Will dinos hurt sps?

[dlmkmm]

I don't see any on my sps or any other corals, just on my power head and return lines. I know I need to get rid of it, I'm just trying to figure the best way. Will this stuff being in the water affect sps in anyway.

My sps look good but very little growth over the past year, although my red planet has faded to pastel red though. Water params are good, but very low bio load with only one clown fish.

 

[returnofsid]

Dinos can crash your entire tank. As they die off, at night, they suck up all the oxygen, from the water column. During the day, they grow very quickly, and will eventually start covering everything in your tank.

Don't blow it around with a turkey baster and Don't do water changes. While W/C are normally a great thing, they seem to fuel Dinos.

Combating Dinos requires a proper ID. Make sure that you have Dinos and not Cyano. The best way to tell the difference is to see how the tank looks, first thing in the morning. Dinos die off at night. First thing in the morning, the tank will look great. About mid day, you'll notice SNOTTY strings all over the tank. Cyano won't die off at night.

There are 2, somewhat successful ways to combat Dinos.

1. Raise your pH to 8.7 AND KEEP IT THERE. This is difficult to do, and requires constant dosing of baking Soda.

2. Lights completely out for 4 or 5 days. Then start lights out at 4 hours/day. Every 2 days, add an hour to the lighting schedule, until you're at your full photo period.

Option 2 sounds scary, with SPS and clams. I did it, with a predominately SPS/Clam tank. I kept my lights out for 5 days. SPS and clams did just fine.

 

[dlmkmm]

Well then maybe it is cyano, this stuff is brown though. However I still see it in the morning. Will trying some "red slime treatment" help to determine if it is cyano or not.

 

[waxy]

You can use kalkwasser and dose it in your tank. It'll raise and maintain your PH at 8.4 and even higher in most cases.

Too much of kalk does'nt hurt your SPS's, if anything they'll love it.

If it's cyano, you may have phosphate issues where you have a redundant amount of nutrients in the tank. Also, "dead zones" no, not referring to your wireless plan, but the flow zone

Just do a water change every week, and continue to dose kalk. You're fine.

 

[dlmkmm]

It looks like I need to work on ID'ing this stuff. I thought it was dino's till I just learned from returnofsid that they go away at night. There is also a very thin almost tranparent film on everything except the corals, not sure what that is either.

There are no dead zones in the tank since i got an mp10. As far as phosphates go, between the GFO and the hair algea (another battle that i'm slowly winnning), I think it gets eaten up really quick!

 

[ReefTECK]

They positively will destroy SPS! and while use of a turkey baster may not be a good idea when they're only on the walls or equipment, once they are on your colonies I advocate that you baste your balls off, and try to save your prized SPS specimens.

they go away at night.

Having recently won the battle against dinos myself I can say for sure that that is not always the case! There are a number of different types of dinoflagellates, luckily they do respond to a number of common treatments.

The best, first and foremost, is not doing water changes. Especially if you have been using any sort of carbon dosing, and you've really managed to drive your nitrates down, they will exploit this environment, and furthermore feed off of the trace elements (inorganic or organic IDK but) in the new salt water you introduce. Also stop the use of any AA's is probably a good idea.

Skim wet, and replace GAC every other day (this was a turning point for me)

The black out scenario helps kill them off by reducing their access to light, of course your animals like light too. Once dinos are growing on them, the light will pretty much be useless to your SPS. I think however 4 or 5 days is a little drastic IMO. I did two 48 hour blackouts over the course of 3 weeks.

Some dinos don't respond to higher pH seemingly at all (mine didn't) and it is very difficult to maintain especially when your dripping kalk into a small system, you can end up lowering your salinity in a matter of a couple of days, and then what do you do? a water change? Wrong!

It took me only 3 weeks to beat them, and things are recovering quite well at this point. It is difficult, good luck to you.

-Andy

 

[fijiblue]

Good to hear Andy!

 

[dlmkmm]

This morning the dinos, cyano, or what ever it is was still there after a night of darkness. Will dosing the red slime treatment for cyano hurt anything else.
The reason I ask is to just try to figure out what it is. If it is still there after the treatment then I can rule out cyano, right?

 

[parkavenuereef]

can someone post a picture of the dino's?

 

[mpoletti]

can someone post a picture of the dino's?

You can try here

But here is a picture of mine before then went brown as you can start to see it happening in front of the green patch

 

[dlmkmm]

Do they always have bubbles associated with them like in the picture?

 

[mpoletti]

Do they always have bubbles associated with them like in the picture?

Nope, not all the time. That picture could also have dino's in it.

 

[Sanagy]

dinos will most definitely hurt your sps and would probably destroy your tank pretty quickly too...i mean, their feet are sooo big



sorry, couldn't help myself

 

[dan223]

I tried all the things mentionded with no luck, what did work in 3-4 days was running filter floss and changing it every morning, the dinos dissolve back into the water column every night and are easily filtered out with floss and can be removed, just change the floss every morning. I used and aquaclear hang on filter on the display during lights out only.

 

[dlmkmm]

Today is the first day of lights out for 48 hours so lets see what happens with just no light. If I see any change at all then I will start the kalk and lights out next week.

dinos will most definitely hurt your sps and would probably destroy your tank pretty quickly too...i mean, their feet are sooo big



sorry, couldn't help myself

Nice one, I was waiting for something like that.