Dinoflagellates/dino battle

[jchopkin]

I have a fluval evo with protien skimmer, activated cardon, ceramic and filter floss set up with stock light however I have been battling a dinoflagellates/dino problem for what feels like months.

My water parameters are below:
Amonia -0
Nitrite - o
Nitrate- 0 - 5
Phosphate - unknown as kit isn't sensitive enough.
Ph - 8.3
Salinity 1.025
Kh. 12

I'm not sure what's causing it or how to get rid of it, it started as GHA and suddenly that changed into what it is now, I'm really at my end with it and just want my tank looking nice and clean for my corals and fishes.

Any ideas on how I can fix or reduce the problem would be greatly appreciated

 

[Reef - Tripp]

The first thing is to check that they are dino flagella and what type to know how to attack them, we take a microscope image

 

[Dkmoo]

1) get a better test kit - very big difference between 0ppm NO3 and 5ppm No3. also need to know the Po4 levels
2) get a microscope as mentioned above to confirm what type of dino - different ones require different treatment
3) generally it is caused by imbalance in how the nutrient is being absorbed. probably because it's caused by something you did to deal with the GHA - the nutrients in your tank has to go somewhere - before, it reached stability b/c your GHA absorbed it, when you remove the GHA from the equation something else has to replace it - in your case, Dino replaced it.
4) how old is tank? as tank matures and your biodiversity increase, different things will help out-complete dinos in nutrient absorption.
5) manually remove them as much and as frequently as possible - don't just blow them off, physically suck them out and remove from tank.
6) be patient, once you manually remove, you are giving the other organisms a chance to start retake their foothold in the pecking order for nutrient absorption, this will take a while.
7) let your algae grow back - they are the unsung heros that has kept your tank in balance due to an underlying issue - in your case, likely too much nutrient/too fast changes that upset the balance between nutrient in and nutrient out
8) UV will help depending on the type of dino as well.

 

[brandon429]

try and find something this quick, this powerful:

this is the best way to fix if your reef is small. if its large you'll have to take less direct means with no specific cure date. the cure date on that method below is anytime you choose to run the method, your tank will shine. so by today, you can have a shiny skip cycle cleaned reef. growback isn't really a problem we can see in scannable rip clean threads. awesomeness is the recurring outcome.

 

[brandon429]

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