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

awais98

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No problem. Paying forward. Did you go to the page I linked above. That’s the thread that @mcarroll saved my tank

Yes I did... that link is also long and seems there is no definite cure....

I plan on trying zeovit coral snow with the zeobac and see how it goes
 

sfin52

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Read the first page. Knowing The type of Dino is key. If you are running gfo or using a carbon source to control phosphates stop running it. They thrive in ultra low nutrient system. 0 po4 and 0 No3 is not a good thing.
 

bboudreaux1969

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Just wanted to let everyone know what worked for me. I had osterios (sp?) form of dinos. Thanks to this discussion and a microscope I was able to identify what I had. Anyway, I tried everything mentioned here in this thread except bleach as this was a new tank without any coral that mattered. However, I have plenty of very expensive fish that I wasn't willing to risk at that point. So I went with the dirty method combined with a blackout every weekend. Prior to raising my nitrates I had tried a 14 day blackout only to see the dinos return within two weeks. The tank in question is at my office so couldn't see over the weekend anyway.
I started with shutting down my skimmer for over 6mos and fed my fish until I thought they were going to pop. I'm talking 6 cubes a day for a 200g tank with 25 fish. I checked my nitrate once a week just to monitor and see what amount worked. I made sure to raise my nitrates slowly as i was trying to keep my elegance, anemone, dersa clam. Turning off my skimmer really seemed to help as my dinos were cut in half right away just by doing that. For example before turning off my skimmer the dinos would come back by Wednesday afternoon and without it I could make it to Friday morning and then you could see them starting to return. I work Monday thru Friday and I would cover the tank around 4pm before I left every Friday.
What I noticed is that once my nitrates climbed to over 80ppm it wasn't coming back on Friday. Therefore, I decided to leave the lights on permanently at that point no more weekend blackouts. After a week I observed a trace of it in my overflows and on the algae feeder clip but very little and isolated there and there only. I continued my feeding regime. When my nitrates got to over a 100ppm I stopped seeing it all together, but I wasn't sure it was gone so I continued, and still no skimmer. Now keep in mind I'm using the api nitrate test kit so not real accurate I know but it's what I had around to check. Anyway, once that test color matched the 160ppm mark on the chart I lost a couple fish. Thankfully none that I really cared about, but at this point my elegance was not looking happy at all and I hadn't seen dinos in well over 2mos. So I cranked up the skimmer crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I let the skimmer run 24/7 at that point and two weeks later still no dinos anywhere. At that point I decided on an 80g water change fingers crossed again. That water change brought my tank down to 80ppm of nitrate. I did the water change on a Friday. Came in on Monday still no dinos. Keep in mind my lighting schedule is back to normal at this point, and the skimmer is running as well. The next week I did another 80g bringing me down to 40ppm. Same thing water change done on a Friday. When I got back to work on Monday still no dinos. I did another 80g that Friday bringing me down to 20ppm and same story on Monday. It has been 2 months now at 0 nitrates and 3.5 months since I last saw it so I guess i'm good.
Just wanted to give my story to maybe help someone in my shoes. During my highest nitrate I lost a couple of chromis, dragonette goby, yellow eyed kole tang, and all my remaining turbo snails that the dinos hadn't already killed. Dirty method works folks you just need to get it real real dirty. Anyway, hope this helps someone. Good luck to everyone who gets this nasty stuff.
Also, wanted to add my highest phosphate was over 3.4 on the hanna checker. I know crazy high but believe it or not my elegance, and clam survived. Same thing with the anemone. As a matter of fact the clam and rose bubble tip anemone never showed any signs of stress even at the highest level of N03 or P04. The colors on my clam never looked so good as they did at that time. Since then my clam has bleached a little but seems to be doing well.
 
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sfin52

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You want some nitrate at 5ppm and phosphates .1
 

bboudreaux1969

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I'm sure I have some nitrate because as you know api is not very accurate. At this point my P04 was .003 last I checked. About 3 weeks ago I added a few frags such as red planet, purple stylo, green poccilipora, 3 different kinds of cap, green turbinaria, and a piece of setosa. All corals are maintaining their color and doing well, but hey I appreciate the advice. Never hurts to throw it out there.
 

sfin52

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I'm sure I have some nitrate because as you know api is not very accurate. At this point my P04 was .003 last I checked. About 3 weeks ago I added a few frags such as red planet, purple stylo, green poccilipora, 3 different kinds of cap, green turbinaria, and a piece of setosa. All corals are maintaining their color and doing well, but hey I appreciate the advice. Never hurts to throw it out there.
I’m glad you beat them and didn’t give up. So many do when they are about to turn the corner.
 

Richards_reef

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What worked for me was the bleach method. I DO NOT RECOMMEND OR CONDONE ANYBODY USING BLEACH IN THERE AQUARIUMS. I was okay with having losses, after fighting dinoflagellates for over a year using every method I could find. I almost gave up the hobby because of it.
 

sfin52

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What worked for me was the bleach method. I DO NOT RECOMMEND OR CONDONE ANYBODY USING BLEACH IN THERE AQUARIUMS. I was okay with having losses, after fighting dinoflagellates for over a year using every method I could find. I almost gave up the hobby because of it.
Thanks for the input but Bleach is not what is being discussed. We are looking at restoring balance back to the tank along with biodiversity. Long term success is based on having nutrients and biodiversity in the tanks. Loads of success doing it the RN method. RN= restoring nutrients. I don’t like the dirty method phrase.
 

Richards_reef

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Thanks for the input but Bleach is not what is being discussed. We are looking at restoring balance back to the tank along with biodiversity. Long term success is based on having nutrients and biodiversity in the tanks. Loads of success doing it the RN method. RN= restoring nutrients. I don’t like the dirty method phrase.
Actually bleach was discussed in this thread in July 24th 2016 (page69), it was discovered by twilliard. I was just updating on what worked for me. I tried everything including the dirty method and the metro method. So far I've been Dino free for over 2 years.
 

sfin52

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Whoops wrong tread. My bad but I’ll still not recommend it. I’ll stick with the RN approach and recommend it.
 

mcarroll

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Folks keep waking up this thread. :D

Instead, check the sticky thread at the top of the Algae forum.
 

Justin Ostafew

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At the risk of drawing attention to this thread by bringing it to the top of the active pile, I would like to take a moment to plant my flag at the top of this mountain after climbing (reading) all 228 pages. I'll now be moving over to mcarroll's suggested thread "tired of battling all together". Good luck to whoever reads this, I am still fighting the good fight.
 

FFJB

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Please inform us!
So the forumula I used is .003/.06*gallons in your system. The .003 is the constant. The .06 is the percent of bleach found in chlorox. If you use another brand look at the label and see what percent bleach it is and use that instead. Then of course your systems water voulme. Mine is 125. Math works out to 6.25. that's means 6.25 ml of bleach to be dosed twice a day into the tank..first time around I slowly poured into my dt near the return line and power head. Didn't want it to sit in one area for too long. Second time I set up my doser and just dosed into my return section of my sump. Once in morning. Once at night. Roughly 12 hours or so apart.
 
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