I need help. Dino treatment NOT working.

[Miami Reef]

I don’t know what to do. I followed the advice in the Dino’s thread but it’s only getting worse!

Here’s what I did: raise phosphates and nitrates by feeding heavily,
Dose silicates.

That’s pretty much all I did.

I have corals and fish in this tank. I really need these Dino’s gone because I’m scared it will harm my livestock. Corals are getting covered and I have sand burying wrasses.

Here’s what I want to try: H202 dosing + black out.

My concern is I don’t want to kill the bacteria in my tank with h202. I am working so hard to make my tank mature and healthy and I think this will take me back.

Things I didn’t try: vibrant, Dr. Tim’s waste away.

I have coolia Dino’s and they do NOT leave the substrate. They stay put.

My skimmer and filter socks are off because I was worried about making my nutrients too low. They are currently around .10 and the Dino’s are worse than ever before! The walls, sand, and rocks are covered in a rusty brown with snot on the sand.

Is there any hope. I feel like this will last forever.

Please note: this picture looks better than now. My PO4 was around 0.07 and I overfed pellets because I thought the higher my nutrients the faster they would go away…NOT TRUE!! Dino’s LIVE for nutrients.

The Dino’s are completely covering my back wall ever since I raised my nutrients higher.

 

[Miami Reef]

I think I’m gonna try @vetteguy53081 ‘s advice. He told me to only run 10%-15% of lights and dose 1ml h202 per 10 gallons a night and microbacter 7 in the day for 5 days.

I’m going to feed the fish, but I’m not going to overfeed.

My question: what goal PO4 should I maintain? People are saying 0 is bad…but now I’m learning that .10 is worse too! What’s the balance? 0.03ppm?

I’m really confused.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I think I’m gonna try @vetteguy53081 ‘s advice. He told me to only run 10%-15% of lights and dose 1ml h202 per 10 gallons a night and microbacter 7 in the day for 5 days.

I’m going to feed the fish, but I’m not going to overfeed.

My question: what goal PO4 should I maintain? People are saying 0 is bad…but now I’m learning that .10 is worse too! What’s the balance? 0.03ppm?

I’m really confused.

.02-.04 is safe range.

 

[Miami Reef]

.02-.04 is safe range.

I wish I knew this before! I literally made this worse for myself by obsessively overfeeding. You were so right Veteguy

 

[BrianAnthony]

Hi. You will find that many people have diff opinions on here. Lol. My phosphate test kit says 0 to .03 is acceptable. (This is me remembering). It's common for most reefers to try to be as close to zero as possible. Po4 is introduced into the aquarium by your water source or food.

I was surprised to see you read that other thread and dosed silicates and overfed. Both of those things would increase dinos in a new tank.

Is this a fairly new tank? Or has it been established for over 4mo?

 

[Miami Reef]

Hi. You will find that many people have diff opinions on here. Lol. My phosphate test kit says 0 to .03 is acceptable. (This is me remembering). It's common for most reefers to try to be as close to zero as possible. Po4 is introduced into the aquarium by your water source or food.

I was surprised to see you read that other thread and dosed silicates and overfed. Both of those things would increase dinos in a new tank.

Is this a fairly new tank? Or has it been established for over 4mo?

About 6 months.

 

[Wyvern]

I'm with you buddy, H202 is holding them back, but it's not getting better, and my Nitrates are HIGH 20-30 probably because my denitrifying bacteria is weak/dead.

I'm going to start dosing bacteria during the day, I just started sea lettuce in my fuge.

Oh, tanks been up since July.

I'm also getting hydroids on my glass and possibly flat-worms.

Oh, the joys of ugly stage, and I thought Freshwater was bad.

 

[BrianAnthony]

Oh ok... So you've had this b4 about 5mo ago.
A lot of bare bottom ppl have issues with reoccurring dinos, because of the missing sand area for bacteria. I looked at your pics. Nice tank. Good news is dinos can go away just as fast as they show up. I'm not an expert, but I've experimented with these. If it was my tank...
I wouldn't add any other chemicals. I'd get the water parameters down to where they should be with some water changes. I'd lessen the light as much as possible. And finally.... I'd add a lot more dry rock. This would add to your bio load to prevent your tank from doing mini-cycles. I really think that a your tank is cycling, giving the dinos a chance for coming back. You should be having issues with hair algae or something by now or some other nuisance algae. I use h202 for dipping my corals and for helping to get rid of algae issues. But, I don't think you need to do that.... Dinos will go with light depravation.

 

[CoralB]

This is what I remember that I did last time I had this issue .Cut my lights back to 6 hrs a day , ran a UV light25 watt 24/7 , kept my phosphates between 0.05 and 0.1 , nitrates at 5 - 10 ,dose daily competing bacteria like microbactor 7 , manually removed as much as I could by hand , held off on water changes for two weeks . Increased my Mexican turbo and Astria snail count . And in about 2-3 weeks it was gone .I controlled my phosphates with phosphat-E , feeding during this time was at a minimum. I ran my skimmer the whole time . Never let your phosphates or nitrates zero out

 

[Chrisv.]

I had really good luck following the Dr. Tim protocol exactly. It's two products, waste away and refresh. And like four days of blackout.

And by black out I REALLY mean black out. As in "I covered my tank with aluminum foil". During the blackout phase, while the dino are in the water column (depending on the species) I ran a cheapo Amazon uv.

I also added an airstone and bumped the temp to 80 during this time.

 

[Miami Reef]

I had really good luck following the Dr. Tim protocol exactly. It's two products, waste away and refresh. And like four days of blackout.

And by black out I REALLY mean black out. As in "I covered my tank with aluminum foil". During the blackout phase, while the dino are in the water column (depending on the species) I ran a cheapo Amazon uv.

I also added an airstone and bumped the temp to 80 during this time.

I can’t do a proper black out because I have fish and corals.

Here’s what I’m doing:
10-15% lights 6 hours a day.
Microbacter 7 daily
Skimmer and filter socks running at highest nutrient export
No coral foods, no fish pellets. Only frozen foods.
Silicate dosing at 2ppm (it was around .1-.2 before).

 

[brandon429]

If your tank was mine: three hours deep siphon removal of all top growth. Rocks pulled, lightly brushed off dinos rinsed down the sink with saltwater, put back in totally clean tank.

next, spend a thousand dollars on a uv filter rated for a professional koi pond, say ten thousand gallons. You don’t have to run it forever it’s for battle only.

and if this was a nano you’d spend two hundred. Big tankers headaches yep but you get all the good fish as trade off

Install, I bet it helps. I know you already have a uv but comparatively it looks like the little donut spare a tiny car would use compared to oversized uv


what I would not do: leave the mass in the tank building, and do chemistry things to hopefully stop it using no physical guiding.

maintain the clean condition by hand, allow no mass, all control attempts are aimed at regrowth control only vs killing a mass left n place

when massed dinos have a phalanx effect to insulate against works against them

 

[Miami Reef]

If your tank was mine: three hours deep siphon removal of all top growth. Rocks pulled, lightly brushed off dinos rinsed down the sink with saltwater, put back in totally clean tank.

next, spend a thousand dollars on a uv filter rated for a professional koi pond, say ten thousand gallons. Install, I bet it helps. I know you already have a uv but comparatively it looks like the little donut spare a tiny car would use compared to oversized uv


what I would not do: leave the mass in the tank building, and do chemistry things to hopefully stop it using no physical guiding.

I actually sold off my UV sterilizer because I saw it as an extra chore (because I quarantine my fish now). And then Dino’s came! Grrrrrr.

I am noticing that a lot of my Dino’s are now free swimming so that means a UV sterilizer can help! But I’d honestly prefer a diatom pool filter!

 

[brandon429]

Chemistry reaction and dosing will bring in gha here soon, you’ll hate the outcome try to intercept this change


the diatom filter indeed would help in daily guiding work

 

[Chrisv.]

I can’t do a proper black out because I have fish and corals.

Here’s what I’m doing:
10-15% lights 6 hours a day.
Microbacter 7 daily
Skimmer and filter socks running at highest nutrient export
No coral foods, no fish pellets. Only frozen foods.
Silicate dosing at 2ppm (it was around .1-.2 before).

You can do a black out with corals! They don't love it but I didn't lose a single fish or coral.

 

[Miami Reef]

You can do a black out with corals! They don't love it but I didn't lose a single fish or coral.

I’m afraid to do it. I spent a lot of time quarantining and conditioning my fish. If the fish can’t see they can’t eat. I have a copperband and leopard wrasse which need multiple feedings a day.

 

[Chrisv.]

I’m afraid to do it. I spent a lot of time quarantining and conditioning my fish. If the fish can’t see they can’t eat. I have a copperband and leopard wrasse which need multiple feedings a day.

If I'm not mistaken dinos also produce toxins that can kill fish. Sort of a catch 22. For what it's worth, I've seen many tanks shut down over dinos (including one of mine). blackout and very aggressive treatment saved my tank.

 

[vtecintegra]

My thoughts. You can beat these things back a number of ways, but your odds of winning are low until you establish competition for them. And I don't think nitrifying bacteria like MB7 are a good competitor. I started with dry rock and sand, and had zero NO3/PO4. Got dinos bad, and tried most of the common suggestions for months. They would not be defeated. I restarted the tank. This time I set up a tub and cured my rock by dumping 15# of live sand from the gulf all over it, and waited two months before setting up the tank. I've kept NO3/PO4 up so the good guys are flourishing, and the dinos have been kept away.

 

[MONTANTK]

Have you tried dosing phyto? I’ve used it twice and both times it got rid of the Dino’s and kept them away

 

[fachatga]

Microbacter clean might help. Good dose daily for 2-3 weeks. Brush off the rocks every night. Change filters every morning.