Documenting my fight with Dino's

Miller535

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I am documenting my fight with Dino's. Tank info, Tank is 125 Gallon, 55 Gallon sump, Reef Octopus Regal 200INT, 4 Kessil A360X's, somewhere around 115 pounds of live rock (mostly Fiji, a Pukani), about a 2" sand bed of standard sand, currently running as FOWLER. A few years back I had a bad algae problem, hair algae, all kinds of algae. My nitrates and phosphates were super high, I think NO3 was maybe as high as 30. Phosphates were WAY WAY over what the red sea kit could even test for. I then started using GFO which with GFO and using the high resolution red sea test kit I could finally get a reading. I think it was still like maybe 4 (yes 4, not .4). I then bought a large Reef octopus bio-pellet reactor. Even after I brought the bio-pellet reactor online, I continued to run GFO. Between the bio-pellet reactor and GFO, my NO3 dropped to I think about 4, and PO3 dropped to maybe .1. Tank started looking great. I thought I had fixed everything, stopped testing. Then maybe a year later everything started, started getting cyano. Problem was light but annoying. I tried correcting it with water changes. Never realizing that my NO3 had bottomed out to zero, and my PO4 to .1. I thought this was a good thing so I never considered it part of the problem. I then proceeded to use Chem-clean. Which wiped out the cyano, but within a day or two ushered in my new nemesis, Dino's. At this time (about sep 2019), I had no idea even what Dino's were. I sent away a Triton ICP test and it came back really high levels of Copper (40ppb) and a few other metals. So I thought the metals were my problem. So I dealt with the metals issue, but the DINOS persisted. I eventually came across the DINO thread on Reef2Reef. And that brings me to this week. My rock was so encrusted with dinos, my sand so covered, and the tank so covered, I knew I had to manually remove as much as I could.
 
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Miller535

Miller535

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So on Tuesday, I physically removed half of my rock, piece by piece, cleaning it in the following manner. Plunge it in a bucket half full of RODI water and scrub it with a giant scrub brush I bought on BRS. Then take the rock out and spray it all over with peroxide. Let it sit for maybe 30 seconds. Then scrub it, then plunge it into a 2nd bucket with RODI water, and scrub it also in there. Then put that piece back into the tank, and move on to the next piece. After I had cleaned half of the rock work. I waited maybe an hour. Fed my fish, turned the light off, and then dosed 25ml of Microbacter7. And left skimmer off for 4 hours as directed on the bottle.
 
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Miller535

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Yesterday (Wed) I did the other half of the rock. And only had the lights on long enough to scrub the rock, and feed my fish. After I did this I waited an hour, and dosed another 25ml of Microbacter7.
 
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Miller535

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Today lights are going to stay off, I am going to start working on making a small batch of water. because I have a blanket of thick dinos on my sand that I am going to vacuum off, probably on Saturday. I am going to re-test my NO3, and PO4 and dose as needed today. I will dose Microbacter7 again. And do the same Friday and Saturday until I vacuum the sand. I ordered some 5 Micron filter socks, when I get those, I am going to do a true black out, covering the tank, and on day 2 or 3 of the true black out I am going t o use these 5 Micron filter socks, and I would probably try and agitate the sand and rock. And then I will reassess.
 
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Miller535

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I have no thrown out the idea of dosing peroxide or buying a UV. But I would really like to avoid this if at all possible. I don't like the idea of dosing peroxide (but will if I have to), and really don't want to spend the money on a UV right now.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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pls post full tank shot pics

your manual controls are ok and might help agreed, we need to see the sandbed. so many dinos hide/get refuge there, the topical cleaning isn't ideal if they're housed below, lets see

if I could relay some info condensed from large dinos work threads, one way that works well is to deep clean and then install actual pods or nutrient controls that prevent or work on growback, nice job starting with the physical removal part.
 
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Miller535

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This isn't a great picture (and it's NOT full tank shot) , but it's what I have right now. (This was before I cleaned the rock)

20200324_191242.jpg
 
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Miller535

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pls post full tank shot pics

your manual controls are ok and might help agreed, we need to see the sandbed. so many dinos hide/get refuge there, the topical cleaning isn't ideal if they're housed below, lets see

if I could relay some info condensed from large dinos work threads, one way that works well is to deep clean and then install actual pods or nutrient controls that prevent or work on growback, nice job starting with the physical removal part.

Thank you for reminding me, 1 of the things I wanted to do once I beat the Dinos back some, I was going to buy a package from algae barn. Their package with phyto and pods. The 5280 pods and ocean magic phyto package
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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perfect, you have an option for dealing with that sand in a unique way: rip it all out, hold it elsewhere, and put it back only when the main tank is saved from dinos.

we can simply clean and dry the sand before re use, spike it with something to kill dinos etc.

having it not in the reef will help tons, and the missing bacteria wont matter, we rip out sandbeds from full running reefs all the time.

I would beat dinos by force with no sandbed present, adding back totall cleaned sand to the system even with pods added will not hurt anything or cause dinos at all.

*there are bottle bac strains avail nowadays not for cycling I would consider too, in the clean condition vs the invaded one
 
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Miller535

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perfect, you have an option for dealing with that sand in a unique way: rip it all out, hold it elsewhere, and put it back only when the main tank is saved from dinos.

we can simply clean and dry the sand before re use, spike it with something to kill dinos etc.

having it not in the reef will help tons, and the missing bacteria wont matter, we rip out sandbeds from full running reefs all the time.

I would beat dinos by force with no sandbed present, adding back totall cleaned sand to the system even with pods added will not hurt anything or cause dinos at all.

*there are bottle bac strains avail nowadays not for cycling I would consider too, in the clean condition vs the invaded one

Currently like I said, I am daily dosing Microbacter7. Would this not fall into that category of BAC not for cycling? I have also considered buying a few different BAC for diversity, as I have read that helps. Not sure I want to rip the sand bed out, but I will if I have to
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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I make it a point to reef so small that any misbehavior results in a 300% water change...a benefit of pico reefs lol (not any invader can withstand that, its why no picos have dino issues on the web)

but if I had a large reef where I couldnt do a total water change, Id have a pond sterilizer plumbed in, a grossly oversized UV. UV is nice here in that if he does rip cleans it burns out casted up cells in suspension from manual work, not just diurnal habits if any. I personally wouldnt try and fix it with a sandbed in place, too hard and takes too long work threads show.
 
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Miller535

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I make it a point to reef so small that any misbehavior results in a 300% water change...a benefit of pico reefs lol (not any invader can withstand that, its why no picos have dino issues on the web)

but if I had a large reef where I couldnt do a total water change, Id have a pond sterilizer plumbed in, a grossly oversized UV. UV is nice here in that if he does rip cleans it burns out casted up cells in suspension from manual work, not just diurnal habits if any.

That's why I wanted to keep agitating them so that they would go into the water column.
 

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