Dino's plus Diatoms?

[ParticleMan]

Hello, so recently I noticed the tell tale signs of a begging dino outbreak. I was able to get a sample of the water and some dino bits and my local LFS was able to put it under a microscope. This was the image he sent me back. He confirmed the Dinos but also that I had quite a bit of Diatoms. Is that a werid combination? the tank has been running now for about 9 months. It was great up until about 2 weeks ago when I saw the dino's start. The stringy snot was sort of the give away and they are irritating the corals a bit. I'm pretty sure it was caused by my nitrates that kept crashing because the refugium was doing to good a job. The tank is a Fluval 13.5. I've been keeping Nitrates in the 5-10 range now and the phosphates around .05-08. Threw a UV sterilizer in and was going to do a 3 day blackout starting on friday. Does all this sound good? From what I can tell they are the Prorocentrum variety.

 

[jonelder68]

I would start silicate dosing as well to cause a diatom outbreak. Dose until microscope slide shows little to no Dino’s. It’s the only way I beat Prorocentrum Dino’s along with everything else you mentioned. Took around 6-8 weeks. Once slides shows diatoms you can start stirring the sand you have uv cook diatoms off along with them running out of silicates. It will take a few weeks for them to die off after as well. Good luck!

 

[Asm481]

Do not bother with uv for prorocentrum dinos. No black out needed either. I fought them for over a year then did silicate dosing which was successful. Get some waterglass from Amazon and dose it till over 2 ppm silicates. Tank will flood with diatoms once you have raised silicates. You should get your own 100 dollar microscope to monitor the dino vs diatom war. The diatoms will dissipate on their own after you stop dosing.