Adding Fish and Dealing with Ostr. Dinos

[SaltLife77]

Good Afternoon fellow reef keepers!

I have been battling Ostreopsis Dinos since March of this year. I had a bloom of what I thought was diatoms so I treated it by cleaning my tank heavy - thus compounding the dino issue ! In any case, I have pushed the dinos back hard. They are still present but only in certain areas of the sand bed. Inspection under a microscope of multiple samples is showing very few dinos, in fact, some of my samples are completely void of dinos all together. At the height of the infestation, I lost two massive corals (Montipora and Birds Nest RIP), a belted sandfish, and a starfish and no doubt many copepods. This loss, left me with no fish in my tank.

Since the battle royale with the dinos, to boost life to out compete the dinos - I have added TBS rock and sand, about 10K copepods, and a robust cleaning crew: 10 trochus, 2 cleaner shrimp, 2 scarlett crabs, and 20 blue legs. My tank is a 40 breeder display with a 30 gallon sump. This was a couple of weeks ago, and all of the inverts, save a couple trochus, are thriving.

Now that you have the novella background, my question: Is it safe to add a watchman goby / pistol shrimp combo to a sand bed that has dinos? My fighting conch and my sea cucumber are both find, both having survived the dinos no problem. I am looking forward to hearing opinions on this. Thanks!

 

[KonradTO]

Good Afternoon fellow reef keepers!

I have been battling Ostreopsis Dinos since March of this year. I had a bloom of what I thought was diatoms so I treated it by cleaning my tank heavy - thus compounding the dino issue ! In any case, I have pushed the dinos back hard. They are still present but only in certain areas of the sand bed. Inspection under a microscope of multiple samples is showing very few dinos, in fact, some of my samples are completely void of dinos all together. At the height of the infestation, I lost two massive corals (Montipora and Birds Nest RIP), a belted sandfish, and a starfish and no doubt many copepods. This loss, left me with no fish in my tank.

Since the battle royale with the dinos, to boost life to out compete the dinos - I have added TBS rock and sand, about 10K copepods, and a robust cleaning crew: 10 trochus, 2 cleaner shrimp, 2 scarlett crabs, and 20 blue legs. My tank is a 40 breeder display with a 30 gallon sump. This was a couple of weeks ago, and all of the inverts, save a couple trochus, are thriving.

Now that you have the novella background, my question: Is it safe to add a watchman goby / pistol shrimp combo to a sand bed that has dinos? My fighting conch and my sea cucumber are both find, both having survived the dinos no problem. I am looking forward to hearing opinions on this. Thanks!

I also had ostreopsis and my YWG did just fine.. cannot say for the pistol shrimp though. I think adding fish will help with your problem actually

 

[SaltLife77]

thank you for the response! Yes, I agree, adding fish will definitely help, and I think that is the last piece of the puzzle to bring balance back to the force.

Very glad to hear your YWG did well, that encourages me! I would think that if my cleaner shrimp are ok, the tiger pistol would be ok, but I am not sure.

Also, my condolences on having Ostreopsis - they are an absolute nightmare...oof!

All the best!

 

[KonradTO]

thank you for the response! Yes, I agree, adding fish will definitely help, and I think that is the last piece of the puzzle to bring balance back to the force.

Very glad to hear your YWG did well, that encourages me! I would think that if my cleaner shrimp are ok, the tiger pistol would be ok, but I am not sure.

Also, my condolences on having Ostreopsis - they are an absolute nightmare...oof!

All the best!

How did you solve it? In my case blackout+uv got rid of it quite well, plus I added some fish. I noticed unfortunately that a lot of microfauna died off because of it
Also, I think the YWG is not actually a sand sifter, they do it sometimes but usually they do it for moving sand around and not for feeding. That's why they probably won't suffer much from dinos.