How to Beat Dinoflagellates once and for all by julian sprung

[ScottB]

I got dinos that smother my corals every day. They already have killed all my plate corals, now working on the elegance coral, and softies. I blow them off and an hour later brown is forming on them. I dose nitrates, phos, bacteria, and still they come. They are on every surface in the tank. I beat them once then I got cyano which started to smother corals, so I took it down and dinos came again. They are the Ostreopsis. I have a UV running. Creepy at night my tank water turns brown. I am getting so tired of them. Even when you beat them they hide out in places like the green hair algae on the tanks walls. I found out when the cyano came the dinos were not really gone, they hid in the green hair algae on the back wall and side of the tank. It pays to a microscope. I never dreamed they were in the hair algae waiting for a weakness to come. I also feed my clams food. I can not change water forever, I have reef clams, and they have needs.

Ostreopsis are USUALLY the easiest dino to defeat. In rare cases it takes some time. Most often it is because reefers don't deploy UV properly. The bulb is old. The flow is too fast. Not enough wattage. Ostreos have a protective SHELL called theca. Many reefers use UV to give them a suntan instead of destroying the shell. Have you read this yet?

A Dinoflagellate Treatment Guide

As the title suggests, this is intended as a short guide on what to do when you suspect dinoflagellates are trying to overtake your system. It is an attempt to boil down the protocols discussed across 11,000 posts in this "Are you Tired" thread along with thousands of other dino threads. I did...

www.reef2reef.com

I wrote it. Ask me anything.

 

[brandon429]

why is this thread not full of 90% dinos corrections, the theory sounded solid when referenced by Julian

with all the dinos help needed, lets funnel about 100 tank trials right here and test this method.

ok, go.

 

[LeDart]

why is this thread not full of 90% dinos corrections, the theory sounded solid when referenced by Julian

with all the dinos help needed, lets funnel about 100 tank trials right here and test this method.

ok, go.

When I get home from work, I am going to readjust, and follow this method for a month, or until I go to Italy on the 8th of March, I just spent all of my lunch break reading up on this thread, and will attempt this method. I will keep y'all updated. By the way, I know that I have ostreopsis dinos as I looked through a microscope to diagnose if they are dinos or diatoms.

 

[brandon429]

for the record, I recommend nobody with a nano reef use this method from Julian, it's for large tanks to experiment with

for nanos we have a far far safer and more effective dino cure method. I'll post the link to anyone who wants to see it in action. nanos do not follow the rules large tankers must follow when dealing in dinos correction work.

the risk in using any method outside of deep cleaning is tradeoff invasions: loading up one's system with extra phosphate and nitrate then getting endless hair algae and cyano invasions last years. see the 600+ page dino's sticky thread here up top for that example. their cure rate is less than 20% of entrants, that's not safe from what I'm seeing. a cure rate of 90% + using deep cleaning methods would be considered safer.

Julian's method, when perfected, can be used in place of deep cleaning to make all tanks clean with low work, that's the appeal. the method is absolutely no where near perfected or the dinos 600 page thread would be 550 pages of fixes.