty one.

@Spare time I'm not sure what you mean by "things in the sand that eat dinos". If we had a known dino predator, that would be fantastic but I couldn't find any info on that. Just other things like various bacterias and algaes that outcompete for food. What organism truly eats dinos?

Id imagine there are zooplankton that eat them but also things competing for whatever dinos use.

 

[brandon429]

this tank still has dinos am assuming?

 

[CHSUB]

tank.

**old school reefers did not have this problem in the late 90s, early 2000's. I don't know why it's shifted, so strange. it's the new scourge of reefing in my opinion, the top challenge so far.

As an old school reefers, I can absolutely tell you we did have dinoflagellates. However, we fixed it with a turkey baster and a toothbrush. Dudes today want to fix stuff with test kits and chemicals. It’s an invented challenge and not an actual challenge.

 

[NeutronMan]

If you can afford it, I’d go the uv sterilizer route before the RIP clean route….

Make sure you plumb it correctly and you’ll probably wipe the Dinos out overnight.

The uv sterilizer doubles as a nice way to kill off bacteria blooms in the future.

 

[brandon429]

my bumpquestion above is actually to dig into a theory I have that specifically nano reef tank invasions are 100% psychological and not biological issues

sounds crazy I know

but, consider this: what else is it when a system that returns any nano to pristine view in 2 hours is not opted for, and instead what's opted for is to leave the invasion in place, wrecking the tank, as further considerations are made

that's a choice event

if fixing nano reef invasions was a matter of chemistry, I'd have eighty pages of chemistry + fixed reefs on file


if fixing nano reef invasions was a matter of species ID, knowing what the invader is, I'd have eighty pages linked of the finest species ID known to reefing


but none of that is what we used to fix eighty pages of wrecked tanks, action did that. what I was hoping for was the .004% occurrence where when status is inquired, someone posts a picture set that looked like this meaning they went to town on that invasion:

shadow_k really did such a reply shock to me with those two pics lol, that's why I put his work on page one of the rip clean threads.

all we needed to fix the op's tank was for the links posted to be applied, then in two hours the op's tank will look like this same succession.

you'd then lower the light power as discussed, and prepare for another rip clean later on due to the delay, we might even need to remove sand, beat dinos in a bare bottom tank, then put back sand.

we judge that from the growback if any after the first rip clean.

 

[sixty_reefer]

What causes dynos? I ended up tearing my last tank down because of them. I could never get a grip on what the heck was going on.

Are they caused because your nutrients "bottom out"? In my mind, if that is the case, it seems that dynos could be easily avoided, with just feeding your tank daily, and having a large bio-load.

Am I thinking about this in the completely wrong way?

You can also Have dinoflagellate with high nutrients. Just feeding heavily wouldn’t help and be detrimental in some situations.
I believe it’s mainly caused by a deficiency in the biological filter that allows the dinoflagellate to redirect all available ammonia into their biomass.