Dinoflagellates.

[koral_lover]

Your answer is on page one.
Get to know what has been tried and then get creative.

Thanks - I thought I was being creative...lol.

I looked at page 1, 250 MH 20k is much different than all T5 20k...crisp white vs. blue windex, that is if your running a radium vs t5 ati blue plus...nonetheless I may experiment. Dirty method, clean method, adding bacteria\diversity, dosing nitrate, etc. hasn't it cut it. Perhaps will invest in a UV.

Thanks for the help and great insight.

 

[trmiv]

I'm running 20,000k MH on my tank, and dinos seem to love basking in its blue glory. I've had both 20K Hamilton and 20K radium over this tank and they don't care either way.

 

[Grkgod36]

From some of the more experienced brothers on here. That read most or all of this . Can we get we get a re cap so far of the methods that seem to be working for most ?
Like dosing vibrant , black outs , cut lighting back , run dirty , etc etc

And things not do
Like water changes , some say not to run gfo ? And so on

I battling Dino's , I don't know the strain it's the stringy brown crap with bubbles .
On the rocks and sand , I blacked out the tank for 4 days 4 weeks ago and they came back !
Running a fuge with cheato , also a gfo reactor.
I'm not over feeding , nitrates at zero , phosphates at zero! All rodi filters are new.

I'm desperate I wouldn hate to have to tear down my tank .if I. Any beat them. And I don't want to dose chemicals that can hurt my fish .

I'm doing another 5 day black out ,and I just ordered some vibrant to dose .
A I run the blue leds 10hrs and white 4 hrs. I will also cut their timing down .

Any other suggestions ?

 

[karimwassef]

As an ex-Dino sufferer, I'll just point to my recent posts in another forum and present this concept - "algae is your friend"

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1977420&page=370

Same water, two zones:

Algae zone
<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/62AF83E1-FE30-48D0-9648-B0D556F15A77_zps8gmqd8ff.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/62AF83E1-FE30-48D0-9648-B0D556F15A77_zps8gmqd8ff.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 62AF83E1-FE30-48D0-9648-B0D556F15A77_zps8gmqd8ff.jpg"></a>

Coral zone
<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/4A261F16-3008-4CFA-B046-391D6D9C3977_zps6ftrjkvz.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/4A261F16-3008-4CFA-B046-391D6D9C3977_zps6ftrjkvz.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 4A261F16-3008-4CFA-B046-391D6D9C3977_zps6ftrjkvz.jpg"></a>

Here'a what mine used to look like

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/C64EE2BF-AD68-4075-B149-3DF317D5E5B1_zpsn8ov3ei5.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/C64EE2BF-AD68-4075-B149-3DF317D5E5B1_zpsn8ov3ei5.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo C64EE2BF-AD68-4075-B149-3DF317D5E5B1_zpsn8ov3ei5.jpg"></a>

 

[DNA]

Got Vibrant in the mail last Friday.

Two weeks earlier I decided to finish what I had left of Algea-X / Dino-X.
Now that I only have three stamp sized patches of visible dinos left in the sump it should be a good indication if it works or not on a minuscule dino problem. In two weeks it has killed all my mini starfishes, the ones that lurk in their holes and put their tentacles out. It also killed my sponges. It left my ostreopsis dinoflagelles alone and the little algae I have left also.

Vibrant has had 48 hours in the tank. The skimmate is much lighter brown in color and there seems to be more of it. I think I'm seeing a bacteria bloom in the water column and the floating particle count there may have reduced a bit. I did not expect fast results so lets see what happens in a couple of weeks.

---

If you missed it I'd like to urge you to go back a page and read my posts from there.
I've successfully beaten dinoflagellates with a method that makes a lot of sense.

This thread has a big reader audience so I hope someone will take the health related issues further.
The effects are subtle, but very real to me. Reefers, sailors and people living in coastal areas need to know the facts on this.

 

[karimwassef]

The cure you mention is removing marine snow by removing sand and most rocks and all corals?

 

[DNA]

karimwassef:

The dirt trapping capability of sand is amazing.
It has to be removed.

Porous rocks will also hold loads of it.

Your corals will not experience stability while you are doing this.
Reduced lighting is also advised to reduce production of organic matter.
---

I've been at this mother of all pests for way to many years and have tried and tested so many things it's hard to figure out new ones. This one is the most logical and effective by far.
Since 99.99% of my dinos are gone and the remaining three stamp sized patches are probably less than what the average tank has you may call it a cure.

I'll call it success, for now.

 

[karimwassef]

Maybe the issue is truly the health of the sand...

I keep a thick sand bed but it's a vibrant mass full of worms. That's been a key to successfully keeping my sandbed.

Your remedy works for you. No question. But I keep a sandbed while getting rid of dinos... the difference is likely in the biofauna in the sandbed.

We tried water transfusions and live rock exchanges. Have we ever tried a sand bed transplant? Like a bone-marrow transplant.

 

[Kurt03]

I added sand from my non-dino mature display to my bare bottom qt tank that had dinos. Also moved some little bags of rubble that seeded in my main tank first. This along with getting my nutrients up enough to get some algae and bio diversity I feel is what got me over the hump.

 

[karimwassef]

I didn't think much of it but I added some worms directly to my sand early on. They were in a display in a LFS. I asked how much and the owner said he'd just give me a baggie of sand from that tank if I bought something... so I bought something.

 

[sowellj]

I posted this in a different thread but perhaps it is more relevant here. I have a relatively mild outbreak, but they are persistent. I have tried or am doing; bacterial dosing, reduced photoperiod, vibrant (1 month), peroxide (6 weeks), manual removal via filter floss.

It is hard to say, but the only things that I can truly say have helped are lights out and manual removal. If the other methods have, it has been subtle for me.

I may try dosing phyto and pods, hoping to further crowd out the dino and grow some other algae.

I have not tried dino-x or removing the sandbed. I guess those will be next on the list.

 

[Kurt03]

It might depend on the species but for me getting algae to grow was key as that brought on biodiversity. What's your no3 and po4 tests?
Do you have sand bed? My po4 wouldn't show up on test kits. Over feeding helped but I ended up dosing liquid phosphate to actually get readings. Feed the food chain from the bottom up. Can try just over feeding fish, but there's also mb7, Oyster feast, reef chili, phyto, etc

 

[sowellj]

Thanks Kurt. I have never once registered phosphate in my system. I may dose a bit to bring it up to detectable levels.

I do have a sandbed. Getting rid of it would be a next step as well.

 

[karimwassef]

I just hate the idea of people giving up sand beds because they don't have the right life in it. I would rather cure the sandbed than kill it.

 

[DNA]

I'd really like to have a sandbed and hopefully I can have one in the future.
Since removing it will get rid of loads of accumulated organic waste there is no choice for reefs plagued with dinos.
I'd like to stress that the rocks and other affected areas have to be dealt with as well.

Critters in the sand are very likely to help, but do they stand a chance against the dinos in the battle for organic nutrients.
An ecosystem is very complex and finding the correct balance is not easy.
That's why I would think the next logical step after the dinos are gone would be to get a large sample from nature.

 

[Ostri]

man no wonder my mental stability and my cognitive functions have deteriorated since my osteo exploded. and continue on after gotten rig of them with dosing of Vibrant. I think the dino toxin will linger on and our liver or kidney isn't able to metabolize it. Wondering if anyone has examine the half life of of this substance.

I'm having the same problem. Did Dino X kill your ostreopsis ovata?

 

[neiltus]

Back on page 161-162 you can see my problem. One of the things I changed was my salt mix. Up until that problem, I had been using HW Marinemix Reef. I tested it for PO4 and it came in at .03 on the Hanna Checker.

Back in November I changed to red sea blue bucket, and the dino gradually faded away. I did a number of other variable changes as well.

Last friday I did a water change of 17.5g with some of the HW Marine salt. I also prepared 10gallons of new water for a coral QT tank. This week the dino are back, not to the level that they were, but they are back nonetheless in both the DT (received 17.5g) and the coral QT (received 10g).

I do have another QT running with red sea blue salt in it, it is dino free.

I know this is purely coincidental, but I suspect that the salt mix has something in it that feeds them.

 

[DNA]

A root cause for dinoflagellates has been found.
Start reading DNA's posts from page 162.

You could stick your head back into the sand and wait forever or act now.
Unfortunately it's not the no-effort solution everyone wants, but the goal is simple and the right results are very likely if you do it properly.

 

[neiltus]

A root cause for dinoflagellates has been found.
Start reading DNA's posts from page 162.

You could stick your head back into the sand and wait forever or act now.
Unfortunately it's not the no-effort solution everyone wants, but the goal is simple and the right results are very likely if you do it properly.

In summary, clean your tank WELL to fix the problem. More through than you have in the past...socks, vacuum, blowing off rocks, skim, carbon/purigen (my choice), water movement and possibly even sand removal or elimination.

All that loose organic matter is a heyday for our one celled enemy.:debi:

 

[koral_lover]

So I spent a quite a bit of time studying from about post 100 and on. I decided to try the "dirty" method. Although, I am not sure it is a successful approach still or not as it was hard to keep track of who implemented it, saying it worked, then came back weeks later saying they had problems again.

In addition to the dirty method, i have started a ATS. I notice a fair amount of green algae on the glass now and also have some GHA now growing on the overflow and my ATS in the sump. Whats strange is I can't get a nitrate reading throughout the whole course of this tank's life! That bugs me as in tanks past I have always had an ongoing battle with nitrates creeping up. Phosphates in this tank seem easy to manipulate though in either direction.

On a positive note, the dinos have died down dramatically, so much so that I don't consider them a problem. However, Cyano has taken their place...where do I go from here? Keep riding dirty and see if the GHA takes over the Cyano and that my ATS picks things up? Try the ChemiClean?...but I don't want to make way for the Dinos again...

It seems from others experiences, I will inevitably always have to run a dirty tank as the minute they employed nutrient control techniques for GHA or cyano, the dinos came back.

Lastly, I haven't removed the sandbed.....yet...but if I can't get the Cyano under control, I will use my handy Home Depot bucket head and suck it out, followed by a water change. I really don't want to do this, as I can't stand barebottom tanks. The hobby has really become not enjoyable as of late...