My dinoflagellates experience/treatment!

[Denisk]

So I went through Dino’s and I may have had them in the past but this time was by far the worst. It didn’t go away with just dosing no3 and p04.

I’ve kept Reef tanks for quite some time and have always done it the KISS method.

However when setting up my new reefer 350. I thought maybe I’ll splurge a little and go the route I never really could afford until now. I decided to listen to the hype! (not blaming anyone here but just saying these suggestions didn’t work for me) People said get the BIGGEST SKIMMER you can afford, get a refugium with a kessil light and etc...

What a mistake!

I had a vertex 180i on my system with a ton of fish. I had a refugium going and grew like crazy the first 3 weeks. But then, BAM!!! What do I get? HUGE outbreak of Dino. Was it that or starting with all dry rock, who knows. All I knew was that I had it and it was bad. I confirmed through a microscope that I had ostreopsis.

I decided to get all the help I could from the forum and which I did. I love this forum and aren’t sure where I would be without it! I just had to tweak some of the suggestions for me to get rid of the Dino.

Steps on removing the Dino:

-I dosed enough stump remover until I had a constant nitrate reading. Po4 was always detectable in my tank so I didn’t have to worry about that.

-I always ran carbon as some Dino can be very toxic.

- I removed all the sand out of the tank as some Dino will live in the sand during the time the lights are on.

- I hooked up a large enough uv with a slow flow right to the display. Every night I would blow off the rocks to get all the Dino free floating in the water column. (I used the 36 watt jebao uv from Amazon)

- I also got rid of the oversized skimmer and the refugium. I went with a properly sized skimmer and am currently using a curve 5. All I had to do was start with feedings slow and continue to check my parameters and realized that a pinch of flake food in the morning and a tiny sheet of Nori keep my fish healthy, well fed and most of all keeps my nutrients in check. Nitrates hover at 4 to 7ppm and and po4 around .03ppm.

2 months or so later, I’m now Dino free and don’t have to worry about it because I no longer have to think about that my oversized skimmer and or my refugium stripping all the nutrients out of the water column. I also don’t have the uv running anymore. I let it run for an extra month but then took it off.

*Now I know people say well cant I just feed more and the skimmer and refugium would be able to keep up. I tried another d I feel like there is some sort of imbalance that my non biology degree can answer*

I hope this can help some people and please if anyone reads this and needs any help, don’t hesitate! I love helping!

Once again, thank you to all who helped me as well.

 

[EmdeReef]

So I went through Dino’s and I may have had them in the past but this time was by far the worst. It didn’t go away with just dosing no3 and p04.

I’ve kept Reef tanks for quite some time and have always done it the KISS method.

However when setting up my new reefer 350. I thought maybe I’ll splurge a little and go the route I never really could afford until now. I decided to listen to the hype! (not blaming anyone here but just saying these suggestions didn’t work for me) People said get the BIGGEST SKIMMER you can afford, get a refugium with a kessil light and etc...

What a mistake!

I had a vertex 180i on my system with a ton of fish. I had a refugium going and grew like crazy the first 3 weeks. But then, BAM!!! What do I get? HUGE outbreak of Dino. Was it that or starting with all dry rock, who knows. All I knew was that I had it and it was bad. I confirmed through a microscope that I had ostreopsis.

I decided to get all the help I could from the forum and which I did. I love this forum and aren’t sure where I would be without it! I just had to tweak some of the suggestions for me to get rid of the Dino.

Steps on removing the Dino:

-I dosed enough stump remover until I had a constant nitrate reading. Po4 was always detectable in my tank so I didn’t have to worry about that.

-I always ran carbon as some Dino can be very toxic.

- I removed all the sand out of the tank as some Dino will live in the sand during the time the lights are on.

- I hooked up a large enough uv with a slow flow right to the display. Every night I would blow off the rocks to get all the Dino free floating in the water column. (I used the 36 watt jebao uv from Amazon)

- I also got rid of the oversized skimmer and the refugium. I went with a properly sized skimmer and am currently using a curve 5. All I had to do was start with feedings slow and continue to check my parameters and realized that a pinch of flake food in the morning and a tiny sheet of Nori keep my fish healthy, well fed and most of all keeps my nutrients in check. Nitrates hover at 4 to 7ppm and and po4 around .03ppm.

2 months or so later, I’m now Dino free and don’t have to worry about it because I no longer have to think about that my oversized skimmer and or my refugium stripping all the nutrients out of the water column. I also don’t have the uv running anymore. I let it run for an extra month but then took it off.

*Now I know people say well cant I just feed more and the skimmer and refugium would be able to keep up. I tried another d I feel like there is some sort of imbalance that my non biology degree can answer*

I hope this can help some people and please if anyone reads this and needs any help, don’t hesitate! I love helping!

Once again, thank you to all who helped me as well.

Thanks for sharing and glad you got rid of Dinos!

Curious about the skimmer, what and how do you think an oversized skimmer caused issues? Stripped too many nutrients?

Same question about the refugium?

The reason I ask is that I run an oversized skimmer, not by a lot, and an algae reactor and a couple of tritons came back with deficiencies in some elements which may be important (likely the algae). But re.nitrates and phosphates I don’t really see much difference whether I run the skimmer or not...

 

[Denisk]

Thanks for sharing and glad you got rid of Dinos!

Curious about the skimmer, what and how do you think an oversized skimmer caused issues? Stripped too many nutrients?

Same question about the refugium?

The reason I ask is that I run an oversized skimmer, not by a lot, and an algae reactor and a couple of tritons came back with deficiencies in some elements which may be important (likely the algae). But re.nitrates and phosphates I don’t really see much difference whether I run the skimmer or not...

No problem! I must say I’m glad I was able to get rid of the Dino’s as well.

As far as skimmer goes. I read an article where it said that skimming can remove trace elements but also strip the tank of nutrients such as organics. Now of course you could do more water changes and or run something like Triton to replace the trace elements. However it doesn’t take away the second problem I had which is that it removed to much organics.

Now of course that’s where the second topic came up where people would say just feed more however I was never able to keep my nutrients in check. My skimmer would always be inconsistent, one minute pulling out a lot of junk, the next 5 hours it would pull nothing and I personally didnt like that. I also didn’t want to run additional gfo and or additional products since it one day my po4 and No3 was x and the next day it would be y. Nothing was consistent and to much work equals to big of a headache haha.

So I guess the refugium could kind of do the same which is just strip to much organics out. But it’s also controllable with how long you run the lights for. You can run it’s 24/7 and or only 6 hours a day.

All in all I think it’s just finding that perfect median that keeps things stable.

I just see so many people going and getting the largest skimmer possible if not twice the size for there tank but only have 4 fish. Or people randomly running bio pellets because they saw a little bit of gha. To me people rush into strapping their tanks with all this equipment without initially thinking what and why do I need it.

Hopefully that answered your questions to an extent.

 

[Michelle001]

Hi, I see you had placed the uv steriliser on top of your tank. Does the jaebo come with a pump, or did you place one inside your tank? Also, did you have a fast flow?

I currently have a bad outbreak of this type of dinos in my reef tank. Only difference with my parameters is that my nitrates are 20 and my phosphate is .23.

 

[plexx]

Just got over my dinos , what worked for me was installing a uv , and blowing off rocks and stirring up the sand bed at lights out and then dosing 3% hydrogen peroxide , 1ml per 10gal. I had to change the filter floss every day but within 2 days dinos were almost gone , now 1 week later there is very little on the sand bed left. Hope this helps someone. I don't know if this could have helped as well, but at the same time I swapped out my t5 light for 2 AI primes on my red sea 200xl. I run the uv on these lights high and the dinos on top of the rocks started to melt fast. May have nothing to do with the lights but just wanted to put it out there. Could uv from led's help with dinos? Don't know.