DINO's SUCK

TK_KW

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So ive been battling dinos for over 6 months now. Tried two rounds of dr tims with no success.

Three day black out knocks them back to undetectable levels, but within a day their back.

I kept having problems with my Nitrates bottoming out within a few days of being 2ppm or so. I have some health issues going on, so I havnt been able to be ontop of everything.

I'm testing Po4 and No3 everyday right now. Seems my nitrate is 1ppm consumption per day.

What else can I try to beat these devils?
Has anyone raised there tank temp to 82 to see what effect that may have?
 

Flippers4pups

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So ive been battling dinos for over 6 months now. Tried two rounds of dr tims with no success.

Three day black out knocks them back to undetectable levels, but within a day their back.

I kept having problems with my Nitrates bottoming out within a few days of being 2ppm or so. I have some health issues going on, so I havnt been able to be ontop of everything.

I'm testing Po4 and No3 everyday right now. Seems my nitrate is 1ppm consumption per day.

What else can I try to beat these devils?
Has anyone raised there tank temp to 82 to see what effect that may have?

I have had great success in raising my tank temp to 80 getting rid of them. 5 years of Ostreopsis and tried everything in the book to get rid of them. I changed nothing except raising temp at the time they disappeared.

I'm keeping my system at this temp indefinitely.
 
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TK_KW

TK_KW

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I have had great success in raising my tank temp to 80 getting rid of them. 5 years of Ostreopsis and tried everything in the book to get rid of them. I changed nothing except raising temp at the time they disappeared.

I'm keeping my system at this temp indefinitely.
Interesting...any adverse effect with coral or fish is my only concern? Seems nothing works for me.

Downside to a 30" deep tank is its hard af to syphon and move coral around on sandbed etc to help the situation.

I may just raise the temp, and cross my fingers
 

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It's a very difficult problem to beat...at least it has been for me. It is helpful to identify the type of dinos you have as there are some specific things that are more effective for certain strains.

For example Ostreopsis is very sensitive to UV because it goes in to the water column at night......amphidinium, not at all as it retreats to the sand bed at night.

Anything that adds biodiversity can help...pods, phyto, live rock from another tank, etc. Keeping nutrient levels up (I aim for NO3 of around 5-10, PO4 of 0.06 to 0.10 helps. Dosing silicates to trigger a competing diatom bloom also helped greatly.

I struggled with keeping NO3 and PO4 up when dosing Dr. Tim's Wasteaway. I had to dose both to keep levels detectable. I used pharma grade sodium nitrate from Amazon and Seachem Flourish phosphate supplement to do that.

If you can get a microscopic picture of your dinos it would greatly help!
 

Flippers4pups

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Interesting...any adverse effect with coral or fish is my only concern? Seems nothing works for me.

Downside to a 30" deep tank is its hard af to syphon and move coral around on sandbed etc to help the situation.

I may just raise the temp, and cross my fingers

No adverse effects. Matter of fact, the corals look better. It's been about three weeks in and growth has increased.

I'm not the only one that has had success with temperature increase. I will say it's dependant on what type of dinoflagellates you have. I was very sceptical about this at first, but in my case it worked. I have before and after pics, but I'm at work.
 

Clownfishy

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Hi,
Sorry to hear about your health issues. Have you considered dosing your Nitrates via a doser as at least this will maintain your levels? I had an outbreak of Ostreopsis for over 1 year period with 2 months being awful. The turning point for me was -
  • UV. I added 2 so what one did not capture, the other one did!
  • Blasting the rocks with a turkey baster every 2 days to get them in the water column so the UV would kill them
  • Only using blue lights and lowering intensity and duration of lighting levels
  • Keeping phosphates at 0.3ppm and Nitrate at 50ppm
I am still only using blue lights and have been slowly increasing the intensity. Every time I tried to add white lights near 5% white light and 100% blue light, the Dino's started to appear but I am going to try again now Dino population is very low.

Hope that helps.
 

vetteguy53081

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They do but they Can be Beat
 

Brew12

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Anything that adds biodiversity can help...pods, phyto, live rock from another tank, etc. Keeping nutrient levels up (I aim for NO3 of around 5-10, PO4 of 0.06 to 0.10 helps. Dosing silicates to trigger a competing diatom bloom also helped greatly.
+1 on this

I'd also add rotifers to the list if you can get them
 

ScottB

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It's a very difficult problem to beat...at least it has been for me. It is helpful to identify the type of dinos you have as there are some specific things that are more effective for certain strains.

For example Ostreopsis is very sensitive to UV because it goes in to the water column at night......amphidinium, not at all as it retreats to the sand bed at night.

Anything that adds biodiversity can help...pods, phyto, live rock from another tank, etc. Keeping nutrient levels up (I aim for NO3 of around 5-10, PO4 of 0.06 to 0.10 helps. Dosing silicates to trigger a competing diatom bloom also helped greatly.

I struggled with keeping NO3 and PO4 up when dosing Dr. Tim's Wasteaway. I had to dose both to keep levels detectable. I used pharma grade sodium nitrate from Amazon and Seachem Flourish phosphate supplement to do that.

If you can get a microscopic picture of your dinos it would greatly help!

+1 to this ^^^^^
 

Claymundo

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My dino is finally starting to get under control. Took about a month in my 0 nutrient system (which caused the dinos most likely) I started feeding twice a day, added uv and physically brush the dino off rock in order for the UV to suck them up and kill them.
 

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Here is what I did.

1. Dose nitrate and phosphate

2. Once nitrate and phosphate are up, dose competition such as waste away, eco balance, live phyto, PNS probio (I did the first three but pns probio looks nice).

3. Maintain nitrate and phosphate up (nitrate above 10 and phosphate at 0.1 for me)


Dinos were gone in a few weeks
 

Marc2952

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For amphidinium my LFS guy told me.recently that what he does is take some bacteria and add it to a cup with some tank water. And then just take your turkey baster or w.e you use to feed your corals and just suck up water from that cup and kind of "inject it" into the sand. I know it sounds crazy but that seems to be the only thing to be clearing up my sand a bit. I had a case of Ostreopsis too but i beat that easy with a UV. I suggest blowing up the sand a bit prior to doing that bacteria trick. I used zeobak just incase you wanted to know. The places where i have done that has been cleared of dinos for a few days now im surprised nobody has tried that..
 

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So ive been battling dinos for over 6 months now. Tried two rounds of dr tims with no success.

Three day black out knocks them back to undetectable levels, but within a day their back.

I kept having problems with my Nitrates bottoming out within a few days of being 2ppm or so. I have some health issues going on, so I havnt been able to be ontop of everything.

I'm testing Po4 and No3 everyday right now. Seems my nitrate is 1ppm consumption per day.

What else can I try to beat these devils?
Has anyone raised there tank temp to 82 to see what effect that may have?
Step 1 for sure is to figure out what kind you have. Get a kids microscope and post the pic online and the forum will help identify it for you. The treatment path varies greatly by type. UV works well for some strains but not at all for Amphidiniums, for those you need to dose sodium silicate or Sponge Excel. I'm still battling them myself but only after 6 months did i get the microscope and realize the silica dosing is what I needed to do.
 
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TK_KW

TK_KW

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6 months of fight for me. Start dosing no3 & po4 to keep them in check, still not winning, but better. But actually when I started dosing h2o2 made a huge difference.
Interesting. I could try that too. I havnt tried it yet
 
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TK_KW

TK_KW

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It's a very difficult problem to beat...at least it has been for me. It is helpful to identify the type of dinos you have as there are some specific things that are more effective for certain strains.

For example Ostreopsis is very sensitive to UV because it goes in to the water column at night......amphidinium, not at all as it retreats to the sand bed at night.

Anything that adds biodiversity can help...pods, phyto, live rock from another tank, etc. Keeping nutrient levels up (I aim for NO3 of around 5-10, PO4 of 0.06 to 0.10 helps. Dosing silicates to trigger a competing diatom bloom also helped greatly.

I struggled with keeping NO3 and PO4 up when dosing Dr. Tim's Wasteaway. I had to dose both to keep levels detectable. I used pharma grade sodium nitrate from Amazon and Seachem Flourish phosphate supplement to do that.

If you can get a microscopic picture of your dinos it would greatly help!

20200819_124917.jpg 20200819_124931.jpg 20200819_124945.jpg
 

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