Dinoflagellates - dinos a possible cure!? Follow along and see!

drawman · Jul 25, 2017

mcarroll said:
That's just more stress.

How's the dosing going and how's the tank progessing, if at all?

Unless you're also doing something crazy in your tank like household cleaners or drugs which would be better off here in this thread, can you post a current pic and update here: Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

In this tank I'm not dosing anything other than Ca/Alk and I've stopped all water changes. Dinos came on about a month ago and have taken acro frags out one by one it's tough to watch. It's hard to say if things are slowing down but they certainly aren't stopping.

I will say it's hard to get the dinos to completely release with turkey basting that's why I was hoping a diluted H202 dip may give them a little room to breathe. I have had it on my list to get carbon going as well as I think the toxins are killing PE on any remaining acros. No snail deaths throughout the process which is nice.

Ramasule said:
Same thing. I stopped WC and dosed metro, that helped. I'm also going to try mcarroll way and raise my p04 from 0.03 to 0.1 well see how that goes, I havn't seen any in tank for a while...

Did you use dry rock by any chance?

I've stopped water changes as well. This frag tank is actually run solely on Siporax media so not rock at all. Functionally, the same idea though. I need to retest PO4 tonight as I think the Siporax is pretty good at taking it down in this tank.

FFJB · Jul 25, 2017

I did the bleach method and within the week it all disappeared. This after months and months of fighting and losing the battle and 1000s of dollars if coral

reeferfoxx · Jul 25, 2017

drawman said:
It's hard to say if things are slowing down but they certainly aren't stopping.

Much like a cold or flu, when I raised nutrients, things got worse before they got better. I almost threw in the towel it got so bad. I was told to wait it out and I'm thankful I did. Two weeks after that, dinos were gone.

evolutionZ · Jul 25, 2017

Hey guys, I'm new here! I'm battling Dino and I chanced upon this awesome thread. Read through over 40 pages from the front and decided I should just post this..

Im currently on day 2 of 125mg/10g and I'm following the original dose of 3 days and then removing them on day 4. Did the dosing and instruction change as the thread goes on?

FFJB · Jul 25, 2017

evolutionZ said:
Hey guys, I'm new here! I'm battling Dino and I chanced upon this awesome thread. Read through over 40 pages from the front and decided I should just post this..

Im currently on day 2 of 125mg/10g and I'm following the original dose of 3 days and then removing them on day 4. Did the dosing and instruction change as the thread goes on?

Yeah.....said screw that **** and went to bleach.

evolutionZ · Jul 25, 2017

So to said metro turns out to be ineffective? I'm never gonna bleach my tank. So I guess it's back to the old school method after my 3 days metro dosing huh

RamsReef · Jul 26, 2017

evolutionZ said:
Hey guys, I'm new here! I'm battling Dino and I chanced upon this awesome thread. Read through over 40 pages from the front and decided I should just post this..

Im currently on day 2 of 125mg/10g and I'm following the original dose of 3 days and then removing them on day 4. Did the dosing and instruction change as the thread goes on?

Do it for 4 days and then hit it with 2x doses again in about 4 days is what I found works. You are not going to kill them only make them unable to replicate, you still have to remove them.

FFJB · Jul 26, 2017

evolutionZ said:
So to said metro turns out to be ineffective? I'm never gonna bleach my tank. So I guess it's back to the old school method after my 3 days metro dosing huh

Bleach brother. .003÷ strenghth of bleach you choose...i chose chlorox at 6%. Multiply gallons. So I have a 125. My formula looks like this. .003÷.06×125=6.25. That's 6.25 ml of bleach dosed twice a day. Once in the morning and once at bed.

mcarroll · Jul 26, 2017

@FFJB I'm VERY glad your dino's are gone, but....

If you run a search for bleach (<--) on this thread and read the >500 posts that account for people trying bleach, then you'll hopefully understand why folks aren't promoting it or doing it like that now. I obviously don't know the specifics of your case, but the stats in the thread for bleach are so bad that your fix may actually have been a coincidence with something else and not (just) the bleach.

It seems to be the case for nearly everyone that, in spite of treatments, if you don't address/fix the underlying problem that brought the dino bloom on in the first place then they come back. Most often the thing that appears to have set them off is a tank starvation issue – usually related to the use of carbon dosing and phosphate removers to keep NO3 and PO4 at near-zero levels....and usually on a newish tank.

FFJB · Jul 26, 2017

Not sure what stats you refer to but what I can tell you is it worked for me along with 2 other local reefers. That being said i also addressed nitrate and phosphate issues. I also introduced some pro biotic bacteria into the system. I believe the bleach was the turning point and savior among all of them. I tried peroxide, metro, flucon, etc eith no changes. Bleach was the only other variable

mcarroll · Jul 26, 2017

FFJB said:
Not sure what stats you refer to

The posts in the search link I provided. There are over 500 posts of people trying (and failing) with bleach....and there are a few tanks that seemed to be irreparably damaged from harsh treatments like that. You can read about them through that search – you don't have to take my word.

If you haven't read through my dino thread, it sounds like it'd be interesting as we've fleshed out a lot about what's really going on (finding scientific research that explains it AND proving it experimentally at the hobby level): Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

FFJB said:
That being said i also addressed nitrate and phosphate issues.

That was your cause and fix....anything else you did just helped at most. Most tanks haven't needed help beyond the nutrients though – where the best target levels for suppression seem to be ≥ 0.10 ppm PO4 and ≥ 5-10 ppm NO3.

But some folks have needed help – or at least help speeded things along.

Rather than bleach I'd suggest (if possible) UV or diatom filtration. Both have been used with success along with the nutrient corrections (doseing and removal of excessive nutrient reduction methods like carbon dosing or phosphate removers).

FFJB · Jul 26, 2017

mcarroll said:
The posts in the search link I provided. There are over 500 posts of people trying (and failing) with bleach....and there are a few tanks that seemed to be irreparably damaged from harsh treatments like that. You can read about them through that search – you don't have to take my word. If you haven't read through my dino thread, it sounds like it'd be interesting as we've fleshed out a lot about what's really going on (finding scientific research that explains it AND proving it experimentally at the hobby level): Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

That was your cause and fix....anything else you did just helped at most. Most tanks haven't needed help beyond the nutrients though – where the best target levels for suppression seem to be ≥ 0.10 ppm PO4 and ≥ 5-10 ppm NO3.

But some folks have needed help – or at least help speeded things along.

Rather than bleach I'd suggest (if possible) UV or diatom filtration. Both have been used with success along with the nutrient corrections (doseing and removal of excessive nutrient reduction methods like carbon dosing or phosphate removers).

Funny....ive read where the diatom filter didn't help much at all in this same thread. I'm not discounting your thoughts but clearly people have had success with using bleach. I believe bleach used accordingly has little I'll effects on anything else in the tank. There is a whole other thread going as well that states the same. To me, it was the last resort. I did everything else prior to bleach. Nothing worked. Local guy used bleach same way I did and it worked for him. Nothing is 100%.

rog2961 · Jul 26, 2017

mcarroll said:
The posts in the search link I provided. There are over 500 posts of people trying (and failing) with bleach....and there are a few tanks that seemed to be irreparably damaged from harsh treatments like that. You can read about them through that search – you don't have to take my word. If you haven't read through my dino thread, it sounds like it'd be interesting as we've fleshed out a lot about what's really going on (finding scientific research that explains it AND proving it experimentally at the hobby level): Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

That was your cause and fix....anything else you did just helped at most. Most tanks haven't needed help beyond the nutrients though – where the best target levels for suppression seem to be ≥ 0.10 ppm PO4 and ≥ 5-10 ppm NO3.

But some folks have needed help – or at least help speeded things along.

Rather than bleach I'd suggest (if possible) UV or diatom filtration. Both have been used with success along with the nutrient corrections (doseing and removal of excessive nutrient reduction methods like carbon dosing or phosphate removers).

While there have been some losses with fish due to high doses of bleach, I wouldn't discount it entirely. Im not sure where the large amounts of failures are, but in that thread I can think of 3 people that overdosed their tank and lost fishes. All others have had positive experiences. Just like there have been multiple people where raising nutrients dont work. As has been show time and time again, raising nutrients isnt a cure all to dinos, just like bleach isn't. In fact, I am experiencing the exact opposite, I bought my levels up to those targets slowly and had a dino explosion. Once my nutrients bottom out, the dinos start turning white. There's more going on that we have no idea about, these guys have millions of years on us.

bh750 · Jul 26, 2017

After beating my Dinos (Amph) it seemed I was dealing with a cyano outbreak. Once again the microscope I purchased recently paid for itself again (twice within a week)! I decided to confirm if it was Cyano Spirulina, so I took a sample and placed it under my scope. Right away I saw it was neither but actual Dinos, again! This time red'ish Amph dinos. I did a few to make sure I wasnt missing something. My samples actually showed some of the previous brownish Amph swimming along with new reddish Amph. So I just continued my program of controlling NO3 and PO4 along with biodiversity (pods, fuge) and they seem to be fading back.

Thought I'd share yet another lesson of really knowing what's in your tank!

mcarroll · Jul 26, 2017

FFJB said:
Funny....ive read where the diatom filter didn't help much at all in this same thread.

Snappy comeback and true, but not funny.

...that's one of the tanks that was irreprarably damaged from bleach, etc. (Bleach was not the only treatment.) One of my main cases in point for creating that alternate thread.

It would be interesting to see what extent of re-innoculation (e.g. detritus or live rock transplant from a healthy tank, etc) it would take to reinvigorate a tank like that. Understandably after all the effort, that tank ended up being broken down.

Read the whole thread if you have time....there have been (more) cases that went the other way too.....within a day or two of elevating nutrients and ceasing things like GFO and carbon dosing the dino's stop coming back. No other treatments.

rog2961 said:
Im not sure where the large amounts of failures are

In that search link I posted you can read about them if you want to.

That's why I posted the search link.

(just put the term "bleach" into the search box on the R2R website and click the "seach this thread only" checkbox to perform the same search yourself....nothing fancy)

Bleach might have a negative effect on dino's, but that would not be totally surprising – it's bleach! It undoubtedly affects lots of microbes in the tank. For that reason, there are better alternatives.

If you could point to some people who cured their dino's using bleach but otherwise kept their tank starved for NO3 and PO4, with persistent carbon dosing, etc, still going on – then you'd really have my attention.

Seriously. PM me some usernames if you know any.

rog2961 · Jul 27, 2017

I experienced exactly what you are speaking of bleach knocked them out completely, nutrients were at 0 for quite some time. Once I decided to add nutrients thats when the explosion happens. Quite a bit of selective hearing as you know raised nutrients dont solve all, a simple "search" would show that. There are multiple reports of users having high nutrients with 0 effect. Im not sure how you can discount bleach which has worked, but promote high nutrients that have been proven not to work. You said bleach affects "alot" of microbes, UV is different how?

mcarroll · Jul 27, 2017

@rog2961 You should read those old bleach posts....not sure what's stopping you. That was a lot of people who tried it – way more than three. I already read them, BTW....and the whole rest of this thread. And a pile of research. And a ton of interviews. I'm still glad you don't have dino's anymore.

If you want to be anti-nutrients or pro-bleach (or whatever – anything) that's OK. It's a big world with lots of dino tanks.

Go cure some of them and write some details about it – maybe explain why it didn't work for so many folks before you if you can. (I'm not the only one who's going to remember all the bleach failures, so it'll help a lot if you can explain.)

If you want to set up some bleach tests and prove that it works then you'll be about where we are with testing nutrient fixes, BTW.

Have you read the other thread yet? There are details and lots of supporting research in there if you're curious.