Dino tank crash

[jdpeters]

deficiency would be low to no nitrates and phosphates

I have been dozing for phosphate and nitrates, would you suggest I continue that or back off?

 

[vetteguy53081]

I have been dozing for phosphate and nitrates, would you suggest I continue that or back off?

Yes, in essence you are feeding the dino. You can do that once you put an end to the flagellates

 

[CHSUB]

I figured that my Dino’s was primarily from the nutrients bottoming out.

This is just blatantly false, no explosive blooms happen without nutrients regardless what low resolution hobby test kits reads. Stop adding fuel to the fire, remove the stuff daily if necessary. Just blowing it around without removing it is making it worse, you need to get better at removing every speck of this nuisance algae and after a week or two it will be gone…I use a canister filter to remove stuff and after an hour my tank is completely free of any nuisances.

 

[jdpeters]

My regimen after beating osteoporosis a few times already the past 18 months

UV: Run 24/7 during treatment. Oversize it. Mine is 5x my overall volume size. I run it now for 6 hours a day as maintenance during night time. It's overkill but follow the 1w per 3 gallons recommendation.

Live phyto. I started growing my own cultures because I had persistent dinos for years. Just dump a cup every night. Plus corals like having live food too.

Mud: AF Life source is served in a scooper and dosed as you would with coral snow. I just dilute it in the sump and will broadcast into the return and cover the display in gray bloom. I dose at lights out and will just clear out in the morning. Dose half the recommended weekly. I alternate this with Coral Snow after 3 or 4 days.

CoralSnow: Follow this:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/extreme-water-clarity-and-cyano-eradication-made-easy.916381/
Bacteria: Dr Tim's Waste Away, Microbacter7 and PNS ProBio. I dose alternately every day following dosing regimen.

Daily: Dose silicates like sponge excel. A few drops every day and start a diatom bloom. Do NOT clean your glass, let the algae and slime build up for a couple of weeks.

Live Pods: Weekly one bottle.

You can dose peroxide but I end up losing SPS frags in the process. The trick they say is to dilute the peroxide in a 10% peroxide/90% tank water mix and use the sump to dose it through the return. I didnt bother with it since I got the UV.

Skimmer collector cup is off but I run skimmer non stop back into the fuge. No GFO, no carbon.
Stopped all sources of trace and aminos-- we aren't sure what trace elements dinos feed on and aminos always feeds dinos in my tank so I stopped using all aminos altogether (especially acropower). I do add a filter pad inside the display to absorb free-floating dinos and take it out at night, replaced with a fresh one.

The strategy here is to overwhelm dino population with different sources of biodiversity which is what the dinos did when overwhelming your tank's biome. The UV kills off a ton of good and bad stuff at the same time, but you are adding and reinforcing your good biome faster than the dinos can recover. This way, it'll go back into balance. The diatoms are food for pods so it's a good thing. Cyano is handled by the coral snow. The mud adds a lot of biodiversity from the dormant bacteria that wakes up after dosing (at least that's the explanation). From my own observation, what it does is add a biofilm on the surface of rocks and sand that prevents dinos, GHA and bryopsis from having a foothold-- accelerating your tank's maturity faster than just dosing bacteria.

Hope this helps. If it's a different strain of Dinos, I would only replace the UV with the wand type since you need to nuke them in the sand. But otherwise, the strategy will still work. I never turned off the lights since I end up killing more corals that way when I tried.

I appreciate this thorough response btw.

I’ve heard Dino’s can be toxic, so it’s still insane to me to watch all my livestock die in response. Honestly, I had never had Dino’s before and just assumed it was hair algae that was pearling. I’m wonder if the air bubble itself is toxic.
My two rock structures are rather large but removable. Considering there’s nothing living anymore could I take them out and pressure wash? I’m still contemplating total restart but it would be so time consuming taking my whole set up apart to sterilize

 

[jdpeters]

Yes, in essence you are feeding the dino. You can do that once you put an end to the flagellates

Ok, I get that. I’m scared to put in that work to remedy this, get it rolling again and let it happen all over again. I guess I’m not totally understanding how I even got it in the first place. I blew the rocks off, cleaned the socks and started my black out. I’m thinking that I probably should just spend the few hundred bucks to get the UV.

I’ve nearly lost everything so peroxide won’t technically hurt anything. I will need to treat this basically like a new tank and start dosing Bacteria and try to get a healthy pod population going.

Can I take my rocks out and pressure wash them at this point?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Ok, I get that. I’m scared to put in that work to remedy this, get it rolling again and let it happen all over again. I guess I’m not totally understanding how I even got it in the first place. I blew the rocks off, cleaned the socks and started my black out. I’m thinking that I probably should just spend the few hundred bucks to get the UV.

I’ve nearly lost everything so peroxide won’t technically hurt anything. I will need to treat this basically like a new tank and start dosing Bacteria and try to get a healthy pod population going.

Can I take my rocks out and pressure wash them at this point?

Peroxide is an oxidizer and very safe and cheap

 

[jdpeters]

Peroxide is an oxidizer and very safe and cheap

Is it something I can use long term if I don’t have any sps?

Also I hear people dosing silicates for diatoms to out compete Dino’s. It’s 30+ pounds of dry rock in a 40 breeder so it’s a lot of rock as far as considered these days.

I have both Dino’s and diatoms coating everything. I feel like if I had started with live sand and some live rock I wouldn’t be in this predicament currently .

 

[bubbgee]

When that happened to me, I did a full restart with live rock and sand after a long break. This is the part where people make it or break it in the hobby.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Is it something I can use long term if I don’t have any sps?

Also I hear people dosing silicates for diatoms to out compete Dino’s. It’s 30+ pounds of dry rock in a 40 breeder so it’s a lot of rock as far as considered these days.

I have both Dino’s and diatoms coating everything. I feel like if I had started with live sand and some live rock I wouldn’t be in this predicament currently .

I am not keen on silicates although its an option and yes on peroxide several weeks. I utilize liquid bacteria to out compete bad bacteria

 

[jdpeters]

I am not keen on silicates although it’s an option and yes on peroxide several weeks. I utilize liquid bacteria to out compete bad bacteria

I have so much diatoms currently I would assume there wouldn’t be any Dino’s lol. What a dang mess.
I think I have a good plan. Thank you and everyone so much.

 

[jdpeters]

When that happened to me, I did a full restart with live rock and sand after a long break. This is the part where people make it or break it in the hobby.

I’m going to see if I can get rid of it, do a prolonged black out, start dosing bacteria, eventually add pods THEN get a order of sand from TBS and a little rock I think.

 

[bubbgee]

I’m going to see if I can get rid of it, do a prolonged black out, start dosing bacteria, eventually add pods THEN get a order of sand from TBS and a little rock I think.

Technically, you can do the peroxide soak the rocks and throw out the sand and then replace the water 100%. That would be amounting to a full reset. The full blackout without anything in it will work.

If nothing alive is in the tank, dose peroxide aggressively.

 

[Reef.]

If you have the type that disappears at night, a Uv (not a green killing machine) should clear them in a week, I had this type, 90% clear after 1-2 weeks the rest were just vacuumed out.

A blackout is not the best solution as the dinos can outcompete your corals and algae and other sources of life that need light.

It really is as simple as UV or/and removal, the reasons you see so many posts saying they can’t beat dinos is because you really have to hit them constantly, very hard to do with big tanks, luckily mine was a nano.

What size is your tank.

 

[jdpeters]

If you have the type that disappears at night, a Uv (not a green killing machine) should clear them in a week, I had this type, 90% clear after 1-2 weeks the rest were just vacuumed out.

A blackout is not the best solution as the dinos can outcompete your corals and algae and other sources of life that need light.

It really is as simple as UV or/and removal, the reasons you see so many posts saying they can’t beat dinos is because you really have to hit them constantly, very hard to do with big tanks, luckily mine was a nano.

What size is your tank.

It’s a 40 breeder. I’m looking at the Aqua Ultraviolet 15 watt.

 

[Jarob]

I just got done with a several month battle with dinos, tried Dr Tims method with no luck, heres what worked for me on my 80g system. Tank is 4 years old but recently moved and added ~30lbs of dry rock, sand was rinsed clear during the move. Tank is a mixed reef with a good amount of SPS/Acros too. Tank is always incredibly stable - Salinity 1.026, temp 78, pH 8-8.3, Alk 8.4, Ca 420, Mg 1350-1400, NO3 5 - 10, PO4 ~0.12, NO2/NH3 0. I will say, my P04 shot up to 0.4 - 0.6 after killing off the Dinos though but so far no ill affects even on the Acros.
___

- Aqua Ultraviolet 25w UV plumbed directly in and out of the display for the first 2 weeks before starting the below procedure, blew off rocks twice a day - this knocked it down ~20%
- Sucked up the top 1/2" of sand and tossed, replaced with a bag of Carib Sea Arag-Alive Special Grade live sand (I think this was hugely beneficial)
- Injected half a bottle of "Microbe-Lift Special Blend" into the clean sand bed, I have never used this product before but saw reviews from others saying its the only thing that helped with Dinos so gave it a shot. Added the 2nd half of the bottle to the tank a week later. (UV off for several hours after this)
- Copepod and plankton dosing (UV off for several hours after this)
- 3 day black-out after performing all of this, covered the tank with towels so no light got in
___

Im 2 weeks from the Dinos and no sign of them coming back! As a precaution I just aded some more live rock from a local reefer with a great tank and am continuing with the pods and plankton.

 

[Jimmy Smits IV]

I put on a green killing machine today but doubtful it’s that effective. I’m not opposed to purchasing a good unit but I feel like I’m past the point of fixing it. I wouldn’t care all that much but the tank doesn’t smell good and it’s in my living room of a small house.

My son has a microscope according to my wife I will give that a shot tomorrow.

They do seem to go away over night and come back after the lights have been on a bit.

THe green killing machine did take care of my Ostreopsis, but I had to use the big chonker, the 24w in my 33 gallon cube. I had the little 9 watt one but I didnt see huge improvement til upgrading.

 

[mimi117]

for getting rid of dino's, you want to make sure your nitrates and phosphates don't bottom out.

go for like 10ppm nitrates, and .03-.1 phosphates, you know your phosphates are where they need to be if you start growing some hair algae, also if you are feeding amino acids, i'd prob stop that for a while, replace any carbon/phosphate remover, make sure you are running a protein skimmer, UV can also help any free floating dinos or any bad bacteria in your water column, if you run filter socks, make sure you change them out every week as they will clog.

make sure you manually remove as much as you can during water changes and if none of that works, try dino-x.

 

[strykerdog11]

So my 5~ month old reef got dinos a month+ ago and it’s just completely got out of control. First things to actually go was some birdsnest, and 4 fish. Snails started dropping and what of the corals that survived the initial onset are on their way out. I think I was water changing too much and let my nutrients bottom out.

I started dosing phosphate and nitrate, blowing rocks off and changing socks regularly. Now I have red cyano in addition to a OUT of control dino outbreak.

I’m absolute frustrated with this. This was my 3rd tank I’ve set up, I’ve never dealt with this or struggled in this fashion. At a certain point is a tear down and sanitation reasonable? I’m literally on the cusp of losing my finally livestock. Even my copepods are dead.

Any thoughts?

This is what I would do, and what worked for me.
Join “Mack’s facebook group” then ID the type
-Get the innovative marine UV or any uv that is UV-C this is important
-Run A LOT of carbon, more than you think you need replace often to avoid toxicity.
-Test nitrates and phosphates, they need to be in balance, a lot of people will say nutrients bottoming out causes Dinos, which is true, but does nutrients that are insanely out of balance.
- Dose dr Tims waste away, and nitrifying bacteria to compete, but do this while
uV is off.

 

[jdpeters]

This is what I would do, and what worked for me.
Join “Mack’s facebook group” then ID the type
-Get the innovative marine UV or any uv that is UV-C this is important
-Run A LOT of carbon, more than you think you need replace often to avoid toxicity.
-Test nitrates and phosphates, they need to be in balance, a lot of people will say nutrients bottoming out causes Dinos, which is true, but does nutrients that are insanely out of balance.
- Dose dr Tims waste away, and nitrifying bacteria to compete, but do this while
uV is off.

Is there conflicting approaches to dosing bacteria and running UV? Some just leave it on correct? I just got a 15 watt aqua ultraviolet

THe green killing machine did take care of my Ostreopsis, but I had to use the big chonker, the 24w in my 33 gallon cube. I had the little 9 watt one but I didnt see huge improvement til upgrading.

i upgraded, just have to install it today hopefully.

 

[Reef.]

Is there conflicting approaches to dosing bacteria and running UV? Some just leave it on correct? I just got a 15 watt aqua ultraviolet

i upgraded, just have to install it today hopefully.

I’m not convinced with dosing bacteria, bacteria multiply rapidly, a UV stops them from multiplying but if you didn’t use a UV why would there be a need to constantly keep adding bacteria if it multiplies?…I’ll answer my own question, because the bacteria that is already in the tank is dominant so the new bacteria doesn’t stand a chance, is my belief?.

If you leave the UV on all that would mean is the bacteria you add would not breed but it doesn’t seem to breed anyway…if you have the type of dinos that UV works for, keeping the UV on would do far more good that adding a little bacteria.