dino experiment

[perikaruppan]

I am battling dinos for the last 6 months.. and man it has been a big pain...

tried 84hrs light outs.. with slowly increasing the lighting period...
then tried elevated PH.. and its amazing that at 10pm the ph is 8.45 and 8am it is 8.05!! so need to dose pretty hard (Calcium Hydroxide) to maintain PH...

but never did both together.. and never tried peroxide...

a shot of the dino's on my Zoans..

but never found it to kill my SPS.. except recently when the latched onto a dead spot on my Green BirdsNest and killed it by spreading all over it... other SPS are fine.. and growing...

It still keeps comming and comming... so can we do..
1. lights out + Elevated Ph + Hydrogen PerOxide

will that help?

 

[bertoni]

Some people seem to be successful with hydrogen peroxide. I'd be very careful with it.

When you did the lights-out treatment, did you cover the tank to keep all light out?

 

[frank2926]

Did you raise ALK TO 13 DKH? Raising ALK was more effective for me than just raising PH >

 

[perikaruppan]

First time didnt cover.. but for the 2nd slot of 4 days, did cover it... they didnt come up at all...

never tried raising Alk though... can do that also... as i have no other go but to redo my tank if this persists...

my Phospates are 0.08 (hanna Checker).. will start the lanthanum chloride test to reduce .. hopefully that has an effect...

 

[Homeytwist]

Hey everyone, I feel your pain and thought I'd share my simple cure; operation blackout. No light (and I mean NONE) for 10 days. Covered my entire tank, sump, hoses, EVERYTHING with tin-foil and kept it that way for 10 full days. Only time that changed was briefly in the morning and at night when I opened a small door I made in the foil for feeding. Water params during the blackout period were all standard stuff, no trickery there. On the 2nd or 3rd day the skimmer started working overtime removing the decaying algae and dinos. When the foil came off the tank was pretty much spotless. It's been close to 6 weeks now and no sign of the dino. Got a bit of cyano growing now, but that's much easier to handle. I've got a mixed reef with fish, inverts, LPS, SPS, and softies. Everything made it through the blackout fine except for one sad little SPS frag that was half-dead going in. Before that I made sure all params were good, fooled with PH and Alk, adjusted lighting etc. etc. etc. The only thing that worked was light depravation.

 

[Beenalongtime79]

Hey everyone, I feel your pain and thought I'd share my simple cure; operation blackout. No light (and I mean NONE) for 10 days. Covered my entire tank, sump, hoses, EVERYTHING with tin-foil and kept it that way for 10 full days. Only time that changed was briefly in the morning and at night when I opened a small door I made in the foil for feeding. Water params during the blackout period were all standard stuff, no trickery there. On the 2nd or 3rd day the skimmer started working overtime removing the decaying algae and dinos. When the foil came off the tank was pretty much spotless. It's been close to 6 weeks now and no sign of the dino. Got a bit of cyano growing now, but that's much easier to handle. I've got a mixed reef with fish, inverts, LPS, SPS, and softies. Everything made it through the blackout fine except for one sad little SPS frag that was half-dead going in. Before that I made sure all params were good, fooled with PH and Alk, adjusted lighting etc. etc. etc. The only thing that worked was light depravation.

10 days!! they probably thought it was the end of the world in there! Haha

 

[Homeytwist]

Yeah man! LFS told me how they dealt with the dino in their display tank... They recommended 7-10 days, and they did the full 10 in theirs and all livestock was fine (coral, anenomes, urchins, etc. etc. etc.), so good enough for me! I occasionally shone a flashlight in there to check on things, but it was all fine.

Forgot to mention, I have a pincushion urchin that got big and fat eating the dino before operation blackout. Mine looks just like the purple, white, orange, and green variant shown here:
http://www.aquariumdomain.com/viewMarineInvertSpecies.php?invert_marine_id=35# It did make a dent in the problem for sure, cleaning the rocks and walls bare but you know as well as I do how fast the dino grows, urchins would never keep up to eliminate the problem... I've also got a red & blue tuxedo urchin but it was never interested in the dino like the pincusion was.

 

[yuzaki]

i have the same problem as most of you here. it has been more 2 months since i had this problem and it very stressful/toxic to sps. you can look below for the film.

they will lessen during lights out and will become active with bubbles with the lights on. during light on i try to remove the dinos covering parts of the LR (with coral line) and dino which have attached to my sps. this has been my daily routine as to help my sps. I have filter sock connected to my overflow pipes and clean them every two days. I have yet to clean the detritus from my sump today and i have yet to siphon out dino from the sand and when i brush them.

I will try the lights out method for three days with only the blue/actinic light on. hope this helps as i dont want to try the peroxide approach now to the detriment of my LS.

my current parameters:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate 0 (as per API)
Phosphate: .0245ppm (hanna ULR phosphorous converted to phosphate)
Alk: 7.5ppm (API)
Cal: 420ppm
Magnesium: 1350ppm (ELOS)

Skimmer: Super Reef Octopus 5000int
Photoperiod: 10 hours total(9 hours white)(10 hours actinics/blue)

 

[Beenalongtime79]

i have the same problem as most of you here. it has been more 2 months since i had this problem and it very stressful/toxic to sps. you can look below for the film.

they will lessen during lights out and will become active with bubbles with the lights on. during light on i try to remove the dinos covering parts of the LR (with coral line) and dino which have attached to my sps. this has been my daily routine as to help my sps. I have filter sock connected to my overflow pipes and clean them every two days. I have yet to clean the detritus from my sump today and i have yet to siphon out dino from the sand and when i brush them.

I will try the lights out method for three days with only the blue/actinic light on. hope this helps as i dont want to try the peroxide approach now to the detriment of my LS.

my current parameters:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate 0 (as per API)
Phosphate: .0245ppm (hanna ULR phosphorous converted to phosphate)
Alk: 7.5ppm (API)
Cal: 420ppm
Magnesium: 1350ppm (ELOS)

Skimmer: Super Reef Octopus 5000int
Photoperiod: 10 hours total(9 hours white)(10 hours actinics/blue)

I feel like if you are going to do lights out, you should do the full monty and just dose the peroxide at 1ml/10 gallons to give your best shot at knocking out the problem since you have already committed to 3 days of lights out....

Then again, you can always ramp upwards if the 3 days lights out doesn't work.

Cheers,
John

 

[perikaruppan]

I hear many of them tell that Dino's are toxic.. but in my tank.. they are growing very near to the SPS, and in some cases on the Frag Plug of the SPS but the SPS are not dying!!! - they are growing very very slowly... so is my problem exacty dynos?

But during the light's out Cycle they are totally Out!!!... still will the peroxide with so many "no Results" Work? or has it actually worked for anyone ?

my phospates are down to 0.03!!!! whola...

 

[frank2926]

Removing all sand, Lights out for 4 days and High Alk (which raised PH also) worked for me. No Peroxide used.

I siphoned out any visible signs daily. Running all water through a bucket rig with cotton floss and Carbon. Returning water to the tank so no water change would be needed.

 

[yuzaki]

I feel like if you are going to do lights out, you should do the full monty and just dose the peroxide at 1ml/10 gallons to give your best shot at knocking out the problem since you have already committed to 3 days of lights out....

Then again, you can always ramp upwards if the 3 days lights out doesn't work.

Cheers,
John

Will dosing peroxide hinder the function of the biopellets?

 

[Beenalongtime79]

I don't use biopellets, but my tank was pristine after the 3 days lights out and peroxide treatment. No issues w/ my tank, no sick fish... everything did fine so I imagine the bacterial population on the rocks/sand was not overtly affected. So, I imagine your bacterial population on your biopellets won't suffer too much of a hit.

Cheers,
John

 

[180+55reef]

if you dose peroxide should you do it after 7 or so hours of light? it seems they would be out the most then?

thanks

 

[Beenalongtime79]

if you dose peroxide should you do it after 7 or so hours of light? it seems they would be out the most then?

thanks

I don't think anyone knows... no one really even knows if the peroxide works either, but we still do it.

I think dosing peroxide helped me out, but it could have been due to just lights out for 3 days. Who knows?

Go with your gut feeling.

I dosed peroxide even during lights out and I think that may have helped.

Cheers,
John

 

[Jaris]

For those of you with dino, how was your water quality? It seems to bloom in tanks with almost 0 nitrate and phosfate. Could one solution be to bring nitrates up to 1 or 2 ppm? I am struggling against dinos now, have tried lights out for 3 days as well as dosing 6% h2o2 ( half the recommended amount, of course), but it doesnt seem to work. I am now trying to feed harder and skim more dry. Any inputs?

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[Beenalongtime79]

I've always had 0 phosphates and nitrates via salifert tests and they just seemed to bloom spontaneously. I've had 3 blooms over roughly 2.5. All resolve w/in 2 weeks.

This last bloom was cut short to only 4 days because I used the 3 days lights out w/ hydrogen peroxide dosing.

I think your results really depend on the species since there are a variety of them out there.

Cheers,
John

 

[Homeytwist]

Rufio's right, the treatment will vary depending on the species. That being said, I will pass on the advice from my LFS for dealing with any dino; 7-10 days of complete blackout. No water chemistry tricks or dosing, just plain darkness. I did 10 days in my system and the dino was GONE. No casualties other than the dino. Keep in mind that regular algae growth will be stunted so if you have any herbivores in the system you may want to feed them until the algae growth returns with the restored light.

 

[Jaris]

Ok, thanks;-) I startet my second blackout yesterday. This time I'll keep it like that for 7 - 10 days. Just hope my minimaxi anemone and xenia will survive that long of a blackout...

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[bagz727]

Wont sps die with no lights for 7-10 days?