Dinoflagellates.

I was using a coralife 12x 36watt running about 400 gph plumbed off my reeflo dart return pump .
I have a 90 gal display with @ 200 gal total volume.
 
lights out for 10 days

lights out for 10 days

curious if anyone has tried this"¦.it seems to me that all this time and money we spend to kill these damn dinos could be saved if we can simply do lights out for 10 days"¦has anyone tried that?
 
When you turn the lights on, the dinos will come back.

They are mixotrophic - that means that they are photosynthetic and heterotrophic.

Unlike algae, they can absorb other nutrients to survive.
 
Mathman..... If you were to turn your lights off for ten days your corals if you have any would be dead, dead, and kaput. Most if not all of rest of your tank would be a lot worse off too. Dinos were surviving like crazy just like cyano long before dinosaurs. Anyway the good part is that by kerping your tank healthy you force them to compete with other microscopic critters for nutrients. My experience.... I have been reefing for twenty years os so without a hint of dinos. Cyano....yup a few times. I recently cleared my tank of hair algae using a marine "algae killer". It worked like a charm. So good that it apparantly killed all of the microscopic algae too. In a single day my tank went from "what is that brown stuff? to a point where I couldn't even keep the glass clear with scrubbing twice a day. My best success was in cleaning the sump,installing fresh phosphate and nitrate removers and finally re installing my UV sterilizer. It has been about two weeks now. The rocks are clear, the corals are obviously relieved and the dinos are down to maybe four or five dime sized spots on the sand and fading quickly. I've only had to clean the glass once in about a week now. Just my experience. Good luck.
 
Mikefromaz said:
It was proven a long time ago that dinos flouish in an excess of nutrients. Long Island sound has been plagued by red tide (dinos) whixh kill fish and inverts on a scale hard gor most people to visualize. Anyway the culprits have long been known to be nitrate based fertilizers and phosphate based detergents washing from farms and towns into the local watershed and ultimately into the sound. By the way back inthe sixties laws were passed barring phosphate detergents. In less than a year fishing and the shellfish industry were astounded by the recovery of the system. Unfortunatly the big money soap suds producets got the rulings repealed. Look up the state of Long Island fisheries if you need convincing. Any ecosystem is kept in balance by the amount of available food. The only reason dinos would subside is if they ate themselves into starvation. It is a hard way to gp bouncing back and forth between cyano/dino outbreaks trying to cure the problem with a dirty fish tank treatment. It just invites more problems down the line.
n
Click to expand...


There is a difference..
I found that dino's can out compete other algae at very low nutrient levels.

With slightly elevated levels of nutrients other green algae can actually out compete dino's.

Now excess nutrient can provide enough for all types of algae and I dont think anyone is talking that. It like during cylce you get all kinds of algae.

I had suggested a while back that since dino's can live at so low of nutrient levels some other element might limit their growth. I mean if people were raising their nutrient levels and growing other green algae and the dino's disappeared the green algae had to be removing something from the water that dino's need.

Since allot of people I know that had them lived in areas where the water was higher in iron that might be it. Plus iron is known to help in plant and algae growth. Some people have tried cupisorb and said it had positive results. I am wondering if anyone has tried MetaSorb UHC ..
 
Last edited:
I wanted to update where I am with my Dino issue and also ask for some suggestions.

I gave up on my fight about 6 months ago. Basically I let the tank crash. I stopped all dosing (2 part and vodka/vinegar), stopped the skimmer and stopped changing water. About 4 months into this I stopped seeing the dino. So I continued down this path for another 2 months until yesterday.

I am sure you can imagine but the tank is filthy and I lost almost all my sps coral. I have green hair algae all over the rocks and the water is somewhat green. Yesterday I cleaned my skimmer and turned it back on and did a 10% water. I am going to do another 10% water change this weekend and let the system run for 1-2 months like this without dosing any carbon or 2 part.

If the dino comes back do you guys have any suggestions? I am actually thinking of getting a larger tank and just starting over. Do you guys suggest I continue taking it slow?
 
Natas.... I can only offer my experience. My approach was essentially the exact opposite from yours. I cleaned anything and everything that might harbor dinos. That included filter sponges, the sump, vacuuming the sand, rocks cleaning the glass on a daily basis for about two weeks. Three bags of Purigen and a fresh charge of Phosguard in the reactor. Finally I began dosing with vodka and restarted a UV sterilizer which I had from a previous tank. The biggest impact was from the dosing and the UV. This dino thing was no joke. I lost about 20 cerith snails, my trumpet, alveopora and goniopora corals. Now...about three weeks since starting my corals are looking great. The fish have their huge appatite back and instead of cleaning the glass twice a day so I could actually see thru the dinos, I have only cleaned it once this week, actually more of a minor touch up. Sand and rocks are all good. I went into this mess knowing absolutely nothing about dinos but learned a lot here. My problem was caused by a marine algae killer which gave the dinos an articially induced nutrient advantage to to lack of competition due to the totality of the algae killer effect.
 
I cleared mine up with a UV sterilizer @ low flow, and skimming constantly.

At night, the dinos become free floating and will get pulled into the UV and the dead exported by skimming.
 
karimwassef said:
I cleared mine up with a UV sterilizer @ low flow, and skimming constantly.

At night, the dinos become free floating and will get pulled into the UV and the dead exported by skimming.
Click to expand...

Yes, I put my 9W. Turbo twist back in service with a new bulb and Rio 180 pump. I managed to restrict the flow to 51 G/hr. , slightly below their "slow" requirement for pathogens. So far it seems to be working.
 
Mikefromaz said:
Yes, I put my 9W. Turbo twist back in service with a new bulb and Rio 180 pump. I managed to restrict the flow to 51 G/hr. , slightly below their "slow" requirement for pathogens. So far it seems to be working.
Click to expand...

Sorry if you mentioned it before, but how big is the system? A 9w UV setup is pretty small.
 
My system is on the smallish side. My display tank is 29 gal. with a 20 gal. sump. I measured it at 42 gal. total when I set it up accounting for rock, sand and equipment. The CPR overflow handles a little over 400gph. The three section sump holds a filter sock, Coralife 125 super skimmer, two litres of Matrix, 20lb. live rock, phosphate reactor and now the 9w UV unit. My return pump is a Rio 1700. Sorry for the "laundry list", but I do admit it was fun <grin>. I used to have an 80gal. reef downstairs on a concrete floor. My new setup is upstairs on a wood floor hence the self imposed weight limit.
 
I suppose you're okay then, for some reason I thought you had a larger system.
Hopefully it works well for you.
 
Finished my FM Ultra Algae X 10th dose on Friday, May 29th. Did a water change this morning, and started GAC again last night. It's bitter-sweet because I have no signs of Dinos, but my sps have lost color (mostly getting brown), and I've lost 1 of them to RTN, a couple others started STN from the base :(. Polyp extension isn't as good across the board (although FM says this is a side effect of treatment), I'm hoping to see some rebounds over the next couple of weeks. I have some zeovit amino acids on hand, should I dose? Or just continue what was previously successful for me? Tbh I'm second guessing my decision and wonder if I should have just started running UVS to see if that would have worked.....
 
I'd probably continue with what worked in the past, although I don't know whether that might encourage the dinoflagellates to return.
 
Update, checked a sample of water squeezed out of my sock a few days ago, was able to find 2 live ostreopsis cells on the slide and some live bacteria cells and some algae cells that appear to dead or at least not active.
Right after I took that sample I started dosing my freshly harvested phytoplankton, 1/4 cup in the morning and 1/4 cup at night, just took a sample from my sock and could not find a single ostreopsis cell, just hundreds of phyto cells swimming around and possibly a couple remnants of ostreopsis cells the the phyto seemed to be feeding on and by remnants I mean all broken up but with the characteristic color and internal organs or structure that make up the dino. Tank is looking awesome and my love for the hobby has been reignited.
I am going to stay the course for now and keep sampling and observing, I am looking forward to putting the sand bed back in if all continues this way.
Will keep posting my results.
 
Cal_stir....

Great news! Very encouraging indeed. My dino invasion appears to have collapsed as well. I owe it to people on RC for sure.. I am going back to review your posts. Thanks for sharing the good news.
 
cal_stir said:
Update, checked a sample of water squeezed out of my sock a few days ago, was able to find 2 live ostreopsis cells on the slide and some live bacteria cells and some algae cells that appear to dead or at least not active.
Right after I took that sample I started dosing my freshly harvested phytoplankton, 1/4 cup in the morning and 1/4 cup at night, just took a sample from my sock and could not find a single ostreopsis cell, just hundreds of phyto cells swimming around and possibly a couple remnants of ostreopsis cells the the phyto seemed to be feeding on and by remnants I mean all broken up but with the characteristic color and internal organs or structure that make up the dino. Tank is looking awesome and my love for the hobby has been reignited.
I am going to stay the course for now and keep sampling and observing, I am looking forward to putting the sand bed back in if all continues this way.
Will keep posting my results.
Click to expand...

Do you run your skimmer during and after dosing or do you shut it off for a while?
 
Scrupulous cleaning, dosing with vodka, fresh phosguard, purigen and UV. I finished up with addimg 200ml. of "reef stew"....essentially live phyto rotifers and pods to help regenerate the bio system trashed by the marine algae killer.
 
Still dealing with dinos here and unsure of my next steps. The 5 day blackout in May knocked them back but didn't get rid of them, not that I expected it to. I ran reduced lighting and have been slowing bringing it back though still not at near pre-outbreak levels. Was blowing the rock twice a day before and after lights out and dosing peroxide at 1.25 - 1.5ml/gallon right after (so twice a day). Corals (what's left) have continued to decline so I dropped the peroxide to just 1ml/gal once a day in case that was contributing to the decline. Trying to keep pH elevated with kalk. None of this is really helping as dinos are continuing to get worse again.

I am open to all suggestions at this point.

Some things I am considering are:
Trying FM Ultra Algae-X, just not sure if many have had results with it.

Adding a UV sterilizer. Kinda hard to spend the money on a large enough UV if I don't have a better than even chance of it working.

Have also considered letting the tank go "dirty" as some have done but just haven't been able to bring myself to turn off the skimmer and GFO.

I have not identified the type of dinos yet, is it worth it at this point?

Thanks for any help you are able to provide.
Dale
 
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