Dinoflagellates.

Mikefromaz said:
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.
Click to expand...
Glad to hear your having success as well, I hope I'm not being premature but mine has been steadily improving for a couple months now and this is the first time I couldn"t find any live dinos.
Staying the course, slow and steady.
 
DDon said:
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
Click to expand...
FM Ultra Algae-X is what brought on my dinos, it decimated the micro fauna in my system, I was trying to rid bubble algae.
I did the dirty method but I run a sulphur denitrator and dose lamthenun chloride so was able to maintain my po4 at .03 and my nitrates at 5ppm. I came real close to hair algae. I used UV in the beginning but found it was limiting the micro algae so I stopped and haven't used it since.
If you go the clean route you will need a good UV so don't cheap out, I have a coralife turbo twist but the better ones have skinny tubes to keep the water close to the light source which is best.
 
well I noticed a few strands of dinos on my birds nest, so dosed 1 shot glass of Kordon Ich attack in my 55g, Literally 30 seconds after dosing 1 strand blew off and all strands were gone within an hour
 
Not surprising that ich medication would kill or disrupt dino.

Ich IS a type of dino.

The difference is that ich and marine velvet infect fish and the dinos we see infect the whole tank.

Since zooxanthellae are also dinoflagellates, I wonder if they're impacted too.
 
karimwassef said:
Try the low flow return through a UV and go dark. It'll force them into the water column and sterilize the water.
Click to expand...

The odd thing about UV sterilizers is the slower one pumps water through their unit the better they work. At first glance my 9 w. Turbo twist doesn't seem like a "giant killer". It is set however to 50g./hr. That is enough to run the 42gal. In my system past the UV around 30 times per 24hr. although the dinos don't move around much during the lights on period.
 
True. Almost everyone who says UV is a waste of money is running their UV at high flow.

I run my 40W at 200gph. It's literally a trickle in my 660g setup but every night, it zaps the dinos floating in the water column. Then my skimmer exports them.
 
Mikefromaz said:
The odd thing about UV sterilizers is the slower one pumps water through their unit the better they work. At first glance my 9 w. Turbo twist doesn't seem like a "giant killer". It is set however to 50g./hr. That is enough to run the 42gal. In my system past the UV around 30 times per 24hr. although the dinos don't move around much during the lights on period.
Click to expand...
The problem with the turbo twist is that some of the water that passes thru isn't close enough to the lamp for proper sterilization so more dwell time is required.
 
I have to admit I have never read any pubs on that unit except for the one included with the turbo twist. They have a line graph showing gph. Vs what type of flow will kill various organisms. The min. flow for the 9 Watt is graphed at 54gph. I set mine to 51gph just for a bit of margin. Anyway my dinos yelled uncle and the tank water is basically invisible. I am very pleased.
 
Mikefromaz said:
I have to admit I have never read any pubs on that unit except for the one included with the turbo twist. They have a line graph showing gph. Vs what type of flow will kill various organisms. The min. flow for the 9 Watt is graphed at 54gph. I set mine to 51gph just for a bit of margin. Anyway my dinos yelled uncle and the tank water is basically invisible. I am very pleased.
Click to expand...
Good to hear, I have the 36 watt and ran it slower than their graph as well, it was working but it was limiting the micro algae as well and my goal was to encourage micro algae. The glass was turning brown with diatoms and dinos and the micro algae out competed it and I was growing a full crop on the glass daily, now that I am feeding phyto the glass only needs to be cleaned every few days instead of everyday.
I think that if someone with a large system is going to go the UV (clean) method then they should go big or go home.
 
I agree about the bigger UV unit for a bigger system. Actually my 9watt is a throwback to when I had my 80gal. reef. I only used it for a short time because it didn't seem to work. Im not surprised. This algaefix stuff started out greay and ended up with a much worse problem than HA. Live and learn right?
 
Mikefromaz said:
I agree about the bigger UV unit for a bigger system. Actually my 9watt is a throwback to when I had my 80gal. reef. I only used it for a short time because it didn't seem to work. Im not surprised. This algaefix stuff started out greay and ended up with a much worse problem than HA. Live and learn right?
Click to expand...
You got that right, bubble algae way easier than dinos to.
 
I like my 40W turbo twist. I run slow enough that I kill most of what goes into it. The way I see it is that it's really just reducing the length of the UV tube assembly... To get as much exposure, I'd have to run a system maybe 2-3x as long without the twist. So it's just compact.

The penalty is flow rate, but that's ok.
 
Well I am going to give UV a try. Have an AquaUV 57watt Classic due to arrive Monday. Once I get it installed, will try that with a combo of 3 days blackout, elevated pH, H2O2, fresh GFO and daily filter sock changes.
I have been avoiding water changes since the last blackout but may do one as I want to remove the top layer of the sand bed for now. It is already pretty shallow to nonexistent on part of the tank due to prior partial remove and my power heads rearranging. Can't remove all (not that I would want to) and will put some back once this clears up as I have 3 leopard wrasses and a melanurus wrasse that need sand. So, is it better to do the water change right before lights out, during or just after? Or just skip this for now? Last time i siphoned part of the bed out I siphoned into a brute trashcan, let it settle and pumped the water back into tank through a filter sock, kind of a pain but if that is best option I can do it again.

Also are you measuring your flow rate through your UV or just estimating?
 
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