Help with Dinos. Start dosing?

[aaron186]

My tank is just under a year old and I’m having some issues with Dinos. My tank is a reefer 425 xxl and I have a 25 wat pentair plumbed into the return running at 450 gph. I also have a reef mat filter roller, a refugium lit by a Neptune glo, and a RO elite 150 sss skimmer with a recirculating CO2 scrubber.

My nitrates are 0 and my phos is 0.05.

Tank is heavily stocked with 12 fish and I feed 2 cubes per day.


I’m reluctant to take my skimmer or fuge down because my pH runs around 7.95-8 while dosing soda ash to keep alk around 8.4. I’m going to give Kalk a shot to see if that helps

I could take my filter roller off line but my tank has a lot of particulate while feeding avast marine reef jerky.

Should I start dosing Nitrate and Phosphate? Will that help with the dinos? Any else I should try? I just bought a bottle of microbacter 7 to see if that helps.

Thanks for the advice

 

[Lavey29]

Feed more, my 12 fish get 4 cubes per day and a snack. Your dinos developed because your nutrient levels bottomed out.

 

[aggrofish]

Neophos will raise it but I would definitely reduce your skimmer and filtration. ETA: 25W is not enough to get rid of dinos. I have a 25w aqua UV on a smaller reefer 350 and it didnt make a dent in dinos. I picked up a cheap jaebo 50W and plumbed it directly to the tank. Dinos gone.

 

[aaron186]

Neophos will raise it but I would definitely reduce your skimmer and filtration. ETA: 25W is not enough to get rid of dinos. I have a 25w aqua UV on a smaller reefer 350 and it didnt make a dent in dinos. I picked up a cheap jaebo 50W and plumbed it directly to the tank. Dinos gone.

The Pentair 25 watt is rated up to 130 gallons

 

[aggrofish]

The Pentair 25 watt is rated up to 130 gallons

The aqua UV 25 watt I have is about the same and with a new bulb it didnt beat dinos and my tank is 75l less than yours. I stuck the jaebo with a return pump inside the tank and bypassed the sump altogether. Worked like a charm and worth the $100 or whatever it was...

 

[Om84]

I was in your shoes few months ago. After battling Dino for 6 months, I’ll tell you what I learned.

-Be patient. Don’t try many things at once.
-ID the dinos - If UV is appropriately sized and not helping it is probably not Uv sensitive
-Turn white lights off or low
-the most important factor like everyone says is get nitrates up >10 and Phos >0.1 and maintain that. I had to dose nitrates and feed more pellets
-the other recommendations like microbacter, silicates, phyto, pods, etc probably help but didn’t help me
-vacuuming and using very small filter socks helped for a couple days and then Dino’s would come back - wouldn’t waste time with it
-3 day blackouts help

My dinos disappeared over a few days when my automatic feeder failed and remained in on position for few hours. I checked my nitrates and they were 30 and phos 0.5. I allowed parameters to come down slowly and didn’t do anything to remove them. They came down to Nitrates 10, Phos 0.1 where I keep it now over a couple weeks. I have not seen dinos for a couple months now. Therefore I do believe like everyone says get your nitrates and phos up. Don’t try too many things at once. Don’t panic. Tanks less than a year old are at risk for Dino’s and other nasties. You’ll get through it and learn a ton. Good Luck.

 

[DarkReefer]

I was in your shoes few months ago. After battling Dino for 6 months, I’ll tell you what I learned.

-Be patient. Don’t try many things at once.
-ID the dinos - If UV is appropriately sized and not helping it is probably not Uv sensitive
-Turn white lights off or low
-the most important factor like everyone says is get nitrates up >10 and Phos >0.1 and maintain that. I had to dose nitrates and feed more pellets
-the other recommendations like microbacter, silicates, phyto, pods, etc probably help but didn’t help me
-vacuuming and using very small filter socks helped for a couple days and then Dino’s would come back - wouldn’t waste time with it
-3 day blackouts help

My dinos disappeared over a few days when my automatic feeder failed and remained in on position for few hours. I checked my nitrates and they were 30 and phos 0.5. I allowed parameters to come down slowly and didn’t do anything to remove them. They came down to Nitrates 10, Phos 0.1 where I keep it now over a couple weeks. I have not seen dinos for a couple months now. Therefore I do believe like everyone says get your nitrates and phos up. Don’t try too many things at once. Don’t panic. Tanks less than a year old are at risk for Dino’s and other nasties. You’ll get through it and learn a ton. Good Luck.

Yeah I too went through this last year. Worst experience and it put me off the tank for a while.

Definitely get an ID of the dinos. It'll help you fight it. Even if you have to buy a cheap microscope for the sole purpose of it, do it. I put this off for months thinking it was cyano or something and when nothing would work I finally bit the bullet and that's when I started to see some progress even though it was a little bit of 2 steps forward, 1 step back initially.

After 11+ months now I've only just brought some white back into my lights a couple of months ago because I was so nervous about it. (even thinking about how I am leaning toward Xr15 Pro's instead of Blues for my new tank is making me cringe with PTSD about it). I think I still have my hydra32 intensity only at about 45% overall.
I've also stopped trying to keep my nitrates/phosphates as low as I was (previously aiming for 5 or less Nitrates and 0.03 phos). These days I'm happy with anything 10-20 Nitrates and 0.1 Phos.

Check out the dino mega thread as well, plenty of helpful guys in there.

 

[aaron186]

Yeah I too went through this last year. Worst experience and it put me off the tank for a while.

Definitely get an ID of the dinos. It'll help you fight it. Even if you have to buy a cheap microscope for the sole purpose of it, do it. I put this off for months thinking it was cyano or something and when nothing would work I finally bit the bullet and that's when I started to see some progress even though it was a little bit of 2 steps forward, 1 step back initially.

After 11+ months now I've only just brought some white back into my lights a couple of months ago because I was so nervous about it. (even thinking about how I am leaning toward Xr15 Pro's instead of Blues for my new tank is making me cringe with PTSD about it). I think I still have my hydra32 intensity only at about 45% overall.
I've also stopped trying to keep my nitrates/phosphates as low as I was (previously aiming for 5 or less Nitrates and 0.03 phos). These days I'm happy with anything 10-20 Nitrates and 0.1 Phos.

Check out the dino mega thread as well, plenty of helpful guys in there.

Thanks.

I’m actually not 100% sure it’s dinos. My understanding is dinos are easy to scrape off the rock? This is stuck on pretty good.