I BEAT DINOS!!! You can too... Heres how to do it.

[Dj City]

I posted this in the Dino thread but wanted to create a thread of my own detailing exactly what I did to defeat this scourge.

I BEAT DINOS!!!

It was not especially hard to do but I did need the right equipment and a multi pronged approach.

3 day blackouts
Diatomaceous earth filter (optional but recommended)
Dr Tim's Dino recipe (Dr Tim's Dr Tim's Refresh / Dr. Tim's Waste Away)
Dr Tim's waste away gel (Optional but recommended)

The regiment looks like this:

3 day blackout with U.V. (while aggressively blowing off rock and aggressively turning and disturbing the sandbed)
•
Employ Diatom Filters (Optional)
.
Beneficial bacteria dosing
•
3 day blackout with Dr Tim's Refresh (No UV)
•
Dr Tim's Waste Away liquid (No UV)
•
Dr Tim's Waste Away Gel
•
Redeployment of U.V.

1st thing was a PROPERLY SIZED, PROPERLY PLUMBED UV Sterilizer with the CORRECT flow.
I can not stress this enough.
You absolutely NEED to have all 3 of the requirements for a UV Sterilizer met in order for it to work.
I have a 180 gallon display and I use a Pentair aquatics smart UV 40w. UV Sterilizer. I use a Jeabo DCP 15000 pump to run it with 1 inch plumbing. Anything smaller than 1 inch plumbing WILL NOT WORK because you will NOT get the needed flow through the UV.
Here is the flow chart...

Put the pump IN THE DISPLAY on the sand bed or no more than 1 inch above the sand bed. Have the UV in a closed loop within the display both pulling from the display and dumping treated water back to the display.
It should look something like this. (Don't mind the mess. Pay attention to the set up of the UV)

3 day total blackout while using UV.
I have the feed pump in the tank and the return in the tank creating a closed loop. Pump is a Jeabo DCP15000. Pump is about a 1/2 inch above the sandbed. PVC pipe goes from pump to top of tank (about 25 inches) through 2 90° elbows forming a "U" and down about 6ft. to the UV.
The UV is laying horizontally on the floor in front of the tank. Water goes through the UV then back up about 6ft of PVC pipe then through 2 90° elbows forming a "U" to return water to the tank.
I am flowing 1019 gph through the UV according to apex flow meter. The UV calls for between 943 - 1574 gph to deal with algae, bacteria and dinos.
I use a Tunze 6105 on full blast to blow the rocks, sand and all surfaces. I put the pump right up to the rocks and make the biggest mess I can getting everything in the water column so it can go through the UV.

I have 4 Marineland Magnum polishing internal filters. Each rated for up to 97 gal tank / 290 gph. These filters will run Diatomaceous earth powder to mechanically filter dinos out.


Immediately after the 3 day blackout...
Deploy Diatom filters while continuing to aggressively blow off rocks and aggressively disturb sand bed with continued use of UV.
If not using Diatom filter, simply continue to aggressively blow off rocks and aggressively disturb sand bed with continued use of UV.
Do this for 3 days using normal light schedule.

After the 3 day period
Start Dr. Tim's Dino treatment which consists of another 3 day blackout while using Dr. Tim's Refresh then using Dr. Tim's waste Away. FOLLOW DIRECTIONS and complete the entire regiment.

Once complete with Dr. Tim's dino regiment...
Do the whole thing over again just to make sure you have knocked them OUT!


This is what I was dealing with and what I defeated.

This stuff was EVERYWHERE and was killing corals. It was much worse than what you see in these pics.

Now the tank looks like this...

A few months later...

The UV is still in operation and still getting the correct flow but there was no way to plumb it the way I would have liked so I ended up with this.

It's still effective but not nearly as effective as having the closed loop from display to display.

I am happy to report that I am STILL Dino FREE!!!!

Just so you know, this is not my 1st fight with dinos. Last battle I had was a 5 year battle on my old 110 gallon reef. DInos won.

The war I lost...
I raised nitrates and phosphates. (No good)
I used UV but did not know I was using it improperly. (No good)
Blackouts (knock them back but not good enough on its own)
Vibrant dosing. (No good)
MB7 dosing. (No good)
Peroxide dosing. (No good)
Silicate dosing. (No good)
Stupidly high flow. (No good)
Low flow. (No good)
No flow. (No good)
Sea cucumbers. (No good)
Sand sifters. (No good)
Leaving sand alone. (No good)
Surface siphoning sandbed. (No good)
Deep and aggressively disturbing sandbed with heavy mechanical filtration using 5 micron socks changed every day. (Better but no good)
Feeding tank. (No good)
Starving tank. (No good)
Increase pods. (No good)
Beefed up fuge chaeto. (No good)
Removing fuge chaeto. (No good)
Shorten light schedule. (No good)
Decrease light intensity. (No good)
Increase light intensity. (No good)
Change light fixtures. (No good)
Sacred Indian dino dance. (No good)
9mm. (No good)
.45 ACP. (No good)
12ga. (No good)
Photon torpedo straight from the Starship Enterprise. (No good)

People have tried to balance out their tank by introducing other things like diatoms or other pest algae. The problem is, once your tank has dinos, That is your new balance.

You HAVE to get dinos under control first in order to achieve the balance you are looking for.
Adding silicate will not get you where you are trying to go.
You wind up having additional problems to deal with and fight while still trying to fight the dinos. You end up knocking your tank Further out of balance.

Check out my build thread for more detail on the fight against dinos.

Good luck in YOUR fight against these prehistoric monsters!

 

[Idoc]

Thank you, excellent right up. Do you know which dino species you were dealing with initially?

On the closed loop UV system, what do you have covering the pump intake? It looks like a square filter?

 

[mindme]

Unrelated. But are those pics the 180g pics? What are the dimensions because it seems much smaller than my 180g.

Is it really deep on the width?

 

[Dj City]

Thank you, excellent right up. Do you know which dino species you were dealing with initially?

On the closed loop UV system, what do you have covering the pump intake? It looks like a square filter?

Amphidinium

I had a mesh screen covering the intake of the pump because at the time, I could not find the actual screen for the pump.

 

[Dj City]

Unrelated. But are those pics the 180g pics? What are the dimensions because it seems much smaller than my 180g.

Is it really deep on the width?

it's a deep tank.
The display is 30 inches deep, 2 ft. front to back and 5 ft long.

 

[mindme]

it's a deep tank.
The display is 30 inches deep, 2 ft. front to back and 5 ft long.

Nice. It's so hard to tell dimensions with pictures sometimes. I totally would have guessed 90g.

 

[SaltISlife]

Gonna be honest here..judging by how white the rocks are and how brand new looking your sump is. Im going to say the issue is more lack of tank maturity and lack of a good biofilm on everything.

I had dinos for a little bit but as the tank matured it just went away on its own and never came back

 

[Dj City]

Gonna be honest here..judging by how white the rocks are and how brand new looking your sump is. Im going to say the issue is more lack of tank maturity and lack of a good biofilm on everything.

I had dinos for a little bit but as the tank matured it just went away on its own and never came back

If you truly had dinos, I doubt they would "just go away on their own"
as for thinking the tank is does not have biofilm or it is just "new" you would be wrong.
Did you read the whole post?

I keep my sump and system clean. How can you try to judge a system from how clean the sump is?

 

[stanlalee]

I beat it in two aquariums relatively easily: lights out 2-3 days, microbactor 7, manual daily removal with toothbrush (the smell is sickening) and feed heavily. Knocked them out within a few weeks. Both times I got dinos doing weekly 50% water changes in both systems with one fish. Problem is I beat dinos but the feedings have brought out the underworld of critters and pest I haven't seen in years or at all so now I'm trying to find the optimal balance.

 

[Mattman1977]

Congrats on getting your balance back. Dino can be very frustrating for sure. I fought it in several tanks before I finally took my dads advice, he started reefing back in the 70’s, “get you some real ocean rock son and leave this white butt crap rock out of your tank.” Best advice for sure.

we set him up a 210 gal tank,72”x24”x30”, when he retired a few years back. Ordered 250 lbs of live gulf rock and I came back over a week or two later and he had close to 15 fish and acro’s in the tank already. Never lost anything. Old school reefing I suppose

 

[PapaReefer]

What is Diatomaceous earth filter?

 

[waynel]

What is Diatomaceous earth filter?

Here's a thread with some info on it: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diatomaceous-earth.557012/

 

[rcillig]

omg, I could have used this three months ago but I used the same Dr. Times regiment and exact same UV to get mine done, I did stop the UV early and had a small reignition of the Dinos but I got them under control very fast and even made a mistake of moving some coral to a different tank and then had to disinfect that tank also as they started up in it also.

 

[Fink]

I'm still in that "hopeful that it's real phase" but I did something similar to recently get over a dino outbreak. I overdosed vibrant and crashed my nutrients and then had a terrible dino outbreak in my 32g biocube. I beat it with a 3 day blackout with UV running 24 hours a day during the blackout. Then I increased photo period by two hours a day over the next few days until I got back to normal. Dinos haven't come back yet, but its only been about week so far... we shall see

 

[revhtree]

Don’t want to give this a shot but glad I have some ammo in case I need it again!

Thanks for sharing!

 

[BurgerFish]

But dinos can always comeback

 

[homer1475]

And the 300 some odd pages of the dino thread, comes to the same conclusion.

Blackout, raise nutrients, and UV. Nothing new here we haven't been doing for years to beat back dino's.

Now if the current trend of everything being pristine white, 0 anything we didn't actually physically put in the tank, and wanting to keep it that pristine white would die off, maybe ha;f the dino threads would never have been made.

 

[revhtree]

And the 300 some odd pages of the dino thread, comes to the same conclusion.

Blackout, raise nutrients, and UV. Nothing new here we haven't been doing for years to beat back dino's.

Now if the current trend of everything being pristine white, 0 anything we didn't actually physically put in the tank, and wanting to keep it that pristine white would die off, maybe ha;f the dino threads would never have been made.

Hey it's ok though because it's a simple version to what worked for anther reefer and may be easier for newer people to find and understand! YAY!!

 

[waynel]

And the 300 some odd pages of the dino thread, comes to the same conclusion.

Blackout, raise nutrients, and UV. Nothing new here we haven't been doing for years to beat back dino's.

Now if the current trend of everything being pristine white, 0 anything we didn't actually physically put in the tank, and wanting to keep it that pristine white would die off, maybe ha;f the dino threads would never have been made.

Please forgive me if these are dumb or repetitive questions, but I'm "battling" dinos myself (no microscope at the present, so can't confirm the type, see my latest posts on my build thread for some pictures). Is a three-day blackout enough, or is UV absolutely necessary? My tank is running TBS liverock, has been up about 6 mos, and I'm wondering if this isn't just something we all have to go through and I need to be more patient. Siphoning it out only makes it look better until the next morning. I can see why so many exhausted with it.

 

[Fink]

Please forgive me if these are dumb or repetitive questions, but I'm "battling" dinos myself (no microscope at the present, so can't confirm the type, see my latest posts on my build thread for some pictures). Is a three-day blackout enough, or is UV absolutely necessary? My tank is running TBS liverock, has been up about 6 mos, and I'm wondering if this isn't just something we all have to go through and I need to be more patient. Siphoning it out only makes it look better until the next morning. I can see why so many exhausted with it.

Purely anecdotal from my personal experience, but the first blackout I did had no UV sterilizer running, and it didn't really do much to help. The second blackout with UV seemed to do the trick. I just used on the of inexpensive sterilizers from PetSmart and it worked a treat.