What to do during a Dino related slow crash?

hotdrop

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My tank has been in declide due to a Dino outbreak for a couple months and this last week everything has began slow crashing. The Moniporas are all bleaching hard, the montipora digi is having poly baiout, the acros are getting tissue recession at the tips and bases, and the softies are happy as ever. Im running crabon and regular 15% weekly water changes fuge with skimmer. I did a few things to make my situation worse: I changed for Hydra 26 to 4x T5 2 weeks ago. I dosed up for 0 nitrate to 20 in the course of a week with fuge off and po4 blasted up to .4 which caused my nutrients to go nuts and ticked off the coral. When that didnt do anything for Dinos I tried to drop Nitrates back to 5 using the fuge which took another 2 weeks but actually made my Dinos even happier and in the mean time corals even more ticked off. Honestly I dont really know what to do at this point except wait for everything thats going to die to die. Definitely made some huge mistakes trying to fight Dinos and now not sure what to do, the dino thread didnt really give any clear guidance except to buy UV (which wont arrive till friday) so advice appreciated.

My parameters are as follows.

8.7 Alk
460ca
1410mg
Po4 .11
Nitrate 5
 

piranhaman00

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I would keep the fuge running but dose NO3 and PO4 to 10/0.1ppm. Your looking good so far. The nutrient swings need to stop so just keep that steady. Hopefully you have a species readily destroyed by UV. What size tank and UV watt? Hook the UV directly to the display. Do no plumb into return or anything. It looks crappy but is not permanent. At night blow off rocks and sand with baster.
 

ScottB

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+1 above.

Sorry we missed you in the dino thread:

We should have been able to spare you some grief, unless you have large cell amphidinium which are really hard to kill with UV. I don't suppose you managed to get an ID on the species? Are your dinos in the sand primarily? Or on the rock, glass, plastic surfaces? Hopefully the latter.

With some exceptions, what you see your SPS doing (bleaching, bailing zoox, STN, etc) are a delayed reaction to accumulated stress. Think about human repetitive stress injury. When dinos stripped the water and the water stayed stripped for a bit they came under stress, but only eventually hunkered down to a noticeable degree.

I'd aim a bit higher on nitrates (10-15) and otherwise peg the numbers you have. Watch ALK as consumption is/has fallen.

Fire up the UV the moment it lands. Until it arrives, manually remove as much dino as possible.
Don't feed aminos. Avoid or minimize WCs. No GFO or other (chemical) nutrient removal
Run carbon to reduce toxins; skim dry
Shorten cycle on refugium
If the dinos are not sand-based, clamp a bunch of filter floss in high flow and high light areas. They will grow there rapidly. Rinse each evening.
 

dwest

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Good advice above.

Keep nutrients elevated. Hit them hard with UV. Remove as many as you can. Keep replacing GAC weekly. I would also get a cheap microscope and ID them.
 
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hotdrop

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I would keep the fuge running but dose NO3 and PO4 to 10/0.1ppm. Your looking good so far. The nutrient swings need to stop so just keep that steady. Hopefully you have a species readily destroyed by UV. What size tank and UV watt? Hook the UV directly to the display. Do no plumb into return or anything. It looks crappy but is not permanent. At night blow off rocks and sand with baster.
Picked up an AQUA uv Hob 15w for a 30g tank and 40g system.

We should have been able to spare you some grief, unless you have large cell amphidinium which are really hard to kill with UV. I don't suppose you managed to get an ID on the species? Are your dinos in the sand primarily? Or on the rock, glass, plastic surfaces? Hopefully the latter.
I did follow the thread there when I tried the nutrient boosting, the instructions are a somewhat conflicting. Some of the posts say boost nitrates to 20, some say 10, others say that once you have a bloom crash nitrates to zero and but keep po4 at .1 then go back to 10 once the bloom starts. I have the rock type of Dinos, i run bare bottom so its just stuff that sticks to my glass, corals and rocks. I was going to buy a microscope but honestly the strategy doesn't seem to change once you identified the dino specie.
Some people recommended dosing pods, tried that didnt work, thought might have been the wrong pods.

The dino Facebook group recommends using vodka dosing and DR tims Waste away and bacteria. Basically this https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/dinoflagellate-treatment-bundle-dr-tim-s.html. It seems to work for people but a high number of them report dino's coming back after a week or 2.

Back to the original question, as the tank is crashing from stress, shifting parameters etc is there anything I should do to lessen the impact or just wait it out?
 

ScottB

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You are correct, the tools are the same for most species. For large cell amphids it is a little more experimental since the UV can't effectively reach them. That is where the pods come in as that species is not toxic. Silicates are also recommended to encourage diatoms competition. The others are toxic, but go into the water column after lights out where UV kills/irradiates/sterilizes them.

To answer your question "lessen the impact?" I would only add to my quote above the following: Once the UV is running consider a 24 hour blackout. Otherwise, just what I wrote above. For ostreopsis, procentrum, small cell amphids and coolia, these instructions will suppress dinos so that other organisms can recover and compete.

Oh, and turkey baste the slime of any corals frequently. Monti. monti digi, birds nest, some acros will lose some tips and edges. Trim them later.
 

DesertReefT4r

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Sorry for your issues. I also had a slow crash from dinoflagellates, amphidinium did it in my case. I really dont have any good tios for you since my crash was a total coral lose. Running carbon to remove toxins will help. Follow the dino guide and keep no3 and po4 elevated. I had to remove all my sand to beat amphidinium as nothing else worked. If you have any other form of dinos UV will be key to successful eradication.
 

SparklesMcgraw

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I got tired of battling ostreopsis (didn’t have a UV) and it was killing all my coral rapidly. I opted for Dino X and raised my Nitrates to 5ppm. They were running around 0.5ppm for a few weeks. Stopped dosing aminos and doing water changes. The Dino X nuked it. 90% improvement after 3 doses. Ended up doing 7 total. It nuked basically all the algae I had in the tank. Things are recovering and looking great. Also was adding phyto and eco balance although not sure if it helped tbh. Ran carbon again and did some water changes. Lost all my sps but a few other pieces survived. They are still ticked off but have just added a couple new sps to test the waters a few days ago. So far so good so fingers crossed. If you are losing coral anyway I would recommend Dino X.
 

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