Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
- Thread starter mcarroll
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The Tank has been running for about 10 months. Using radion with diffuser: turns on at 10 am and off at 9 pm. already have a 3 inch hippo tang and 2 clowns. CUC: about 6 nausarius nails. 10 turbo snails and 10 hermit crabs. I've recently started suctioning the top algae layoff. Limited feeding and reduced lighting to 11am to 8 pm. Hopefully that will work...Possibly, but I'd be careful on the nutrient manipulations....balance what's there by dosing if needed and remediate with manual methods (cleaning by hand) before you resort to chemistry (i.e. GFO, other).
It could be coincidence, but I don't see any snails in that vid. Can you list your current CUC (as far as you know)?
Without a doubt if you make a big increase to your nutrient load, you're going to have more CUC duties....so get ready for more snails.
Also, it may have been more optimal to increase livestock levels even more slowly. Were the 3 wrasses the tank's first fish? How old is the tank? How long are your lights on per day and what intensity (PAR or lux) are they set for?
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Slight tangent, but I'm going there, just for benefit of anyone else.
We want herbivores. Not "CUC" (scavengers/opportunists).
This CUC will not do what you want. The turbos will only touch the rock/glass and they are the only pure herbivore. Plus they are likely getting a lot of the same algae that the tang would want anyway - the rock based stuff.
The Nassarius are obligate scavengers, they will eat and then bury. The hermits will prefer to scavenge than to graze algae. Most tanks really don't need scavengers in these numbers. Scavengers need no introduction. Arms and claws and tentacles and mouths appear out of nowhere to rise to the occasion. So you have mostly scavengers, and the crabs will fight the others for scarce scraps.
Only crab I've ever seen worth its reputation as beneficial is emerald, and even then only the females.
(Ceriths and strombus are my fave snails for thoroughness)
Welcome to coolia land. I found using the marine land micron filter to be really effective in control. If you add uv with it and follow the nutrient process described here you should recover in a few months. Major carbon use is required to keep the toxins down.
SDboatguy
Active Member
Cheap but working UV -Jebao ... I got the 55 watt for my 100g , about 85 bucks plus a pump. I'm running mine in the display and it has definitely made a difference. Aqua UV sounds like the the one to get if budget is not an issue and you plan on running it long term.
OP
OP
mcarroll
10K Club member
+1
I don't recommend crazy amounts though, just a "fresher schedule".
Instead of the usual 1 cup / 100 gallons / 1 month.....downshift and use 1/4 the amount, but change it out 4x as often (weekly) so it's always fresh.
Of course use your judgement (or nose!), but that should do it in most cases!
Dear friends,
I've read this whole thread many times since I have been fighting dinos for over 6 months, from the very beginning of my new 100 gallon reef. I have to say that I did it I am finally dino free and I wanted to share my experience with you unlucky people. I was loosing hope at times and even thought about malawi cichlids. Now first some background.
The tank was started last September with some new dry pukani rock and some LR i had in my 60L nano tank. Sand was also dry but I was thinking I am going to add fish slowly and everything is going to be fine. In my reefing career I had no major algae issues so I wasn't too worried about it. Especially not worried about Dinos since I came across them just few times on forums and that't. New pukani wasn't really cured but I still decided to dump everything and hope for the best. I believe this was a main factor.
Fast forward some months I had some algae, from diatoms to GHA but again, not overly concerned since every tank has to go trough an ugly stage, especially ones started with dry rock, or partially with dry rock, which was my case. At the time I had only two clownfish, minimal feeding, wet skimming so I was thinking I was all set and just have to wait for some time and I will be fine. The sand started getting covered with brown slimy coat. at first i thought those are diatoms and they will go away. They didnt and they just got worse and worse. Then it started covering my LR and looked more like cyano. Now I am thinking, cyano is just a phase, it will go away. It didnt, instead it kept getting worse, so I ended up having every surface of a tank covered in brown slime. Also I notice many stars, worms, pods just flying around the tank lifeless, and I started wondering why are all those critters dying all at the same time. Snails would sit lifelessly on the sand until the brown thing covers them too. So only then, in January I am thinking, well this doesnt look good, I google my situation and find dinos on forums as possible answer. Once I read the description of the dino outbreak there was no doubt in my mind those were dinos. I was 100% positive. So now that I have a major dino outbreak, what do I do. Well I took a toothbrush and made a tank shinny Well it lasted for an hour.
Also they recommend a total blackout. Didnt do anything other than damaging some corals that collapsed and stayed in the sand during the entire blackout.
Next up was DinoX by fauna marin. This thing worked as a charm. I couldnt believe how clean my tank was for 21 days. BTW 21 days is max you can dose it, after it you have to stop, use carbon, change your water and wait for at least 2 weeks. Lets just say that it didnt take more that 2 days for Dino to recover. At that point I was crushed. I started thinking about going back to freshwater. It is cheaper, easier and usually you get some results right away.
Next up was H2O2 or Hydrogen peroxide. Now, at that time I was already too tired of hoping and being let down, and I also heard many reefers say that H2O2 is just a band aid, so I decided to skip. I still have a bottle of it though. There must be a natural way of fighting those jerks, right? Well there is. Stable and diverse system is the answer. How do I achieve this. Well feeding a lot, adding pods, dosing nutrients, or so called dirty method. Here in Serbia I had no chance to buy pods so I had to somehow produce them myself in such numbers outcompete the dino outbreak. With that I also decided to finally start my chaeto refugium. So I was pretty much blasting my chaeto 27/7 with 1000 PAR LED and at the same time I was feeding my tank an insane amount of food. I have only 3 fish, naso tang and two small clownfish but I was feeding like I have a shark in there. I removed my filter socks, skimmed dry, feeding like crazy and added a lot of soft coral frags. Lights on a display tank were still on for 12 hours a day.
I also have to say that Dinos didnt give up easily. It wasnt like I was dino free overnight. It took me good 3 months to stop seeing signs of dino. It was a slow but effortless process. I just fed a lot and I would sometimes have to rinse my chaeto because of detritus and dino buildup on it (no filter socks). Now my tank is dino free, my naso tang is really fat and all the good stuff finally took of. coraline algae was receding during the outbreak, now it is growing like crazy, pods are counted in billions and corals are growing fast. About NO3 and PO4, well I didnt check them since the outbreak started. Levels were fine before the outbreak and dinos still took off. So this time round I decided to leave those numbers alone and focus on visual signs of my tank's well being. Given the growth of chaeto (I harvest a basketball size ball every 3-4 days) I am sure NO3 and PO4 are quite low, but still the tank is high nutrient environment. I would like to encourage all the people tired of DinoX, Peroxide, filter socks, blackouts to try the dirty or natural method. So a lot of food, chaeto and really strong grow lights.
People like pictures, so here are some during the outbreak and after.
I've read this whole thread many times since I have been fighting dinos for over 6 months, from the very beginning of my new 100 gallon reef. I have to say that I did it
I am finally dino free and I wanted to share my experience with you unlucky people. I was loosing hope at times and even thought about malawi cichlids. Now first some background.The tank was started last September with some new dry pukani rock and some LR i had in my 60L nano tank. Sand was also dry but I was thinking I am going to add fish slowly and everything is going to be fine. In my reefing career I had no major algae issues so I wasn't too worried about it. Especially not worried about Dinos since I came across them just few times on forums and that't. New pukani wasn't really cured but I still decided to dump everything and hope for the best. I believe this was a main factor.
Fast forward some months I had some algae, from diatoms to GHA but again, not overly concerned since every tank has to go trough an ugly stage, especially ones started with dry rock, or partially with dry rock, which was my case. At the time I had only two clownfish, minimal feeding, wet skimming so I was thinking I was all set and just have to wait for some time and I will be fine. The sand started getting covered with brown slimy coat. at first i thought those are diatoms and they will go away. They didnt and they just got worse and worse. Then it started covering my LR and looked more like cyano. Now I am thinking, cyano is just a phase, it will go away. It didnt, instead it kept getting worse, so I ended up having every surface of a tank covered in brown slime. Also I notice many stars, worms, pods just flying around the tank lifeless, and I started wondering why are all those critters dying all at the same time. Snails would sit lifelessly on the sand until the brown thing covers them too. So only then, in January I am thinking, well this doesnt look good, I google my situation and find dinos on forums as possible answer. Once I read the description of the dino outbreak there was no doubt in my mind those were dinos. I was 100% positive. So now that I have a major dino outbreak, what do I do. Well I took a toothbrush and made a tank shinny
Well it lasted for an hour.Also they recommend a total blackout. Didnt do anything other than damaging some corals that collapsed and stayed in the sand during the entire blackout.
Next up was DinoX by fauna marin. This thing worked as a charm. I couldnt believe how clean my tank was for 21 days. BTW 21 days is max you can dose it, after it you have to stop, use carbon, change your water and wait for at least 2 weeks. Lets just say that it didnt take more that 2 days for Dino to recover. At that point I was crushed. I started thinking about going back to freshwater. It is cheaper, easier and usually you get some results right away.
Next up was H2O2 or Hydrogen peroxide. Now, at that time I was already too tired of hoping and being let down, and I also heard many reefers say that H2O2 is just a band aid, so I decided to skip. I still have a bottle of it though. There must be a natural way of fighting those jerks, right? Well there is. Stable and diverse system is the answer. How do I achieve this. Well feeding a lot, adding pods, dosing nutrients, or so called dirty method. Here in Serbia I had no chance to buy pods so I had to somehow produce them myself in such numbers outcompete the dino outbreak. With that I also decided to finally start my chaeto refugium. So I was pretty much blasting my chaeto 27/7 with 1000 PAR LED and at the same time I was feeding my tank an insane amount of food. I have only 3 fish, naso tang and two small clownfish but I was feeding like I have a shark in there. I removed my filter socks, skimmed dry, feeding like crazy and added a lot of soft coral frags. Lights on a display tank were still on for 12 hours a day.
I also have to say that Dinos didnt give up easily. It wasnt like I was dino free overnight. It took me good 3 months to stop seeing signs of dino. It was a slow but effortless process. I just fed a lot and I would sometimes have to rinse my chaeto because of detritus and dino buildup on it (no filter socks). Now my tank is dino free, my naso tang is really fat and all the good stuff finally took of. coraline algae was receding during the outbreak, now it is growing like crazy, pods are counted in billions and corals are growing fast. About NO3 and PO4, well I didnt check them since the outbreak started. Levels were fine before the outbreak and dinos still took off. So this time round I decided to leave those numbers alone and focus on visual signs of my tank's well being. Given the growth of chaeto (I harvest a basketball size ball every 3-4 days) I am sure NO3 and PO4 are quite low, but still the tank is high nutrient environment. I would like to encourage all the people tired of DinoX, Peroxide, filter socks, blackouts to try the dirty or natural method. So a lot of food, chaeto and really strong grow lights.
People like pictures, so here are some during the outbreak and after.
EmptyWallet
Active Member
Hi Folks, do I have Dino's here? Not stringey, no air bubbles, all over the sand (brown) but in areas of no light they are completely white? Doesnt look like any photos or youtubes of any type of nuisance algae or dino???
I have new dead rock (well tank running 6 months), zero nitrate, 0.04 phosphate, using Nopox and gfo.
I have new dead rock (well tank running 6 months), zero nitrate, 0.04 phosphate, using Nopox and gfo.
@JrSoxie I used Jebco 55w. It’s built poorly but works and is cheap. Make sure to clean it frequently. I posted earlier that black dust I thought was plastic was washing out. I was wrong. It’s carbon dust. I Raman tested it. Same stuff in my canister. The UV must put a charge on the glass sleeve.
Deezill
Valuable Member
@Pavle Thank you so much for sharing. Ihave been battling Dinos too. I am polluting my system as well. If I win I will explain exactly what I did. Much of it was raising my nitrates from 0 to 10 and My Phosphates are currently 0 but I am going to get those up too. I will keep you posted.
OP
OP
mcarroll
10K Club member
Do you mean that your cannister (and UV) are finding enough particulate carbon in the water for you to notice? Are you rinsing your activated carbon before putting it in? Or is it maybe being tumbled in a reactor? Which carbon are you using?
I didn’t wash it well enough it seems. Now it’s just got to settle out but it takes a long time. My sock is black as coal. Was Brs rox the good stuff.
I tried to reuse an rodi cartridge. Dumb idea. Also let it tumble.
I added a little nitrosomas a day back and well it seems once you get close it’s ok to do. I appear Dino free except for a little on the return head from my sump. Getting better. In six months if the stay away I’ll start reducing n and p to 2ppm and 0.05ppm and hold it there for good. Getting new pods this weekend.
Now my little tank also cured despite my attempt to murder it. I’m adding aluminum based phos remover to drive the p down and chemipure to drive the n down. Want to see if I can stress the tank into a bloom. I secured confocal microscope time and put Raman on it. I want to see if I can observe changes in toxin production as I modulate iron first and then a second test with iron with raised nutrients. I read of some significant structural changes when this was done but the studies are way old on old equipment. Unfortunately I need to learn to grow these buggers on demand to do this and be sure I can monoculture them. No studies on coolia that I see but plenty on red tide and saxitoxin.
I also wonder if I can leverage Dino’s to fight algae. If I can make them attach and kill the algae but remain low in toxin production it might work. Thinking also ways to modulate toxin in algae as well to reduce problems in my Lake Erie during the summer. Irons cheap and natural.
Ps when I say iron I mean the chelates form ferric-edta
I tried to reuse an rodi cartridge. Dumb idea. Also let it tumble.
I added a little nitrosomas a day back and well it seems once you get close it’s ok to do. I appear Dino free except for a little on the return head from my sump. Getting better. In six months if the stay away I’ll start reducing n and p to 2ppm and 0.05ppm and hold it there for good. Getting new pods this weekend.
Now my little tank also cured despite my attempt to murder it. I’m adding aluminum based phos remover to drive the p down and chemipure to drive the n down. Want to see if I can stress the tank into a bloom. I secured confocal microscope time and put Raman on it. I want to see if I can observe changes in toxin production as I modulate iron first and then a second test with iron with raised nutrients. I read of some significant structural changes when this was done but the studies are way old on old equipment. Unfortunately I need to learn to grow these buggers on demand to do this and be sure I can monoculture them. No studies on coolia that I see but plenty on red tide and saxitoxin.
I also wonder if I can leverage Dino’s to fight algae. If I can make them attach and kill the algae but remain low in toxin production it might work. Thinking also ways to modulate toxin in algae as well to reduce problems in my Lake Erie during the summer. Irons cheap and natural.
Ps when I say iron I mean the chelates form ferric-edta
@Deezill make sure you get your PO4 levels up too. As you know, it is good to have balance between those 2. And sufficient nutrient export is as important as import when fighting dinos in my opinion. Many people here wrote about that. NO3 and PO4 dont kill dinos themselves, they just create an environment that can support biodiversity, but we still need to efficiently export them. Under no circumstances should we allow nutrient buildup. It will just trash the tank even more.
@mcarroll The 'clean zone' was probably just me disturbing the sandbed. I used to do it twice a day, or even more. Those were some of the useless efforts I was making to combat dinos. Other clean zones are created by tang dragging around a piece of rock nori was attached to. Even with disturbing the sand everyday it was still almost 100% covered all the time. It was nasty. Unfortunately I cant find any pictures showing dino at its best in my tank. I can just say that even with extensive googleing I couldnt find a tank that looks as bad as mine. Mine were dinos on roids
@mcarroll The 'clean zone' was probably just me disturbing the sandbed. I used to do it twice a day, or even more. Those were some of the useless efforts I was making to combat dinos. Other clean zones are created by tang dragging around a piece of rock nori was attached to. Even with disturbing the sand everyday it was still almost 100% covered all the time. It was nasty. Unfortunately I cant find any pictures showing dino at its best in my tank. I can just say that even with extensive googleing I couldnt find a tank that looks as bad as mine. Mine were dinos on roids
JaimeAdams
2500 Club Member
In my experience, an ATS is the best method for nutrient export in a Dino tank, because Dinos just cannot grow in the ATS, too much flow. Whereas any environment I could make that was good for Chaeto, the Dinos also proliferated. And if you wanted to get really crazy (which I did at one point but then stopped because it wasn't necessary), you can put a UV sterilizer before your ATS and ensure no living Dinos get in there.
I'm in the process of setting up a new tank and I'm not turning the lights on until I get my ATS set up (which I've been waiting on for a couple of months), because I want a nice, controllable means of nutrient export that the Dinos cannot invade.
It is a real trick to balance keeping nutrient levels high enough that Dinos don't bloom, but then not so high that algae takes over your tank.
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