Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[ShowboatHK]

Am I supposed to be removing Chaeto during the Dino battle? Seems odd to dose pho’s and nitrate but keep the Chaeto.

 

[Eclyps19]

After about a month and a half of dosing n03 and p04, plus two blackout periods, I feel like I've finally gotten by dinos back under control. I'm getting hit with the obvious cyano outbreak now with my elevated nutrients. How long should I let cyano do its thing? I'm trying to keep it somewhat cleaned up, but don't want to be too aggressive in removing it and letting dinos take its place again.

 

[Ross Petersen]

Does anyone dose phosphates in the cycle/startup phase to get phosphates up right off the bat? Thanks!

 

[Michael Gray]

I don't have Dino's. But I have a question because I'm battling baddddd baddd GHA. I stated vibrant. Weekly. . I test po4 and no3 about every other day. Obviously GHa is taking my nutrients so my po4 will read 0 in Hanna ulr phosphorus test. And nitrates will slowly drop. I've read Dino's will show up in tests read 0. That being said. I been dosing po4 and.no3 when they read zero. Am I feeding the GHA just more and more. If my test kits read zero but still have excessive gha bad .I obviously still have po4 and no3. Is that enough for Dino's to not show up? I also have like 10 acros. Tiny frags. Another reason I dose to show po4 and no3.

 

[djf91]

Just wanted to report that I bought the 33 watt Jebao UV with a 200 gph pump. Cleared my Dino’s completely in 3 days. All zoanthids, frogspawn, and palys are back to normal. Can’t say how amazed I am. Also, like I said in my previous post. I had the 9watt green monster on this tank during my last Dino outbreak a year ago and it had zero effect so I definitely would say go big with the UV!

 

[DraggingTail]

I sweated dinos to the point that I gave up. You know what happened? They eventually went away on there own.

Just thought I would share

 

[Greenstarfish03]

Just wanted to report that I bought the 33 watt Jebao UV with a 200 gph pump. Cleared my Dino’s completely in 3 days. All zoanthids, frogspawn, and palys are back to normal. Can’t say how amazed I am. Also, like I said in my previous post. I had the 9watt green monster on this tank during my last Dino outbreak a year ago and it had zero effect so I definitely would say go big with the UV!

Ok this ammazes me bc i just had a dino outbreak for the first time in 15 years so i bought a 36w coralife turbotwist and Ive been running it on my tank for about two weeks and i have not seen one single improvement. Did you do anything else while adding the uv and do you know what type you had?

 

[Greenstarfish03]

I need a little clarification. I have Ostreopsis for the first time in 15 years. I have been skipping water changes so my nutrients have climbed and its dricing me crazy bc now im getting some sort of turf algae as well. I have been running a 36w turbotwist uv for about 2 weeks with no change. To me i think i did some damage to my bacteria load with some chemiclean a while ago. So the logical fix to me seems like i should try to fix my bacteria issue. Shouldn't dosing bacteria like microbacter7, phytoplankton, pods help more then anything else? Then if I do that wont the uv kill the phytoplankton? Maybe dose microbacter, phyto and half the pods in my sump and run the uv in the dt? Im going to start doing water changes again bc i dont want everything else to go to hell Im just not going to go crazy so I can keep my nitrates betwen 10 and 20. Its hard to vacum my sand i have neve done that on a tank but i can try that. It seems though that will upset the bacteria in the sand and wont that make the dinos worse? No comperition or does the good of the manual removal just out weight the bad?

Thanks

 

[DraggingTail]

I need a little clarification. I have Ostreopsis for the first time in 15 years. I have been skipping water changes so my nutrients have climbed and its dricing me crazy bc now im getting some sort of turf algae as well. I have been running a 36w turbotwist uv for about 2 weeks with no change. To me i think i did some damage to my bacteria load with some chemiclean a while ago. So the logical fix to me seems like i should try to fix my bacteria issue. Shouldn't dosing bacteria like microbacter7, phytoplankton, pods help more then anything else? Then if I do that wont the uv kill the phytoplankton? Maybe dose microbacter, phyto and half the pods in my sump and run the uv in the dt? Im going to start doing water changes again bc i dont want everything else to go to hell Im just not going to go crazy so I can keep my nitrates betwen 10 and 20. Its hard to vacum my sand i have neve done that on a tank but i can try that. It seems though that will upset the bacteria in the sand and wont that make the dinos worse? No comperition or does the good of the manual removal just out weight the bad?

Thanks

Pics?

 

[Greenstarfish03]

Pics?

Sorry I didnt think about the pics bc i had it id a wile ago.

 

[DraggingTail]

Sorry I didnt think about the pics bc i had it id a wile ago.

We all like pics.

I would start doing 10% water changes every 2 weeks until it goes away

 

[Greenstarfish03]

We all like pics.

I would start doing 10% water changes every 2 weeks until it goes away

Thanks DraggingTail. I think that makes sense. I usually do 30g so 20-30% pending on total actual water volume once a month unless I have issues or my levels start to elevate then I will slip another one or two in a month. Doing smaller ones every couple weeks hopefully will help keep things from getting out of control w/o dropping my nutrients too low. For years I was a nitrate 0, phosphate 0 person and I had never had Dinno before now so I'm a little skeptical of the nutrient bottoming out people at as far as being the main reason. I lean more towards you don't have enough biodiversity b/c your tank is new or you did something silly like too much chemiclean or other chemical

Any thoughts on why the UV doesn't seem to be helping? or my plan to add bacteria, phyto and pods? What about running UV while doing that? I'm a little concerned that running UV and dosing bacteria and phyto at the same time will be counter productive.

 

[DraggingTail]

Thanks DraggingTail. I think that makes sense. I usually do 30g so 20-30% pending on total actual water volume once a month unless I have issues or my levels start to elevate then I will slip another one or two in a month. Doing smaller ones every couple weeks hopefully will help keep things from getting out of control w/o dropping my nutrients too low. For years I was a nitrate 0, phosphate 0 person and I had never had Dinno before now so I'm a little skeptical of the nutrient bottoming out people at as far as being the main reason. I lean more towards you don't have enough biodiversity b/c your tank is new or you did something silly like too much chemiclean or other chemical

Any thoughts on why the UV doesn't seem to be helping? or my plan to add bacteria, phyto and pods? What about running UV while doing that? I'm a little concerned that running UV and dosing bacteria and phyto at the same time will be counter productive.

What is your nitrates and phosphate?

 

[djf91]

Ok this ammazes me bc i just had a dino outbreak for the first time in 15 years so i bought a 36w coralife turbotwist and Ive been running it on my tank for about two weeks and i have not seen one single improvement. Did you do anything else while adding the uv and do you know what type you had?

How large is your tank? I believe mine was Ostreopsis. It would form in long hair-like strands on the glass, powerheads, and on my zoas and soft corals.

 

[Greenstarfish03]

How large is your tank? I believe mine was Ostreopsis. It would form in long hair-like strands on the glass, powerheads, and on my zoas and soft corals.

100g and I have maybe 40g of water in the sump in the basement. Mine hasn't really bothered the corala yet but I dont want to get to that point.

 

[Greenstarfish03]

What is your nitrates and phosphate?

Nitrates were 10 and phosphates were .17, but i will measure them again tonight bc i bet there higher now since I haven't done any water changes.

 

[DraggingTail]

Nitrates were 10 and phosphates were .17, but i will measure them again tonight bc i bet there higher now since I haven't done any water changes.

Vibrant.

 

[gmdcdvm]

Well,
I am hoping I am not jinxing myself. For the last two months I had been battling Dino’s in my 65g Red Sea E series aquarium. I had lost 3 corals and the others were looking stressed. The fish were fine. The two anemones were fine. But every day all of my rocks and sand would be covered in them along with some of the corals. At night it would disappear
I figured I had several options:
1. “Organic”: go dirty, no water changes, no skimming, carbon only.
2. “nuclear” using Dino X
3. Scorched earth: starting over.
I decided to try the organic approach first figuring I cloud always try the other two as a last resort. I stopped the skimmer and just kept up with the carbon. Didn’t see much of a change. I was getting frustrated and was wondering about doing a blackout. I was willing to lose the corals and anemones but my family grew attached to the fish. Could not lose these.
After several weeks still not much improvement. While reading a thread someone posted info about GARF. I remembering buying their garf grunge years ago when I had been in the hobby. The thread was about increasing biodiversity to combat Dino’s. I figure it would not hurt. So I ordered some garf grunge for the tank. I put in 5lbs of grunge. Then, about a week later garf sent another 5lbs by accident. So I ended up with 10lbs of garf grunge plus.

I was not to impressed by the grunge. It smelled and clouded up the tank but I was getting desperate to avoid chemicals or a complete do over. The silt settled out after a few hours and no one looked worse for wear. I figured the money I spent on the grunge would be a drop in the bucket to my other options. Within days things were looking better. Now it’s been two weeks and I am having a hard time finding any evidence of Dino’s.
The corals look better now and things are going well. I can’t say for sure garf made a difference but nothing else happened until I added that into the tank. Increasing pho4 and nitrates didn’t do anything. The thread I read discussed biodiversity and competing organisms. It also mentioned how 15-20 years ago when harvested/wild live rock was available Dino’s were pretty much unheard of. The theory was live rock provided greater biodiversity to out compete Dino’s.
i know correlation does not equal causation but wanted to share my experience. I will update again if anything changes.
Gerry

 

[djf91]

100g and I have maybe 40g of water in the sump in the basement. Mine hasn't really bothered the corala yet but I dont want to get to that point.

Someone else should chime in but I don’t think you have ostreopsis. If it is in fact Ostreopsis I would double up on UV sterilizer.

 

[drawman]

Just an update. I would say I've been just about 99% dino free. The only place they seem to barely show up is on the PVC pipe that runs to/from my UV sterilizer. We will see if I am jinxing things as I just did my first water change in at least a month yesterday and removed a large amount of hair algae (with applying peroxide). I've let my Alk creep up to about 8.0dKH from 6-7dKH as well and have tried to open a window from time to time now that it's a little warmer out. I seriously wonder how much elevated CO2 contributes to dino infestations, especially with newer tanks with dry rock. I don't measure pH currently so I have little to offer other than observation.

Something definitely turned the corner with my outbreak several weeks ago and I'm not entirely sure what it was but likely a mix of everything I was doing.