Dinoflagellates

[JonBoy89]

So I'm currently fighting dinoflagellates and have been since early November 2015. Discontinued water changes for the first month in hopes to help, but everything got worse mid december... started large consistent water changes 2-3 weekly siphoning out dino's and things started to appear to get slightly better over the course of the next 2 weeks or so... I have tried blackouts, high ph, high mag, peroxide dosing (currently on dosing pump still), large amounts of gfo and GAC... as the dino's started to appear in the beginning stages I was running higher nitrates, roughly 30-40ppm. Po4 0.04 this system is a 75gal sps, 6 bulb ati, good flow, good skimmer, recently started running gfo again in hopes of possibly eliminating dino's.. also, mid December I tried carbon dosing via red sea product in hopes of eliminating nitrate to solve PART of a possible issue but clearly that didn't work. Nitrates dropped to 0 or close to 0 via salifert. Needless to say with po4 and no3 at extremely low levels, sps are not taking a liking to this. Tank has been up 1 year with great success up until this point...

 

[CoralNerd]

I just went through a battle with dinos. Does the bubbles come later in the day after the lights have been running then go away over night only to come back the next day?

Are you dosing alkalinity and calcium? You will want to get the ph up during the day and watch or stop two part dosing alkalinity portion of the dose.

The best way to get ph up is kalkwasser but it can spike the alkalinity so keep an eye out.

Good reference http://www.socalireefs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73283
I used a modified black out so I can feed my fish and didn't turn the white part of lights on only blues when I did turn them on.

I also used Korallen-Zucht coral snow, and sponge power along with what I mentioned above. Good luck.

 

[JonBoy89]

Thanks for the response coralnerd. I am dosing 2 part, and also ph is 8.3 mid day. Also, bubbles appear random times during the day, but yes they disappear at night. As well as 98% of the rest of dino residue! Only other forms of attack I have not yet tried to combat this, would be adding more bio diversity. Pods, etc. Do you feel the coral snow or sponge power had any effect on the dino themselves?

 

[Reef Ruler]

Thanks for the response coralnerd. I am dosing 2 part, and also ph is 8.3 mid day. Also, bubbles appear random times during the day, but yes they disappear at night. As well as 98% of the rest of dino residue! Only other forms of attack I have not yet tried to combat this, would be adding more bio diversity. Pods, etc. Do you feel the coral snow or sponge power had any effect on the dino themselves?

The bio diversity (pods, phyto, live rock from different systems) in combination with black out periods, no water changes, and heavy feeding is what I believe knocked out my dinos.