I have 99 percent beat dinos in my frag tank, thought I would share how now to hopefully help some others that are struggling with them. I never did examine them under a microscope, so I don't know the exact variety, sorry.
I set up my 6 foot by 2 foot frag tank in March. Black egg crate and 4 medium sized pieces of flat-ish live rock on one side stacked to make a shelter for the small yellow tang and kole tang that keep it clean. Also a large piece of live rock in the sump. There is also some springeri damsels in the tank.
It cycled very gently, very little algae and coralline was starting to coat the frag racks. Problem was, acros and montis were struggling in it. Losing color and/or browning and receding. Softies were doing ok. . I checked nitrates and phosphate and both were zero. Red Sea for nitrates and hanna ultra low for phosphate. I started dosing, kept the levels at 3-5 nitrates and .01 to .02 for phosphates. My acros and montis rebounded and were growing and coloring up by the day, enough that I installed my calcium reactor.
Suddenly, dinos showed up and went to plague proportions almost overnight, to the point where corals were getting killed. Snotty, stringy brown dinos. They covered everything that was getting light. Blowing them off helped for an hour. Sorry for the picture quality.
So, I tried feeding the tank more nutrients, made them worse. Tried H2O2, no joy. Tried no skimmer. Nope. Blew them off every night and filtered them in a fresh sock and changed it out right after. Didn't phaze them. Tried no water changes. No change. Then I decided to try to beat them like I did in my Nano.
With the nano, after removing all the sand and having no luck, I seeded 2 bags of ceramic bio media in the sump of my display for a couple weeks and after I put them in one of the chambers of the nano (an all in one type) the dinos were gone in a couple weeks. More surface area for bacteria. Bingo.
I figured there must not enough surface area for bacteria in the frag tank, as it was basically just the tank and sump walls, egg crate, and the modest amount of live rock, I went to my LFS with the intent to get more rock. Instead of live rock, I decided to try a Marine Pure block, the 8 x8x4 size. Rated for a much larger tank, but since I had the room in the sump for it I went for it.
I seeded the block for a week in my display sump, On January 20th I did a water change, siphoning all the dinos I could, and installed the block in the frag tank sump. I quit dosing that day as well. I took this picture tonight, January 31st.
I would say they are 99 percent gone, just a little bit on my frags of gorgonians near the overflow tonight and that was it. They were totally covering every horizontal surface and coral in this tank less than 2 weeks ago. Look at the birdsnest in the left background. It was 100 percent healthy and neon pink colored. All but the pink now visible was killed by the dinos.
So in my case, the imbalance both times I had dinos seems to be directly caused by not having enough surface area for the good bacteria to out compete the dinos.
I set up my 6 foot by 2 foot frag tank in March. Black egg crate and 4 medium sized pieces of flat-ish live rock on one side stacked to make a shelter for the small yellow tang and kole tang that keep it clean. Also a large piece of live rock in the sump. There is also some springeri damsels in the tank.
It cycled very gently, very little algae and coralline was starting to coat the frag racks. Problem was, acros and montis were struggling in it. Losing color and/or browning and receding. Softies were doing ok. . I checked nitrates and phosphate and both were zero. Red Sea for nitrates and hanna ultra low for phosphate. I started dosing, kept the levels at 3-5 nitrates and .01 to .02 for phosphates. My acros and montis rebounded and were growing and coloring up by the day, enough that I installed my calcium reactor.
Suddenly, dinos showed up and went to plague proportions almost overnight, to the point where corals were getting killed. Snotty, stringy brown dinos. They covered everything that was getting light. Blowing them off helped for an hour. Sorry for the picture quality.
So, I tried feeding the tank more nutrients, made them worse. Tried H2O2, no joy. Tried no skimmer. Nope. Blew them off every night and filtered them in a fresh sock and changed it out right after. Didn't phaze them. Tried no water changes. No change. Then I decided to try to beat them like I did in my Nano.
With the nano, after removing all the sand and having no luck, I seeded 2 bags of ceramic bio media in the sump of my display for a couple weeks and after I put them in one of the chambers of the nano (an all in one type) the dinos were gone in a couple weeks. More surface area for bacteria. Bingo.
I figured there must not enough surface area for bacteria in the frag tank, as it was basically just the tank and sump walls, egg crate, and the modest amount of live rock, I went to my LFS with the intent to get more rock. Instead of live rock, I decided to try a Marine Pure block, the 8 x8x4 size. Rated for a much larger tank, but since I had the room in the sump for it I went for it.
I seeded the block for a week in my display sump, On January 20th I did a water change, siphoning all the dinos I could, and installed the block in the frag tank sump. I quit dosing that day as well. I took this picture tonight, January 31st.
I would say they are 99 percent gone, just a little bit on my frags of gorgonians near the overflow tonight and that was it. They were totally covering every horizontal surface and coral in this tank less than 2 weeks ago. Look at the birdsnest in the left background. It was 100 percent healthy and neon pink colored. All but the pink now visible was killed by the dinos.
So in my case, the imbalance both times I had dinos seems to be directly caused by not having enough surface area for the good bacteria to out compete the dinos.
