Are you really sure that this was dino?. That changes desbribed above usually have no effects on dinos. Dino require very little amount of light, and only total blackout will sometimes work, but unfortunately common with recidiv. The nutrient way is often not working, as dinos thrive on organic stuff, and that you can never totaly deplete. It is totaly pointless therefore to reduce no3 and po4..on the contrary this can cause more dinos, as you will kill the healthy concurents to dinos. I think the cause is an unhealthy sandbed with lack of small microanimals and therefore the bed will build up an overload of organic stuff. The overload of organic stuff in combination with ultralow po4 and no3 will further kill the beneficial algue that could concure the dinos. Things that in turn destroy the sandbed and thus contributes to dinos is some sandstars, that will eat the good microanimals in the bed, and to have too much circulation that disturb the sandbed. I think also some cause can be too fine sand, more suitable for Deep sand beds. Grain size around 0.1-1 mm should be perfect only for real DSB...most of us have shallow beds in the displaytank around 3-5 cm..in that cases i think it is wrong with too fine sand...i guess that more correct grain size in that case should be 2-4 mm. So...bigger grain size, not too many disturbing animals in the sand, not too much circulation that destroy the bed, not too low po4 and no3, be careful with sandstars and sandshifter, maybe also not too many eremits of the same reason...they will eat up the micofauna in the bed, that in turn will in longterm get an organic overload in the bed. We all know that dinos almost always start in the bed so there is the cause i think. I have tried everything, nothing works except sucking out the bed and make some new in the proper way. Every times(4 times of 4) i have used arag lives 0.1-1 mm i got dinos after 3-6 months, thus when the organic load is too high in the bed. The only chemical way that works is Algenex...but it will not take care of the main reason, you will get recidiv...same is about total blackout...it works a while....
To be sure you have to look at them in microscope, alternatively have a very experiensed eyes..the dinos is recognised of their extreme fototaxi, that is that they completely dissappear when you turn the light of, and in 30-60 minutes will be back when turn the halid on. There is no other "algue" that behave like this as far as i know. The point is that dinos is not a common algue, as it is a partly heterotroph organism.
Jonas Roman/Sweden
but every time I do a blackout my soft corals and anemones grow so much during the lights out period, idk why or if it's normal but my soft corals do great during blackouts lol
