What causes dinos and how to cure

F

fishkeeprian

Active member
Hello,

I have been battling Dinos for a few weeks. I do 10% waterchanges and siphon out as much as I can during water changes.

My current parameters are

Alk 7
Cal 460
Mag 1260
Nitrates 2.5
Phos 0.018

There is loads of info but my mind is getting scrambled.
What should I be doing now?

Thanks
 
There's a good thread on this in the chemistry forum. One of the trickiest things about dinos is that there are several kinds, that require different cures. This has created huge confusion. When I had them, I researched different methods and made a list of things to try. I tried several things. UV sterilization seemed to work the best for whatever kind of dinos I had.
 
I have had dinos twice now, the first outbreak covered the sand and the second which was worse covered the sand and rocks. It was my understanding it can be a cause of excess nutrients, an imbalance between nitrate and phosphate, and a few other reasons I dont recall. As mentioned with all the different causes there seems to be a lot of confusion so the cure may be a bit of trial and error.

For the first round I cut back on feeding to every other day or every couple days till eventually it receded. No lights out, no siphoning, kept up with my 4g a week wc and in a few weeks it was gone.

The second and most recent happened after a massive clean out of my sump. The tank was almost a year old so I thought I would clean the sump. Personally never again. I think in this case all the algae was out competing for nutrients. Mind you this is only my speculation. I siphoned for a few days then gave up. I cut back on feeding again, hadnt done a wc in almost 3 weeks, I noticed as the algae was slowly growing back in the sump the dinos were receding.

This was only my experience with it and what I did to fix it, your experience may vary. Good luck
 
Just so I don't have to type the same info over and over again, read this thread on reefcentral where I talked somebody through their dinos problem. The thread is only a couple pages and can be considered a summary of the multi-hundred page threads about it on this and the other forum.

The first step is identifying which strain you have. You cannot come up with a battle plan until you know which strain you are dealing with. A $10 plastic microscope from Amazon is enough, but of course if you have access to a better microscope that will be easier. That other thread links to a good place to help ID the dinos from pictures, but if you post the pictures here I'll confirm the strain for you.
 
sfdan said:
Just so I don't have to type the same info over and over again, read this thread on reefcentral where I talked somebody through their dinos problem. The thread is only a couple pages and can be considered a summary of the multi-hundred page threads about it on this and the other forum.

The first step is identifying which strain you have. You cannot come up with a battle plan until you know which strain you are dealing with. A $10 plastic microscope from Amazon is enough, but of course if you have access to a better microscope that will be easier. That other thread links to a good place to help ID the dinos from pictures, but if you post the pictures here I'll confirm the strain for you.
Click to expand...

This is under my microscope, is it dinos and what strand?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dw2gkvu1a4bzec6/181019_210027.mp4?dl=0
 
Ok if you can't get any more zoom or focus, record a video with fewer of them so they aren't piled on top of each other. That way I can more clearly see the motion of them. The motion does look like Ostreopsis, but again, very hard to tell.
 
Very good video. The dominant dino is definitely Ostreopsis. Read this thread for my advice in how to deal with them.

The bad news is they are toxic and can do a lot of damage, but the good news is there are very good treatment methods that have a high track record of success against them.
 
sfdan said:
Very good video. The dominant dino is definitely Ostreopsis. Read this thread for my advice in how to deal with them.

The bad news is they are toxic and can do a lot of damage, but the good news is there are very good treatment methods that have a high track record of success against them.
Click to expand...

So i read the thread and the main things are uv and higher nutrients. My phosphates are at 0.05 and my nitrates are at 2.5ppm. My water volume is 200l what size uv should I get? Thanks
 
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