My Battle With Dinoflagellates

Acropora Crazy · Oct 17, 2009

I have been battling these for over 6 months!
The first 6 months I thought it was just algae or some sort of Cyano.
Now after reading this article I realise I have Dino's:cry:
Problem Dinoflagellates and pH by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

So the battle is on!:hammer:

This stuff is brutal, it kills any sps it touches and zoas as well as LPS.
I added some hermits and snails from another tank befoe reading the article and thye just seemed to be paralyzed after eating some dino's!

So after reading the article I did the following

raised the PH to 8.4-8.6 using pickling lime( it was running aroung 8-8.2)
turned off all lights for 30 hours
started skimming wetter
changed the carbon in my reactor and added more than usual
changed the GFO in my other reactor and added twice as much GFO
put chaeto back in my fuge
clean and blow off any dino's I can see and get to
I then tuened out the light for another 60 hours
I have also stopped feeding the tank for about 2 weeks now

I would say I now have gotten rid of about 70 percent of them.
I swear these things have almost gotten me to tear my tank down!

I have lost about $2000.00 in livestock at least to these.

But after reading the article I am happy I now know at least what the problem is, because it was killing me before not knowing what was going on.

Has anyone else fought these and won, and if so please LMK what you did to win the battle.

650-IS350 · Oct 17, 2009

Yep. Twice. Beat it in 7 days.

Turned off all lights, none or hardly any feedings, enclosed the whole tank with a canopy so that it doesn't get a shroud of light. NO water changes etc. after the 7 days or more.. they all turned to dust. then I did a 40-50% WC siphoning all the dust and bebris left by the Dinos'

Acropora Crazy · Oct 18, 2009

650-IS350 said:
Yep. Twice. Beat it in 7 days.

Turned off all lights, none or hardly any feedings, enclosed the whole tank with a canopy so that it doesn't get a shroud of light. NO water changes etc. after the 7 days or more.. they all turned to dust. then I did a 40-50% WC siphoning all the dust and bebris left by the Dinos'

How did your corals handle it?
What types of corals do you have?

acronautical · Oct 18, 2009

The dinos I have off and on are only on the sandbed. I don't panic over them anymore, just increase water changes, gfo, and carbon amounts.

JR's Reef · Oct 18, 2009

It is a battle. Ive got rid of them twice. I didnt gut the lights off tho just cut them back to a couple hrs a day.

ahayes13 · Oct 18, 2009

i had dinos as well at one point. i ended up getting rid of them in a month or so by doing very large weekly water changes.

Acropora Crazy · Oct 18, 2009

acronautical said:
The dinos I have off and on are only on the sandbed. I don't panic over them anymore, just increase water changes, gfo, and carbon amounts.

That sounds more like Diatoms.

Acropora Crazy · Oct 18, 2009

ahayes13 said:
i had dinos as well at one point. i ended up getting rid of them in a month or so by doing very large weekly water changes.

Every were I read they say to stop doing W/C until they are gone.
I was doing large weekely W/C's but it seemed to make it worse.
I am using Ro/DI water.

JR's Reef · Oct 18, 2009

Try getting some airline and a filter sock. Place FS in sump use airline as a siphon hose and siphon them out into FS in the sump. That way your not taking water out and helping the pop go down. I found out that helps getting rid of them by keeping them under control while your battling them. I done this on my 2nd time and it was much faster getting rid of them.

coraladdict · Oct 19, 2009

I had them for months, was feeding minimally, no wc's, higher kh/ph, ran uv,shortened light cycle etc etc they would be reduced but never go away. What knocked them out for me was.... simply running a large aquaclear filter stuffed with filterfloss right in the display tank. Everynight they dissolve back into the water and are free floating, so every morning I would dump out the brown filter floss and put back in fresh stuff. After 3 or 4 days they were almost completely gone. They would also build up threads on the koralia's during the day so towards the end of the light cycle I would swish them around in a small bucket of fresh water and it would turn brown. again after months of different techniques simply rinsing the powerheads and running the filter floss worked.

650-IS350 · Oct 19, 2009

All the corals didn't like the lights out but that is one of the ways dinos feed is with light, also not doing WC's doesn't give them extra nutrients to feed off, as well as very small feedings ( less food in the water ). Make sure pH stays 8.2 or higher I believe the whole way through. Dino's for some reason target inverts first then corals and fish ??