dino experiment

SPS tank, third bout of dinos started the last couple days after blowing off some cyanobacteria aggressively last week. P04 is 0.04 on Hanna, no detectable nitrate. Carbon and GFO don't seem to help...debating the H202 method again and actually dosed 1cc/10gallons to my 120g tank. Any other ideas? BTW, I did turn the lights off today and will leave them off for a couple of days, but I have some SPS frags coming tomorrow too....so, don't want to keep them in the dark too long after transit.
 
t4zalews said:
Zero dinos still, completely gone. I now welcome the current bubble algae and aiptasia. Those are easy. Ever since turning down my sump turnover I have had zero dinos.

I dont run any macro algae, took off my carbon and GFO, sand bed has never been whiter in my life of reefing. My tank literally looks better than it ever has. I am running an oversized skimmer if that means anything. My in tank circulation is still random with reasonable flow, but the sump is very slow and skimmer works great. I would recommend slowing down the flow to anyone with dino issues, granted you have a quality skimmer, maybe even any skimmer.

I am happy to conclude that my issue is solved and I would add this method as a possible resolution to dino eradication.
Click to expand...

Sorry if I missed it, but what is your sump turnover? Is this on your 65 gallon tank?
 
Nanook said:
SPS tank, third bout of dinos started the last couple days after blowing off some cyanobacteria aggressively last week..
Click to expand...

This strengthens my theory of cyanobacteria being a formidable competition to dinos.

---

Here is an idea for anyone.
Suck up loads of cyanobacteria from an infested tank and place in your dino infested one.
Turn off your skimmer for a week and see what happens.

Here is another.
Since diatoms and dinos take turns in nature introducing silica may produce interesting results.

There may be side effects to either of these two so doing it in a controlled way would be wise.
 
t4zalews said:
Zero dinos still, completely gone. I now welcome the current bubble algae and aiptasia. Those are easy. Ever since turning down my sump turnover I have had zero dinos.

I dont run any macro algae, took off my carbon and GFO, sand bed has never been whiter in my life of reefing. My tank literally looks better than it ever has. I am running an oversized skimmer if that means anything. My in tank circulation is still random with reasonable flow, but the sump is very slow and skimmer works great. I would recommend slowing down the flow to anyone with dino issues, granted you have a quality skimmer, maybe even any skimmer.

I am happy to conclude that my issue is solved and I would add this method as a possible resolution to dino eradication.
Click to expand...

Hi Taylor,

I'm a newbie...still learning but have a dino problem at the moment. Can you explain how to slow down the sump turnover? I have an DELTEC AFP600 skimmer in the sump but I'm not sure how to slow down (1) pump that feeds the skimmer and also (2) the return pump to the display tank.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
Usually, people use a ball-valve or something similar to slow down a return pump. If you just want to regulate the amount of flow into the skimmer, a T and a valve somewhere should be fine. Another option is to feed the skimmer with the overflow but use a T-valve to send only part of the water into the skimmer.

From the picture I've seen, I think the APF600 is a recirculating design, but I might be wrong.
 
Battle is almost over.

Battle is almost over.

I have a 150 gallon bare bottom reef that's 15 years old. I recently reworked the tank. The corals were so healthy and big all LPS that water flow almost went stagnant in the main display. Some hammers and frogs were the size of a basket ball. Leaving the water flow so low for as long as I did clogged the rocks up. So I took all the main rocks from the main tank 150 pounds and started a brute garbage can cooking process. I trimmed all the main corals and mounted them on acrylic rods in the main tank mounted to a huge sheet of acrylic on the bottom of the tank. It looked really good and the flow was awsome.
I did a very bad thing I added a Agra Alive 3 inch sand bed over the acrylic sheet to make the main tank look nicer while the rocks clean themselves. I must add there is over 150 pounds of live rock in the 300 gallon sump in the basement.
2 weeks after the big change came a Huge Dino Explosion. I had never seen so much slimy brown algae in my life. I never fought with Dinos in 16 years of reeling. It killed all my snails. All the corals started to close. The population was exploding and growing back as fast as I could suck it out. I was so sad to see my beautiful reef suffer from this kiss of death. I read this thread and every other page that contained the word Dinos on the Internet and learned all I could.

Water had perfect conditions as always. 8 DKH 440 Calcuim 1500 Mag 0 Nitrate 0 Phospate. Running Bio pellets.

All this time useing heavy heavy GFO. Heavy Carbon. Change every 2 days.

I tried Peroxide 1 week. 1ml per 10 gallons all the way to 4ml per ten gallons. Affected the dinos temporally on a daily basis but the dino scurge was out of this world.

I tried blackouts. 3 days. Then 4. Then 7. With peroxide. These things were affected but came back strong.

I tried 8.5 PH via Kalk drip.

Just when I was going to give up and the tank was about to die corals starting to STN. I tried a silly thing. I added 500ml of Cuprisorb. I figured something in the water changes fuels this plauge. Maybe it's trace metals in the new salt. The Cuprisorb can't hurt.

So my last stand started. Kalk to 8.5. Cuprisorb. Vaccum trough filter sock back into tank. Mild water changes. Carbon. GFO. Lights on.

Over three days the whole population crashed. Corals opened up 50% day 4.

I only see a couple of Dinos after 4 days of not vacumming the sand bed through the Sock. I very thin flat layer just starting to form the strings in the low flow corner of the sand bed. I run the Vaccum And there gone for another 4 days.

Who knows when they will be 100% gone. Maybe when I introduce my main rock into the DT in 8 months for now the tank is saved.

To recap. I belive Cuprisorb and vacuuming sand bed extensivly through a filter sock no water change with Kalk drip to be the magic combo.
 
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I have had this problem with my tank and damn it just sucks i just got thru buying all my fish. I have just taken my fish corals and they are packed in my ten gallon its a horrible 5h8ng im afraid im going to have to start over a new tank for this fish and inverts.
 
t4zalews said:
I'm happy (not that people have dinos) that this thread is still alive.

My tank is almost completely rid of dinos finally. I did only one thing. I slowed down my turnover rate through my sump.

It sounds crazy but I went from 600gph to 200gph maybe less in my 65g tank. The dino's kept on receding and receding. This is the only thing I did. I even increased my lighting schedule. I've done a 14 day blackout before and that didnt work. No filter sock, no water changes.

Tank hasnt looked this good in years.
Click to expand...

I am having this trouble as well. Thinking back, I believe the dinos start coming on after I add another return on my overpower pump. Now I reduce the flow back quite a bit. I can see the dinos is slowing down alot few days ago. i also took three powerhead off line ( two 6105s and one jebao pump off over one week ). RIght now the tank only powered by two MP40 run at 60%. it has been just less than one week and I don't see much dinos when light turn on, only few spot at the end of the light cycle. How long does it take for you to see the dinos completely gone after you reduce your return pump, t4zalews.

Thank you for trying it out and let us know...

Joey
 
t4zalews said:
I'm happy (not that people have dinos) that this thread is still alive.

My tank is almost completely rid of dinos finally. I did only one thing. I slowed down my turnover rate through my sump.

It sounds crazy but I went from 600gph to 200gph maybe less in my 65g tank. The dino's kept on receding and receding. This is the only thing I did. I even increased my lighting schedule. I've done a 14 day blackout before and that didnt work. No filter sock, no water changes.

Tank hasnt looked this good in years.
Click to expand...

Hi Taylor!

What strain of dinos did you have? I have been battling ostreopsis sp
 
Jesus that was a loooong thread. The third one I've read too.
Couple of questions.

I'm liking the idea of upping the nutrients to increase competetors. One person on another thread was dumping their skimmate back in. Ideas on that?

Does skimmate have salt? cause I'm losing salinity but refuse to add salt with water change. Maybe it was my ato.

Will reducing flow on sump pump by a valve hurt my pump at all?

Any good list on what dinos kill and don't kill? I'd like to safely add livestock to up nutrients but don't wanna lose anything. My clowns, yellow tang, and Kole tang have survived throughout. Starfish, snails, blue tang, and Blenny have died.

Thanks. I have only tried peroxide, lights out, and api Algaefix so far. Always comes back but this is my first time with peroxide.

Probably will think of more questions later. Don't have microscope
 
Oh yeah!....

Will my fish eat with lights out? When I put a flashlight in there, they're all to their hiding spaces. Should I feed normally?
 
Skimmate will have the same salinity as the tank, more or less. Skimmers export saltwater, so any volume lost there needs to be made up with saltwater, although the amount might be too small to notice. That was the case with my systems.

Any animal that grazes on the substrate or on algae might consume some dinoflagellates and have problems. I don't know what the likelihood of that is.
 
Hi all, I have read most of this thread, but excuse me if I missed this somewhere.

It appears that water changes will increase the Dino outbreak, but what about two part solutions? If they are added instead of water changes to keep parameters in check do you also see an increase in the Dinos?
 
Two part solutions likely are safe enough to add, although they might have some trace elements that could feed dinoflagellates.

I would say that sometimes, water changes will feed a dinoflagellate bloom, but not always.
 
I have been doing this a long time. I had massive dino's 2 years ago. I had good tank parameters. I had been doing weekly water changes of 15% as I was reviving an old tank for sps. I was running ROX carbon in a bag and GFO in a reactor. I got dino's so bad it killed my new frags. I tried black outs, siphoning and water changes. upping the Gfo. Nothing was working. It seemed to make it worse. My wife accidentally broke my protein skimmer while cleaning the cup while I was out of town. So I threw in the towel. Stopped all water changes, and skimming. Dino's gone. In less than 2 weeks. I kept the tank this way for 2 years. Continued with normal light schedule and fish feeding. I added top off water daily and may have done 5 water changes in this time period. No GFO or carbon. NO Dinos.

November 2014:
Removed remaining Mud from sump, and hooked up my new to me euro reef 180 skimmer. I started Carbon and phosguard. 6 weeks later removed changed 1/3 of gravel for Fiji pink (live). 2 weeks later another 1/3 gravel for fiji pink (live). It has been 3 weeks since I did this. I started to see Dino's 3 weeks ago. I have just finished week 5 of vodka. NO3 is still 100. Im going to buy a new test today. po4 is .65, up from .34 because of the lights off for 3 days and algae releasing it.

I am in day 5 of H2O2 dosing at 1ml per tank volume. I did a 3 day black out. reduced light yesterday and today. Things are looking great. i have to vac the fiji tonight because of the accumulation of detris from the treatment. So far this is working for me. Im going to keep my fingers crossed. BTW I will probably change the rest of the gravel and a 20 gallon water change. tonight as well.

Conclusion:
My problems seem to arise from water changes, carbon or Phosphate removal. Is it too much too soon? I am going to back off on water changes and only run small amounts of carbon and phosguard. I will also be changing my t5 bulbs for new ones this week. Blue + and Blue special. This tank has been running for 15 years. No dino's until I tried SPS 2 years ago. (IE low nutrient water).

Any thoughts?
 
I sucked the rest of the old gravel out but did not add any new. Im back on regular lights as of today. My tank looks great and no noticeable Dino's. the sludge trapped in the old gravel behind the rock wall was gross. Today is day 9 since I started H2O2. tonight will be my last treatment. Fingers Crossed.
 
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