Removing sand to get rid of amphidinium dinos

[dwest]

That’s my story too. I removed 90% of my sand (what I could get to) when fighting small cell amphidinium. After the worst year or so of my 30 ish reefing career, my tank turned almost immediately for the better. That was about 6 years and tank is still great.

Latest FTS

 

[Kellie in CA]

I so wish I had done this 2 years ago and not wasted so much time/money/stress on ineffective remedies.

I surprisingly don't hate bare bottom. It so easy to just suck up all the detritus with a baster and throw it out. But... I love trachys, acanthos, scolys.... they seem so much more at home on a sandbed. The sand will probably go back in at some point.

 

[k log(omega)]

I so wish I had done this 2 years ago and not wasted so much time/money/stress on ineffective remedies.

I surprisingly don't hate bare bottom. It so easy to just suck up all the detritus with a baster and throw it out. But... I love trachys, acanthos, scolys.... they seem so much more at home on a sandbed. The sand will probably go back in at some point.

if you add your sand back, i would probably try to seed some in a separate tank or bucket with saltwater and live sand from IPSF or aquabiomics or something. put a bunch of pods and phyto and stuff so it’s full of good stuff and has no vacant space for dinos to come back. just a thought

 

[REEFRIED!]

Update. I removed my entire sand bed about 6-8 weeks ago. After removal I would place a marineland filter in the tank and turn off return and turkey baste the rocks. I did this three times a week for the first three weeks then once a week since. My Dino’s are gone, confirmed with microscope. Corals look great. During my battle with Dino’s my sps looked fine, but they really bothered some zoas. I lost some frags of some nice zoas. I have since replaced them and they look great. I plan on putting sand back in slowly. I actually have a container of sand in my sump now, and plan to leave it in there for 3 weeks to a month storing it occasionally to hopefully seed it with bacteria while not exposing it to light.

Here is a pic before and after sand removal. I have read the entire large dino thread, and nobody on the whole thread had them as bad as I did. They covered, I mean covered the sand, and were on the rocks too. If I put a frag rack in the tank it would be covered in an hour or two.

 

[k log(omega)]

Update. I removed my entire sand bed about 6-8 weeks ago. After removal I would place a marineland filter in the tank and turn off return and turkey baste the rocks. I did this three times a week for the first three weeks then once a week since. My Dino’s are gone, confirmed with microscope. Corals look great. During my battle with Dino’s my sps looked fine, but they really bothered some zoas. I lost some frags of some nice zoas. I have since replaced them and they look great. I plan on putting sand back in slowly. I actually have a container of sand in my sump now, and plan to leave it in there for 3 weeks to a month storing it occasionally to hopefully seed it with bacteria while not exposing it to light.

Here is a pic before and after sand removal. I have read the entire large dino thread, and nobody on the whole thread had them as bad as I did. They covered, I mean covered the sand, and were on the rocks too. If I put a frag rack in the tank it would be covered in an hour or two.

yeah so i'm feeling like taking the sand out is definitely the way to go. the sandbed has huge surface area for these things to hide in and once they get established in there it doesn't seem like diatoms, pods, or anything are going to kick them out without a hard fight. and in a case as bad as yours i think the pros of getting the dinos out totally outweigh the cons of removing any "good" organisms in the sand. especially considering that when the infestation is that bad, there are likely very few "good" things living in there. congratulations on the dino free tank

 

[Kellie in CA]

Just back for another update... Ripped out all the sand and went bare bottom for 4 weeks. No sign of dinos.

This past weekend I washed the heck out of some new sand until it ran clean, then have slowly been adding it back to the tank over the past couple of days. Sand is sparkling white... no sign of anything coming back.

If your tank isn't huge, this is the way to go! Way less work (and expense) then all the other crap I tried!

 

[k log(omega)]

Just back for another update... Ripped out all the sand and went bare bottom for 4 weeks. No sign of dinos.

This past weekend I washed the heck out of some new sand until it ran clean, then have slowly been adding it back to the tank over the past couple of days. Sand is sparkling white... no sign of anything coming back.

If your tank isn't huge, this is the way to go! Way less work (and expense) then all the other crap I tried!

thank you for validating for me! keep me updated on how it goes. make sure to keep everything else in balance too so those nasty mfsjvshd don’t come back

 

[TheBigDrewsky]

@REEFRIED! Have you considere just removing the top layer of sand and thoroughly rinsing? I had the same issue as you early on where if I just removed small patches, the regrew back by the next morning. It was only when I removed the top layer from as much of the tank as I could reach did the regrowth start to disapate materially. I had to do manual scrubbing of rocks and removal and rinsing of the top layer of sand 3x over a course of a week didn my LCA population get crippled. Along with that I also did nitrate, bacteria and silica daily dosing as well as pouring in bottles copepods. Once my LCA got under control, cyano started growing all over my sand and on the rocks, GHA, cyano and osteropsis dinos took over the rock. I considered this a good sign that the mix was changing to more managing uglies.

One other tip: One of the other forum members suggested this and it seemed to work when I tried it last week: Buy some filter floss and cut it into large long strips and place it into your display tank. I did this an it collected a lot of dinos which I exported by pulling out the strips. I thought about rinsing and reusing but ended up just throwing them away since I have a huge mat of filter floss from Amazon. I hung them up on the display glass by tied them to small suction cups I had laying around from other aquarium equipment. Have not got a chance to try again since I have been away for the last week. I will see my tank later today after a week running by itself. Is probably going to need another deep clean!

This has been an interesting read - I have a small portion of my bed with dense amphidinium. My nitrates bottomed - phosphorus still at 0.12 or so. Been dosing nitrates - just added copepods and phyto - just ordered silica -

When people speak of adding bacteria - may I ask what you use? How much? How often? Do you turn off the Skimmer and mat during bacteria adding? Anything to look for while adding bacteria?

Finally when people are removing and rinsing the top layer of sand - is removal via power vacuum pump or siphon? Rinsing sand in bucket with RODI and fresh salt for how long? Clearly filtering out through sock or similar and then adding back the same sand? Or would recommendation be remove the sand where the amphidinium are and replacing with live biome sand like AF? Or Aquabiome? Any benefit of adding caribsea live sand? Would it hurt?

Thanks!

Drew

 

[k log(omega)]

This has been an interesting read - I have a small portion of my bed with dense amphidinium. My nitrates bottomed - phosphorus still at 0.12 or so. Been dosing nitrates - just added copepods and phyto - just ordered silica -

When people speak of adding bacteria - may I ask what you use? How much? How often? Do you turn off the Skimmer and mat during bacteria adding? Anything to look for while adding bacteria?

Finally when people are removing and rinsing the top layer of sand - is removal via power vacuum pump or siphon? Rinsing sand in bucket with RODI and fresh salt for how long? Clearly filtering out through sock or similar and then adding back the same sand? Or would recommendation be remove the sand where the amphidinium are and replacing with live biome sand like AF? Or Aquabiome? Any benefit of adding caribsea live sand? Would it hurt?

Thanks!

Drew

if you go back to like pages 2-3 i had a pretty good amount of detail in what i did with the sand. i rinsed with tap water first a bunch of times then RODI. dosing bacteria didn’t seem to help much but it doesn’t hurt as long as you keep your nutrients up. i think algae is the best for outcompeting, hence the silicate dosing to induce diatoms. i also found that if i seeded the sand with some phyto, pods, bacteria, etc in a bucket with saltwater and an air pump for a couple days before adding back it helped. otherwise the dino’s would repopulate the sand pretty quick since it’s totally empty of competition. all in all taking the sand out just seems to remove way more dino than just gravel vacuuming. also i just used my vacuum hose and removed the gravel vac part and started the siphon by mouth like siphoning gas out of a car lol im sure there are better ways

 

[slingfox]

This has been an interesting read - I have a small portion of my bed with dense amphidinium. My nitrates bottomed - phosphorus still at 0.12 or so. Been dosing nitrates - just added copepods and phyto - just ordered silica -

When people speak of adding bacteria - may I ask what you use? How much? How often? Do you turn off the Skimmer and mat during bacteria adding? Anything to look for while adding bacteria?

Finally when people are removing and rinsing the top layer of sand - is removal via power vacuum pump or siphon? Rinsing sand in bucket with RODI and fresh salt for how long? Clearly filtering out through sock or similar and then adding back the same sand? Or would recommendation be remove the sand where the amphidinium are and replacing with live biome sand like AF? Or Aquabiome? Any benefit of adding caribsea live sand? Would it hurt?

Thanks!

Drew

Drew, keep at it. I had a major battle with dinos during month 3 of my new tank. It took three weeks to bring under control using a combination of siphoning out the top layer of sand and rinsing (did this at least a half dozen times), scrubbing off the rocks with a waterproof electric grout scrubber from Amazon (super useful and I now use it to keep the area where the sand touches the glass clean + also very useful to scrub the weir every so often), buying some live rock from KP Aquatics, periodic dosing of nitrate, daily dosing of bottled bacteria (I have used Microbacter7 or Dr Tim's Waste Away for daily dosing and KZ Zerobac for weekly dosing along with DIY coral snow), UV on 24/7, ran tank at 82 degrees for two months, daily dosing of silica, and did the exporting via strips of filter floss in display for a week (replaced floss as needed).

Needless to say I wish I started with live rock + live sand since any money saving I got from using 100% Marco rock evaporated during the Dino + cyano + GHA war!

Once the dinos got under control I dealt with a huge cyano outbreak where I had purple mats growing all over the sand. This was dealt with by 2-3 rounds of sand siphoning and rinsing. I then dealt with a month of GHA explosive growth in my rocks. I dealt with that via a combination of dosing Reef Flux and manual scrubbing of the rocks. I also bought more CUC as well as an algae Blenny who got super fat within a week. Around a month ago all the uglies stopped. My rocks have very little algae (barely notable film here and there) I only have to scrub my glass every 2-3 days. I now fear I don't have enough algae in the tank to feed my CUC! I still do daily dosing of bottled bacteria (Macrobacter7 6 days a week and Zeobac when I do weekly DIY coral snow after a water change). I will discontinue the MacroBacter7 once I run out but that could take a while since I bought a gallon of it during a sale when I was in the midst of the dink war. I intend to use Zeobac once a week going forward since the DIY coral snow seems to work well. I no longer dose silica but have it around just in case. I started adding LPS coral two months ago and have my first set of new SPS (the first set all died during the dino war) yesterday.

Regarding your questions: I don't think it would hurt buying some live sand but I don't believe live sand in a plastic bag is any better than dry sand plus bottled bacteria. Live sand from somewhere like Tampa Bay Saltwater however would likely be a huge benefit but is costly. During the ugly stage I bought live rock from
KP Aquarics. Those pieces of rock got some growth of dinos but less and were significantly less GHA. Next time I start a tank I intend to use live sand from TBS and a mix of dry rock and live rock from KP Aquatics or TBS.

When I add bottled bacteria, I turn off the skimmer and UV for one hour. I don't measure precisely but try to pour in the equivalent of a few capfuls in my 140 gallon system. When I was rinsing the sand, I did so with faucet water for several rounds then salt water for the last two rounds. During the last round I added bottled bacteria and then added the sand back into the tank. To siphon out the sand I use a standard manual siphon hose (Python) into a 5 gallon bucket. I also have an electronic sand siphon from Amazon which is super useful but it tends to get clogged when siphoning sand so I mostly just use it to move water to and from buckets when needed.

 

[TheBigDrewsky]

So here is a current picture. So would you (if it were you knowing what you know now) just siphon out this entire section of sand and replace with new sand? Or would you still siphon out, rinse and all of the above that’s described?

My biggest concern is for the fish and corals in the tank… want to do what i can without loss of life.

 

[TheBigDrewsky]

Update. I removed my entire sand bed about 6-8 weeks ago. After removal I would place a marineland filter in the tank and turn off return and turkey baste the rocks. I did this three times a week for the first three weeks then once a week since. My Dino’s are gone, confirmed with microscope. Corals look great. During my battle with Dino’s my sps looked fine, but they really bothered some zoas. I lost some frags of some nice zoas. I have since replaced them and they look great. I plan on putting sand back in slowly. I actually have a container of sand in my sump now, and plan to leave it in there for 3 weeks to a month storing it occasionally to hopefully seed it with bacteria while not exposing it to light.

Here is a pic before and after sand removal. I have read the entire large dino thread, and nobody on the whole thread had them as bad as I did. They covered, I mean covered the sand, and were on the rocks too. If I put a frag rack in the tank it would be covered in an hour or two.

Hello…. Providence here. Is there any concern with removing all the sand and even disturbing the biome even more? Did you add anything to the tank during and after sand removal? (Pods, bacteria, supplements, nutrients?). Any loss of life of livestock, inverts, corals? I have a 105 DT - i shudder to think how to now get out all that sand without massive loss and replacement of water. Thanks!

 

[slingfox]

So here is a current picture. So would you (if it were you knowing what you know now) just siphon out this entire section of sand and replace with new sand? Or would you still siphon out, rinse and all of the above that’s described?

My biggest concern is for the fish and corals in the tank… want to do what i can without loss of life.

I would siphon out the sand, rinse it, add some bottled bacteria, and put the sand back in. Assuming you want sand in the long run, it is not efficient to keep on replacing the sand since you may need to go through this process half a dozen times or more. Every time I did the sand rinse my fighting conches (the only CUC to survive the dino apocalypse) would get very active and start moving all over the sand. I saw this as a good sign.

 

[slingfox]

Hello…. Providence here. Is there any concern with removing all the sand and even disturbing the biome even more? Did you add anything to the tank during and after sand removal? (Pods, bacteria, supplements, nutrients?). Any loss of life of livestock, inverts, corals? I have a 105 DT - i shudder to think how to now get out all that sand without massive loss and replacement of water. Thanks!

Dinos on the sand are mostly only on the top layer when the light is out they bury themselves into the sand at night. If you siphon with the light in you only need to siphon a relatively thin layer around the tank. There is less disturbance than doing a gravel vac where you are disturbing deep into the sand bed.

In connection with the sand siphon and clean I would add some bottled bacteria into the rinsed sand. Dosing bacteria is one of the common things suggested to do in a daily basis to help your tank build the diverse micro biome that helps keep dinos in check.

I also dosed phyto every day since I have a phyto culture.

I eventually did dose some copepods after the Dino's got under control. Before Dinos hit I had a massive pod population as evidenced by a lot of them crawling over the back tank wall as well as the lower portion of the tank all around. Dinos completely wiped out my copepod population as well as several emerald crabs and 20+ snails and hermit crabs. I have since built back my CUC. My copepod population has not got back to the old level but that may be because I have 4 wrasses now which pick at the rock all day. I will be doing copepods one last time (I hope) tonight since I have had almost one month of no uglies and therefore started adding coral too.

I had a few coral when the Dino's hit in month 2. All my SPS died whereas all my euphillia lived including the torches which some believe are hard to keep but that was not the case for me.

Thankfully I did not have any fish die due to dinos. I assume they didn't like the tank then since dinos have a have a strong pungent / bitter smell which must of made fish life hell.

 

[brandon429]

@TheBigDrewsky

no there is no risk from the missing sand; its the extraction process that clouds up waste in the tank as the hidden rare risk of crash. you can't remove reef tank sand inside a running tank without waste clouding.

the risk is removing the sand with the tank fully running. some tanks will die from the initial disturbance * but there may be ways to prep all reef sandbeds for removal in-tank by some preemptive action to better align the safety risks and that's why I like this thread so much. that + the results on file for the tanks who removed the waste catch from the tank design.

the risks are not associated with the missing substrate + it's housing for organisms, live rock handles that just fine for us in reefing sand isn't doing anything special but catching waste and holding some bugs.

this thread plays an important role for options for big tanks...being able to remove sand without tank disassembly is a big big market need.

the only way to not kill hundreds of tanks that wanted to remove their sandbed though is found by searching the official sand rinse thread out and seeing those jobs.

you have to take the reef apart to get the animals out first in the totally safe bed removal examples

loss examples from removing sand while animals are present are found on page one of the sand rinse thread; some tanks will die from trying to remove sand from a running reef.

all subsequent pages/ 59 more are of disassembly bed removals, which are 100% safe for all reef tanks but they're big hard work.


*any reefer can drain off and catch their current good water into brutes, then still disassembly remove the sand for safety (and put back only fully pre-rinsed sand just the same)

you can then fill your current water back over clean sand and either have a bed swap or full removal if that's warranted. taking apart the tank and housing animals elsewhere while the bed is extracted is the only known safe way, per the sand rinse thread.

 

[REEFRIED!]

Hello…. Providence here. Is there any concern with removing all the sand and even disturbing the biome even more? Did you add anything to the tank during and after sand removal? (Pods, bacteria, supplements, nutrients?). Any loss of life of livestock, inverts, corals? I have a 105 DT - i shudder to think how to now get out all that sand without massive loss and replacement of water. Thanks!

No I did not lose any livestock during or after sand removal. I placed a small Tupperware in the tank with some new live sand for my corris wrasse to sleep in. I removed my sand over about a week. I did half on one Sunday and the other half the next Sunday. I did not lose any water as I just siphoned it out through a filter sock back into the sump. When the sock got full of sand I dumped it into a bucket and started again.

Looking at your picture it seems as if you don’t have a bad infestation. Have you confirmed which type of Dino’s you have?

 

[TheBigDrewsky]

No I did not lose any livestock during or after sand removal. I placed a small Tupperware in the tank with some new live sand for my corris wrasse to sleep in. I removed my sand over about a week. I did half on one Sunday and the other half the next Sunday. I did not lose any water as I just siphoned it out through a filter sock back into the sump. When the sock got full of sand I dumped it into a bucket and started again.

Looking at your picture it seems as if you don’t have a bad infestation. Have you confirmed which type of Dino’s you have?

Hello - yes - numerous folks said amphidinum - been waiting a few days on getting all supplies here to start treatment - doing bacteria tonight - then starting water glass tomorrow and then siphoning the top layer of soiled sand -

Sand removal is a last resort for me -
Can’t even imagine how that’s going to work - did you use the python tubing to suction the sand bed out?

 

[TheBigDrewsky]

So is it normal to be nervous about dosing bacteria? Decided to go with biodigest - dosing one tonight - skimmer off for one hour -

No concern about a recycle?

 

[REEFRIED!]

So is it normal to be nervous about dosing bacteria? Decided to go with biodigest - dosing one tonight - skimmer off for one hour -

No concern about a recycle?

Yes I used simple tubing to siphon. I would not be worried about a re-cycle. Silicates did not work for me. They may work for you.

Dosing or adding bacteria is controversial to me. I think that most people agree that the bottoming out of nutrients (nitrate and phosphate) open the door to Dino’s. Especially in a younger newly established tank, and especially one started with dry rock. Although Dino’s could also come in on a frag, a snail shell, and many other ways. Then take over, especially in a newer tank.

Next, almost everyone agrees that the very first step in fighting Dino’s (after proper identification) is to raise nutrients to detectable levels. Those levels differ for most people but let’s just say to something like 5-15ppm nitrate and 0.03-0.15-ish phosphate. Then to test often and try and keep levels as stable as possible. Here’s where it gets tricky. Then most will tell you to dose some bacteria. Either dormant bacteria (like microbacter7) or actual live bacteria like (microbacter start) or other similar products. Now it is hard enough to keep elevated nutrient levels, especially considering that said tanks have most likely bottomed out. So their natural set up is doing well at removing and lowering nutrients. So keeping elevated nutrients is clearly difficult. Dosing nitrate and phosphate and testing every other day or so requires some dedication. Let’s say you manage to find a stable dose and keep levels elevated at your preferred numbers. Now you start dosing bacteria. Which no matter what bacteria you dose, it is inevitably DE-nitrifying bacteria. Which will obviously make keeping your nutrients elevated and stable hard. On one hand you will be most likely dosing a product to raise nutrients while also dosing a product to lower nutrients. You can see where this is a bit counterintuitive. While I truly believe adding bacteria to a reef tank is never a bad thing, I also believe that a cycled reef tank most likely has all the bacteria it needs. Bacteria is everywhere. All over the rocks, sand, glass, plumbing, fish, frags, snails, crabs, your hands, literally everywhere. It doesn’t just disappear. I think a good bacteria/ carbon source product to dose is NP bacto balance. However it must be used carefully as it does a great job at lowering nutrients. While they do state that it will not lower them to undetectable levels.

Dino’s suck. That is for sure. I believe that you should start with just one method at a time and ride it out for 2-3 months before deciding if it is working. Dosing silicates has proven to work for some people and I understand the philosophy of it. Getting diatoms to outcompete Dino’s for space. And it is fairly safe as you can almost not overdose silicates. Although testing for them is problematic, as most test kits are highly inaccurate. I am in Boston and if you want to come by I can give you my new salifert silicate test kit (not a great kit, but cheaper than the Hannah, which I believe is for freshwater, although most use it for saltwater. There is another more nerdy way to test for silicates, that you can google if you want). And also some of the Brightwells sponge excel. I know you said you have water glass which is more potent so you may not need it.

TLDR: dosing bacteria to fight Dino’s doesn’t make much sense to me. Adding bottled bacteria to a cycled reef tank is never really a bad thing, but is most likely not doing much, and makes keeping elevated and stable levels of N&P harder to achieve. Dosing silicates to encourage diatom bloom is certainly logical but does not work for everyone.

 

[noobreefer2]

Yes I used simple tubing to siphon. I would not be worried about a re-cycle. Silicates did not work for me. They may work for you.

Dosing or adding bacteria is controversial to me. I think that most people agree that the bottoming out of nutrients (nitrate and phosphate) open the door to Dino’s. Especially in a younger newly established tank, and especially one started with dry rock. Although Dino’s could also come in on a frag, a snail shell, and many other ways. Then take over, especially in a newer tank.

Next, almost everyone agrees that the very first step in fighting Dino’s (after proper identification) is to raise nutrients to detectable levels. Those levels differ for most people but let’s just say to something like 5-15ppm nitrate and 0.03-0.15-ish phosphate. Then to test often and try and keep levels as stable as possible. Here’s where it gets tricky. Then most will tell you to dose some bacteria. Either dormant bacteria (like microbacter7) or actual live bacteria like (microbacter start) or other similar products. Now it is hard enough to keep elevated nutrient levels, especially considering that said tanks have most likely bottomed out. So their natural set up is doing well at removing and lowering nutrients. So keeping elevated nutrients is clearly difficult. Dosing nitrate and phosphate and testing every other day or so requires some dedication. Let’s say you manage to find a stable dose and keep levels elevated at your preferred numbers. Now you start dosing bacteria. Which no matter what bacteria you dose, it is inevitably DE-nitrifying bacteria. Which will obviously make keeping your nutrients elevated and stable hard. On one hand you will be most likely dosing a product to raise nutrients while also dosing a product to lower nutrients. You can see where this is a bit counterintuitive. While I truly believe adding bacteria to a reef tank is never a bad thing, I also believe that a cycled reef tank most likely has all the bacteria it needs. Bacteria is everywhere. All over the rocks, sand, glass, plumbing, fish, frags, snails, crabs, your hands, literally everywhere. It doesn’t just disappear. I think a good bacteria/ carbon source product to dose is NP bacto balance. However it must be used carefully as it does a great job at lowering nutrients. While they do state that it will not lower them to undetectable levels.

Dino’s suck. That is for sure. I believe that you should start with just one method at a time and ride it out for 2-3 months before deciding if it is working. Dosing silicates has proven to work for some people and I understand the philosophy of it. Getting diatoms to outcompete Dino’s for space. And it is fairly safe as you can almost not overdose silicates. Although testing for them is problematic, as most test kits are highly inaccurate. I am in Boston and if you want to come by I can give you my new salifert silicate test kit (not great kit, but cheaper than the Hannah, which I believe is for freshwater). And also some of the Brightwells sponge excel. I know you said you have water glass which is more potent so you may not need it.

TLDR: dosing bacteria to fight Dino’s doesn’t make much sense to me. Adding bottled bacteria to a cycled reef tank is never really a bad thing, but is most likely not doing much, and makes keeping elevated and stable levels of N&P harder to achieve. Dosing silicates to encourage distom bloom is certainly logical but does not work for everyone.

I used the Seachem sillica test, it's pretty good for just getting an idea, I started at about 2 ppm, and I have been dosing waterglass, now it's up to 6 ppm, which aligns with what I have been dosing. Still no diatoms, but I have been upping the dose, I hope to get them soon.