Dinos (ostreopsis) are back, double check my plan?

[malfist]

Hi All,

I'd appreciate feedback on my plan of attach for my umpteeth million round of dinos. Skip down the The Plan if you don't want to read my history of this fight.

Background:
I spent 4 years battling dinos after being new to the reefing hobby (coming from high tech planted freshwater) and buying into the ULNS philosophy of beating algae with 0 everything. Didn't realize what it was until I'd spent over a year siphoning out snot during each water change and being frustrated by it coming back time and time again.

Finally got more serious about the hobby and really decided to tackle it because I wanted healthy coral. I did the whole nine yards of treatment, bottled bac, oversized UV plumbed straight into the display, dinox, vibrant, hydrogen peroxide, phyto dosing, blackouts, everything. I'd knock it back for a week or two and then it'd come back just as bad as before and repeating the previous process didn't knock it back again.

I had my tank DNA sampled and confirmed what my microscope was showing, ostreopsis. Even though mine did not seem to leave it's mucus mats at night, it was certainly ostreopsis.

Finally, I did a couple of things that finally let me see the end. Instead of hand dosing nitrate, phosphate and bottle bac (MB7), I put them all on an automated doser. I plumbed a 24W UV sterilizer into my return on a manifold with a swing valve and flow meter to make sure the right flow rate through it (400GPH), did successive 3 day blackouts (3 black, 2 lights, 3 black, 2 lights, 3 black). Turned UV/Skimmer off for MB7 dose times and reset my lights back into acclimation mode and reduced the photoperiod significantly. I also got an automated feeder and set it to overfeed the tank. I also bought gulf cultured live rock and sand. Added 20 pounds of live rock from the gulf to the display and 10 pounds of live sand to the sump. I also dosed silicates to the tune of 1ppm/week.

It took months of dosing nitrates and phosphates to have them show up regularly, and it wasn't enough to get them to show up I found, I had to keep them near a constant number. That meant testing every day for weeks and adjusting my dose rate. God bless Hannah's phosphate and nitrate HR test kits. My goal was 40ppm nitrate and 0.4 phosphate.

I finally got them beat with this method, and then after a month like this and seeing algae growth I reseeded my tank with copepods, added a purple tang and replenished my snail cleanup crew and everything was great. This battle had wiped out my chaeto so I refreshed it.

~1 year all is good. Eventually I stopped dosing nitrates and phosphates because they stayed elevated with the overfeeding.

Today:
A couple of months ago I noticed a new algae was spreading on the rocks and didn't think anything. I realized the tang wasn't eating any of the new algae and it being a green algae kind of surprised me. Then I noticed some snail deaths. Finally it got to plague proportions a few weeks ago and I went in to help the tang out and realized that it had slimy brown gunk on the tips of all the algae. My worst nightmare was back. Rechecked with the microscope and it is indeed my old foe back again.

I tested my nitrates and phosphates, I have 4ppm of nitrates and 0.22ppm of phosphates, so it's not bottomed out, though my nitrates are really low.

The Plan:

1. I shunted all my return pump into the UV sterilizer. Reduces overall flow through sump, but increases flow through UV to 613 GPH. Goal: low exposure to more
2. Ordered a 24W green killing machine to add to the display. It runs at ~200gph. Goal: high exposure to fewer, directly in display
3. Will resume dosing nitrates to get my nitrates back up to ~40ppm. This will likely reduce phosphates, will need to test both and adjust as needed
4. I had reduced silicate dosing to .85ppm. Increasing this 50% to drive habitat displacing diatoms, plus, love the sponges it grows

If no improvement in 1 week, I'll take additional steps:

1. DrTim's method, blackout with bacteria dosing

If still no improvement:

1. Begin dosing Metronidazole
2. Ramp silicate dosing again, trying to drive competition for habitat space
3. Overseed with copepods directly into the display.

If still no improvement:

1. Reapply previous aggressive treatment, live sand to sump, successive blackouts, MB7, etc.

Following eradication in any step, reseed copepod population, dose phyto.

My philosophy for this treatment plan is to disrupt or kill off the dinos while having their habitat space taken over my a competing species. Preferably diatoms.

 

[taricha]

Everything you are doing is sensible in the respect that others have had some success with it.

But in the spirit of keeping it simple and pushing back against the idea that there's a necessary 12-move combo that you have to do just right in order to knock this out...
You have slimy brown dino cells on the tips of algae, indicating that it's attaching from the water.
The only thing of your list that I'd actually tell someone else is very important/necessary regardless of other tank circumstances is this part...

Ordered a 24W green killing machine to add to the display. It runs at ~200gph. Goal: high exposure to fewer, directly in display

UV in the display. Get cells in the water going through UV.
Your success will relate more to this than anything else in the list, IMO.

 

[stoney7713]

What temperature do you run your tank at?

 

[stoney7713]

Let me say, it sounds like you have a game plan but it's pretty complicated.

Nitrates being that low and phosphates that high I would dose nitrates to bring it back up to balance it out.

I've battled dinos twice now, and have used several different methods. It seems things never went the same twice either.

The second time I tried some of the same treatments as the first that eradicated them, but until I again raised the tank temperature to 82, it didn't work. I had actually forgot about that step.

My suggestion would be in combination of your first plan, slowly raise your temperature to 82 over a week. If your inhabitants can handle it, most will just fine honestly.

 

[Jonreefer]

green killing machine wont do anything. Its flow is to fast
I had Osteo just a few weeks ago and my GKM did nothing to what i was seeing after a week.
You want to have 1w UV to 3 gallon of water and have the pump in the display to get as much as you can and very slow gph like if you have a 60g tank id run like max 100gph in the UV.
I bought the Innovative marine 10w UV that i can control the pump speed in my 20g tank.
I had it in the tank running at its slowest and did zero black out but turned my lights down to all blue and only ran like 3hrs a day.

After a week I had pretty much all of them gone and its been a few weeks and there is nothing coming back.
So with osteos. get the proper sized UV and make sure its pump is in the display running through the sump isnt going to do much as you will not get much of them compared to in the tank itself.

Dont use the GKM as its a waste of time and money for Dinos and no need for a black out just cut down the lights alot so it gives them more time to go in the water.

I also dosed microbacter 7 here and there during my treatment.

also dont waste the time with silicate dosing with Osteos. Since they go in the water and no need to try and fight them on the sand

 

[taricha]

Dont use the GKM as its a waste of time and money for Dinos and no need for a black out just cut down the lights alot so it gives them more time to go in the water.

YMMV, but others have mostly found success with cheap low quality UV like the green killing machine and jebao etc.

 

[Jonreefer]

I had zero impact on the Dinos with the green killing machine. When I added the new UV from Innovative marine I noticed a result and them starting to get less and less after a few days. I ran the GKM for weeks and saw no improvement.
Just going by my experience with the unit for this and in the past I shut down tanks losing the battle cause I only used the GKM. I wish someone woulda told me sooner they are useless for Dinos.

 

[billyocean]

A piece of filter floss on a nori clip at night helps. Just wash the floss put in the morning/day and put back in before lights out. I used that, green killing machine, turkey basted before lights out, raised phosphate to .1 and nitrates to 16, dosed mb7 and in about 4-5 days the floss was no longer catching any.

 

[buruskeee]

Update? I have an Aqua UV 25W in my 150g (132g DT) that I just moved to my DT. I’m running it at 200GPH to try and give it as much exposure as possible without overheating my bulb (lowest spec rate is 400GPH).

My nitrates are up to 16ppm and phosphates are 0.13ppm.

I’m going to run my lights at 100 PAR peak at the top of my rocks (have mostly acro frags) instead of my typical 350.

It’s been a day since I moved it but I’ve noticed the strands are getting longer. I’m hoping it starts clearing sooner. I’d hate to have to buy another UV just for this as the Aqua UV is already $400.

 

[Fish Think Pink]

We just had @Jason mack who runs the Dino Support Group as a guest speaker... as you've already figured out, much of what you had been doing was wasted efforts and he makes it simple, not that it doesn't still suck... and the UV key is both not thru sump and THREE times oversized - we recorded him:



GOOD LUCK to you!!

 

[buruskeee]

Wanted to update. Since moving to 200GPH, the long strands are pretty much gone and it’s the small strands that sparingly remain. It looks like I’m starting to win the battle, just took a bit longer since I had to use barely over 1x turnover to get enough exposure to start sterilizing the dinos. I will observe for the next week in hopes that it eradicates it (I’m going to leave the UV for a month after it’s visibly completely gone before returning it to my sump return line).