URGENT! Fish/corals dying after UV killed dino’s.

[RickvDam]

Hello!

I had a massive Dino (Ostreopsis) outbreak and yesterday I installed a UV. The smallest ond I could get in less then a month (gotta love the Netherlands) was a 18W one (15G tank). Today after the UV running for a day, almost all my dino’s are gone. However my fish were laying on their sides breathing fast. I had a hour before work so I quickly had to act and decided to unplug the UV, and do a 30% water change. I also put back my skimmer and carbon.



As I didn’t have enough time to heat the water conpletely, it dropped from 26° to 22°. I’m very happy to say that I received a video of the clowns swimming and acting much better. However I have a few questions.

1. Leakage

The UV is new, doesn’t leak on the floor and works as I can see the light turn on. Putting my hands in the tank doesn’t feel weird, and my hammer was the only coral completely closed up. After work I can test for a voltage leak, but how big is the chance of a new, fully working UV to electrocute the tank?

1. Dino Poisening

As my UV is quite large, and dino’s are harmfull. Could this many dead dino’s be the cause? My tank had a LOT of dino’s, and now I really have to search to find some.

1. Corals not opening

My hammer is starting to open again, so are most of my zoa’s, but a few species aren’t… Is it possible that a week of dino irritation, then a few hours of bad water, then a temp drop, will make some stay closed longer? They are some of my first zoa’s, and I would really hate to lose them. I know it’s only been a few hours since the dino’s are mostly gone, but as some are fully open I’d rather be safe then sorry.



I need to run my UV at least a few more days to make sure the dino’s are all gone, but I don’t want to lose my fish or corals…

 

[taricha]

As my UV is quite large, and dino’s are harmfull. Could this many dead dino’s be the cause? My tank had a LOT of dino’s, and now I really have to search to find some.

You have known toxic dinos, and killed a lot of cells in a short time. Toxins released into the water seems the likeliest candidate, and running a bunch of activated carbon would be my suggestion.

 

[RickvDam]

You have known toxic dinos, and killed a lot of cells in a short time. Toxins released into the water seems the likeliest candidate, and running a bunch of activated carbon would be my suggestion.

I added activated carbon, turned my skimmer back on and did a 30% water change. Should I just to be safe do another waterchange tomorrow? Is there a specific test I can do to test for toxins? I will test for voltage leakage just to be sure. Now that almost all dino’s are gone, should I still do a small waterchange every day untill the UV is gone?

 

[Lavey29]

Toxins from dinos or your UV killed off your good bacteria in your tank resulting in ammonia spike. Rather then using a bandaid for your dinos you need to identify and correct the problem that caused them which is usually bottomed out nutrients.

 

[RickvDam]

Toxins from dinos or your UV killed off your good bacteria in your tank resulting in ammonia spike. Rather then using a bandaid for your dinos you need to identify and correct the problem that caused them which is usually bottomed out nutrients.

I had dino’s a while back caused by bottomed out nutrients. Started dosing and my nitrates and phosphates are currently, and have been for weeks, in a very acceptable range… I honestly don’t know why the dino’s came back, but the UV is for now a temporary solution so my corals don’t die. I will test ammonia when I get home.

 

[Narideth]

I've had multiple fish lost to Ostreopsis poisoning in the past both before and after sourcing a UV. It was definitely their toxins for me. I was only able to save any fish after they got bad by removing them from the tank entirely and housing them elsewhere for a bit.

Good thinking with the water change, glad to hear they're recovering! I still run UV nightly as needed to help manage dinos while the tank is sort of bolstering itself.

 

[brandon429]

Uv does not export mass it lyses the cellular mass which stays in the system and sinks down into the sand and rock crevices, fueling a tradeoff invasion in a few months of either gha, cyano, or more dinos (see the nuisance algae forum 700 page dinos thread, any of them, about 90% tradeoff invasions and rarely a real cure)

you need mass export, optimally before the uv was installed. you still need it.

the right way to manage long term nanos is to rip clean when it's invaded, make the tank perfectly clean as we did below, then install uv as a preventative. This prevents animal losses completely, we show.

there's a reason this thread is 60 pages of rip cleans (mass export) and not one loss: because skipping rip cleans are dangerous and running them isn't/ compare any system's before and after pics in this thread to any dinos thread you can find, calculate the % saved

you should run a rip clean now, before the invasions come, it's far preferable to running carbon because the majority of your dead cells aren't going to land in the carbon they're already sinked in the rocks and sand

post a full tank pic

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[RickvDam]

Uv does not export mass it lyses the cellular mass which stays in the system and sinks down into the sand and rock crevices, fueling a tradeoff invasion in a few months of either gha, cyano, or more dinos (see the nuisance algae forum 700 page dinos thread, any of them, about 90% tradeoff invasions and rarely a real cure)

you need mass export, optimally before the uv was installed. you still need it.

the right way to manage long term nanos is to rip clean when it's invaded, make the tank perfectly clean as we did below, then install uv as a preventative. This prevents animal losses completely, we show.

there's a reason this thread is 60 pages of rip cleans (mass export) and not one loss: because skipping rip cleans are dangerous and running them isn't/ compare any system's before and after pics in this thread to any dinos thread you can find, calculate the % saved

you should run a rip clean now, before the invasions come, it's far preferable to running carbon because the majority of your dead cells aren't going to land in the carbon they're already sinked in the rocks and sand

post a full tank pic

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

Wow thats a lot of info thanks! Every water change I do clean the sand. Is a rip clean still necessary or is 3 waterchanges which includes the sand enough?

The tank:

 

[brandon429]

no u dont have to do them other than when needed, the system will guide you with visual feedback. see those little spots on the sandbed? that's the hub where new invasions outgrow from, connect to other mats and begin collecting their own nutrient benefits/light access like communal organisms do.

my particular nano is 18 years old solely due to these rip cleans when needed, each system is different. I've got my tank streamlined to about once a year rip clean / all the interim water changes I just do light sand top layer cleanings without disassembly. you could even stall this one out a while and see how far you get with the current setup, they're not harmful you can see as you scroll through the before and after pics. to take apart a system and remove 100% of its invasion and waste collection doesn't harm a reef, it energizes it. corals open vs stay closed, fish are happy etc.

*this is reef tank surgery though, you can't just skim a couple jobs then run it/needs to be a directed study of 10 or so of the linked examples from the thread where you see ten times over how tanks of various sizes all do the exact same thing for several years running in that thread:

-the takedown of the tank, the order of animal removal so that delicate organisms come out before the water gets all muddied up during the takedown

-covering up held fish in buckets so they don't jump out on the floor during stress

-the light re ramping trick we advised in every single job: when you reassemble the tank, you run much less light % than your tank is used to (that's a factor in dino outbreaks too, too bright lighting) your corals won't be harmed with a temporary light reduction. You can slowly ramp back up light % over time, but in your case you don't need the original power for quite a while. less intense light will still work and the feed you provide the system fills in nicely for coral support

-we show how each tank is cleaned out and dried pretty much/ so that there aren't adherents on the tank walls/then perfectly rinsed sand is put back in, then refilled with all new water matching temp and salinity, then the rocks are set back in this system and they've been rasped and rinsed off, then last all the animals and corals go back in and the light ramping trick is ran. that's every example in the thread.

study well
B

 

[BeanAnimal]

Yeah - let's set up a nano and tear it down and basically start fresh every year. WOW!

 

[RickvDam]

no u dont have to do them other than when needed, the system will guide you with visual feedback. see those little spots on the sandbed? that's the hub where new invasions outgrow from, connect to other mats and begin collecting their own nutrient benefits/light access like communal organisms do.

my particular nano is 18 years old solely due to these rip cleans when needed, each system is different. I've got my tank streamlined to about once a year rip clean / all the interim water changes I just do light sand top layer cleanings without disassembly. you could even stall this one out a while and see how far you get with the current setup, they're not harmful you can see as you scroll through the before and after pics. to take apart a system and remove 100% of its invasion and waste collection doesn't harm a reef, it energizes it. corals open vs stay closed, fish are happy etc.

*this is reef tank surgery though, you can't just skim a couple jobs then run it/needs to be a directed study of 10 or so of the linked examples from the thread where you see ten times over how tanks of various sizes all do the exact same thing for several years running in that thread:

-the takedown of the tank, the order of animal removal so that delicate organisms come out before the water gets all muddied up during the takedown

-covering up held fish in buckets so they don't jump out on the floor during stress

-the light re ramping trick we advised in every single job: when you reassemble the tank, you run much less light % than your tank is used to (that's a factor in dino outbreaks too, too bright lighting) your corals won't be harmed with a temporary light reduction. You can slowly ramp back up light % over time, but in your case you don't need the original power for quite a while. less intense light will still work and the feed you provide the system fills in nicely for coral support

-we show how each tank is cleaned out and dried pretty much/ so that there aren't adherents on the tank walls/then perfectly rinsed sand is put back in, then refilled with all new water matching temp and salinity, then the rocks are set back in this system and they've been rasped and rinsed off, then last all the animals and corals go back in and the light ramping trick is ran. that's every example in the thread.

study well
B

This is quite a long read while at work so when I get home I’ll read the whole thing! Thanks a lot already! That pic was from yesterday, before the UV. It looks better now. Will take a new picture when lights turn on.

 

[BeanAnimal]

OP - You killed a LOT of stuff quickly with the UV and there was no means of export. At the very least you had low O2 and possibly an ammonia spike. What is done is done.

Skimmer, water changes and carbon.

I am not sure I would run the UV without the carbon and skimmer running.

That is a big UV - I would not let it run that long on a tank this small. Mechanical filtration will help once you get the bulk knocked down. Blowing stuff off the rocks with a power head or turkey baster and or filtering through floss/carbon/etc. Don't feed the corals or NOPOX or anything like that, it will just feed the Dino's

@vetteguy53081 and others have made many contributions regarding fighting Dino's as well. There are methods other than "Rip Clean" that are viable short and long term. Before you rip everything out, do some research.

 

[Troylee]

You should have never took your skimmer or carbon offline.. with that being said you should be fine now that you added them back.. a water change won’t hurt but the damage is already done “killing off the Dino’s” it poisoned your water but you’ve taken the correct steps in correcting the problem. I would let it ride personally

 

[brandon429]

don't read the whole thread rather just pick ten or so random work links and study those, skip several pages each time/that's a perfect pattern set to pick up.


this is truly the age cheat of the millennia for nano reefs, old tank syndrome is a storage syndrome, a plant/moneran-dominant syndrome, and rip cleaning is the opposite: oligotrophic state, so that the tank is so clean you can easily up your feed rates and the corals and fish will love it. moneran mats, algae, ciliate groups of invaders are directly selected against in the rip clean process.

our downfall is tank size: nobody wants to rip clean a 200 gallon setup for a minor invasion (however they do it for home moves we show so they can move the tank safely)

it's a good thing that's a nano reef. you can literally just cheat it into old age. My nano would have never made year 18 without rip clean cheats, I'm ok with that he he.

 

[RickvDam]

You killed a LOT of stuff quickly with the UV and there was no means of export. At the very least you had low O2 and possibly an ammonia spike. What is done is done.

A while back I read something recommending removing all filter material. Now that I think of it, it really wasn’t that smart. Luckly most survived.

That is a big UV - I would not let it run that long on a tank this small. Mechanical filtration will help once you get the bulk knocked down. Blowing stuff off the rocks with a power head or turkey baster and or filtering through floss/carbon/etc. Don't feed the corals or NOPOX or anything like that, it will just feed the Dino's

The UV is just for the dino’s and will be removed the moment the dino’s are gone. I’m currently not adding anything. Just carbon, skimmer, and some flakes untill everything stabalizes.

You should have never took your skimmer or carbon offline..

Mistakes were made, that for sure. I thought I was doing the right thing out of stress. I’m keeping my carbon and skimmer in, doing waterchanges and slowly let things stabalize.

 

[jbaur]

Is the UV sterilizer and pump rated for saltwater use?

Has your amount of flow changed? Did you test ph?

 

[BeanAnimal]

The UV is just for the dino’s and will be removed the moment the dino’s are gone. I’m currently not adding anything. Just carbon, skimmer, and some flakes untill everything stabalizes.

Ohh absolutely - but you still need to limit it to short bursts for something like this. Spreading the dose out over days or a week would have resulted in a much more manageable control without the near catastrophe. I know looking backward is easy, but you now for the ret of this cleanup and for the future.

 

[brandon429]

as you are reading the rip clean threads, notice small details

how much testing of params is in that thread? I honestly think we're at page 60 having never discussed any params, check it to see. what that means is, we're able to handle about 2 million bucks of other people's reef tanks without any losses in pattern and without testing for anything other than temp and salinity. following the physical order of ops is how we win. it does no good to sample the reefing masses for test levels of any param, because at the time of reading that's their estimate

we can easily search out any test kit comparison threads for ammonia, nitrate, pH etc and find them always in conflict for readouts. red sea reported 100 ppm nitrate higher than api or hanna did etc

that's the number one reason why I don't use testing in my work threads, I don't need anyone's guesstimate we only need them to follow the listed order of ops for the win.

 

[RickvDam]

Is the UV sterilizer and pump rated for saltwater use?

Has your amount of flow changed? Did you test ph?

Yes both are saltwater rated. Amount of flow is the same. Ph was a bit low, but is back to normal after turning the skimmer back on.

Ohh absolutely - but you still need to limit it to short bursts for something like this. Spreading the dose out over days or a week would have resulted in a much more manageable control without the near catastrophe. I know looking backward is easy, but you now for the ret of this cleanup and for the future.

Yea the thing is, the plan was to run in on a hour on hour off schedule. But as the UV didn’t raise my temperature, I thought “a great, I can keep it on and get rid of it quicker” not thinking about the toxins… I still have some dino’s left. What do you recommend? Turn it on for 2-3 hours a night?

 

[BeanAnimal]

Brandon - with all due respect, your intentions are always good, but the guy came here looking for EMERGENCY help and you have just pounced on him with a wall of posts trying to get him to subscribe to your rip clean, visual cue, not testing dogma (or whatever it is). Let the man come up for air for goodness sake.

"pattern sets"
"work links"
"age cheat of the millennia"
"storage syndrome"
"plant/moneran-dominant syndrome"
"oligotrophic state"
"moneran mats, algae, ciliate groups of invaders"

These posts just get harder and harder for the average person to read, let alone those us who know what you are trying to say.