Losing the battle, need a game plan

[Rawsreef]

GM

This tank I've had for a while now, and I can't seem to shake the dinos (I think it's dinos)


I recently took most live rock out because I want to turn this into a frag tank and left the sand. I took most corals off the rocks and chipped the rocks to get the rest of the corals I couldn't remove, leaving a few rocks, sizes no larger than a baseball.


Dinos seem to be spreading even more. To the point it's stressing most of the corals.


I've tried, siphoning, waterchages, dosing bacteria/coral snow. It just keeps coming back every time.



I've been thinking of removing all corals from this tank and temporarily placing them in my 180G, but afraid of spreading the dinos into that tank too.



Looking for help finding the best course of action please!

 

[Katrina71]

Try a complete blackout for 3 days. It may be very helpful, and it's free!

 

[joseph.timbs]

Buy a uv if affordable

 

[Rawsreef]

Try a complete blackout for 3 days. It may be very helpful, and it's free!

I thought about doing this, should I keep the corals in the tank or would it be better to move them to my larger tank?

I can dip the corals then transfer that way I reduce the chances of transferring the dinos. Or would they be fine during the blackout? They are already very stressed.

 

[Rawsreef]

Buy a uv if affordable

Not really affordable and would hate to buy an equipment that I won't be using down the line, id like to keep this system as simple and low maintenance as possible.

 

[Katrina71]

I thought about doing this, should I keep the corals in the tank or would it be better to move them to my larger tank?

I can dip the corals then transfer that way I reduce the chances of transferring the dinos. Or would they be fine during the blackout? They are already very stressed.

They'll be fine

 

[Dburr1014]

Personally, I wouldn't transfer the corals.
100% stop water changes. The Dino's are feeding off of that.

Do you know what type of Dino you have? If they go into the water column at night, a 3-day blackout with a UV would destroy a lot of them. And dosing hydrogen peroxide would do more damage to them.

 

[PasoFish89]

What are your nitrates and phosphates? I recently dealt with dinos with a large CUC and dosing some nitrates and phosphates, both relatively cheap as is a blackout.

 

[Dburr1014]

Do you know your nutrient levels? They need to be off zero. Zero is probably how you got Dino's in the first place.

 

[PasoFish89]

Personally, I wouldn't transfer the corals.
100% stop water changes. The Dino's are feeding off of that.

Do you know what type of Dino you have? If they go into the water column at night, a 3-day blackout with a UV would destroy a lot of them. And dosing hydrogen peroxide would do more damage to them.

I second the non transfer of the corals.

 

[Katrina71]

Keep it simple IMO

 

[TheDuude]

As other has stated step 1 is a 3 day blackout. Step 2 is to identify the dino strain you are dealing with.

 

[Stevorino]

I caught dino after my tank went fallow while I QT'd fish for Velvet. Talk about a gut punch.

Fortunately, I nuked dino in under 2 weeks.

It's worth mentioning on the front-end that I have a UV Filter between my display and sump that is always on. I can't weigh in on it's impact because I never turned it on or off during this time. That being said, I DID get Dinos when it was on, so at least some of the tips below were the difference in catching it and beating it.

My steps:

1. I siphoned out as much dinos as I could and then turned off lights for a day. I didn't worry about covering sides of tank or any of that.

2. I put the lights as dim as I could and put them in acclimation mode to slowly ramp up back to normal over 6 weeks. I personally think this is a step that was critical to my success. Most of the advice is to do a multi-day blackout and that's it. But then what happens when you crank your lights back up to 100%?

3. Dropped in a bunch of pods. On the BRS vids these guys seem to be the Ugly Stage terminators.

4. My nitrate was near zero, so I overdosed a little food on day one and then fed heavier going forward. My goal was to get Nitrates back up to ~5 ASAP and then ~10 over the course of a week.

5. Daily splash of Microbacter 7 and phytoplankton (to boost pods) until bottle complete.



There's obviously a bunch of simultaneous actions here, so I can't point to what was the most impactful.

But the end-result is that I didn't have to siphon dinos again after that initial day, and they were totally defeated within a week or two.

Taking out your rock was probably not helpful IMO. You are removing biomedia when you do that, making the battle even more difficult. The high-level theory of my approach above was to boost beneficial bacteria/algae/microfauna to outcompete the dinos.

Good luck!

 

[MartinM]

GM

This tank I've had for a while now, and I can't seem to shake the dinos (I think it's dinos)


I recently took most live rock out because I want to turn this into a frag tank and left the sand. I took most corals off the rocks and chipped the rocks to get the rest of the corals I couldn't remove, leaving a few rocks, sizes no larger than a baseball.


Dinos seem to be spreading even more. To the point it's stressing most of the corals.


I've tried, siphoning, waterchages, dosing bacteria/coral snow. It just keeps coming back every time.



I've been thinking of removing all corals from this tank and temporarily placing them in my 180G, but afraid of spreading the dinos into that tank too.



Looking for help finding the best course of action please!

Are you using good quality live rock? If not, get some.

 

[Rawsreef]

Thanks for all the replies!

I think the approach I will take is a 3 day black out as many of you have said. I may dose some peroxide during the blackout to help kill off the dinos in the water column during this time.

I know my nutrient levels are not 0 but they are very close to 0. I will retest today when I'm home. If I have to get them up, would it be beneficial to dose a bit skimmate from my large tank? Figured might as well be resourceful instead of buying some no3 and po4 in a bottle. I can also do a WC with some of my large tanks water instead of dosing anything, my large tank has high N and really high P. Around 20-30 NO3 and above a .6 po4 (been dealing with phosphate issues in the larger tank)

 

[Dburr1014]

Thanks for all the replies!

I think the approach I will take is a 3 day black out as many of you have said. I may dose some peroxide during the blackout to help kill off the dinos in the water column during this time.

I know my nutrient levels are not 0 but they are very close to 0. I will retest today when I'm home. If I have to get them up, would it be beneficial to dose a bit skimmate from my large tank? Figured might as well be resourceful instead of buying some no3 and po4 in a bottle. I can also do a WC with some of my large tanks water instead of dosing anything, my large tank has high N and really high P. Around 20-30 NO3 and above a .6 po4 (been dealing with phosphate issues in the larger tank)

Take the cup of the skimmer.
That will do it.
Do the Dino go in the water column at night?

 

[Stevorino]

Thanks for all the replies!

I think the approach I will take is a 3 day black out as many of you have said. I may dose some peroxide during the blackout to help kill off the dinos in the water column during this time.

I know my nutrient levels are not 0 but they are very close to 0. I will retest today when I'm home. If I have to get them up, would it be beneficial to dose a bit skimmate from my large tank? Figured might as well be resourceful instead of buying some no3 and po4 in a bottle. I can also do a WC with some of my large tanks water instead of dosing anything, my large tank has high N and really high P. Around 20-30 NO3 and above a .6 po4 (been dealing with phosphate issues in the larger tank)

I'd just feed much heavier and keep testing every couple days until it gets into a ~10 nitrate range.

I suppose you can try these other fixes, but eventually you will need to feed more anyways to get the tank into a good balance/rhythm.... so why not go ahead and get that going on the front end when you know you'll be testing a bunch anyways?

 

[Rawsreef]

Take the cup of the skimmer.
That will do it.
Do the Dino go in the water column at night?

There is no skimmer in the 20G which is the one that has the dinos, I was referring to dosing skimmate from my 180G tank, which has high nutrients.

I think they go into the water column, I don't see as much on the surfaces when lights go out, and I occasionally see some floating on the water surface throughout the day. Which looks slimy and bubbly when on the surface of the water

 

[jimfish98]

Not really affordable and would hate to buy an equipment that I won't be using down the line, id like to keep this system as simple and low maintenance as possible.

Very affordable. I have a 13w drop in that I have in my sump next to my return pump. $27 bucks, no plumbing, and you can buy a new one for less than a replacement bulb on these expensive hard plumbed options. It is on Amazon and sometimes available for next day delivery.

 

[Jimbo662]

I'm in the middle of the battle right now. Phos was .07 and nitrate was 2.7 when I tested last weekend. Late Monday afternoon I siphoned the sand and did about a 17g water change (100g tank), dosed coral snow that included MB7 and covered the tank. At that point the sand was completely covered with the stuff. Today is day 3. Last night I peeked with a flashlight and the sand was completely clean. I'm debating on whether to just wait until tomorrow to remove the cover and give it that one extra day. I'll update with what I decide and pics of the results.