Am I dealing with Dino's?

[dragon99]

Things have deteriorated rapidly. Last week everything was fine and looking better than ever. Today I realize I'm being overrun.

 

[jsker]

I am thinking more the red slime/cyano. Time to break out the turkey baster, check you phosphates, clean the skimmer daily, change the filter socks every other day. That is how I finally concurred mine. Cyano lives on phosphates and silica. One other think to check is you RO filter, and TDS

 

[dragon99]

I blasted all of the corals that have the brown strings, but within minutes they are starting to build up again. It appears to be actively killing the corals as the spots where it attaches are bleached.

This started last week during a Chemiclean dose. I did back to back doses at 1.25x recommended (1g per 75g). I started seeing this brown stuff the second or third day in. I assumed at first it was just a diatom bloom, but it's gotten really aggressive in the past 2 days and is killing corals.

Nitrates - 4-8ppm steady for the last 2 months, slightly higher before that
PO4 - .01-.02 for the last couple months
Alk - 7.85 avg, has flucuated slightly, got up to 8.5 last week due to all of the WC's after Chemiclean

RO is 7TDS, DI TDS is 0 and always has been. I was getting high silicates on Triton results last year so I added Spectrapure DI buster cartride after the mixed bed DI.

 

[Velcro]

I blasted all of the corals that have the brown strings, but within minutes they are starting to build up again. It appears to be actively killing the corals as the spots where it attaches are bleached.

This started last week during a Chemiclean dose. I did back to back doses at 1.25x recommended (1g per 75g). I started seeing this brown stuff the second or third day in. I assumed at first it was just a diatom bloom, but it's gotten really aggressive in the past 2 days and is killing corals.

Nitrates - 4-8ppm steady for the last 2 months, slightly higher before that
PO4 - .01-.02 for the last couple months
Alk - 7.85 avg, has flucuated slightly, got up to 8.5 last week due to all of the WC's after Chemiclean

RO is 7TDS, DI TDS is 0 and always has been. I was getting high silicates on Triton results last year so I added Spectrapure DI buster cartride after the mixed bed DI.

Looks like dinos. They commonly pop up when you kill their competitors. Do they diminish once lights are out for a while?

 

[dragon99]

Looks like dinos. They commonly pop up when you kill their competitors. Do they diminish once lights are out for a while?

Appears diminished, especially on the sand bed this morning.

Out of the frying pan into the fire.

 

[Velcro]

Check out my thread on UV.

 

[jd371]

That's exactly what happened to me a few moths ago. I ran a some Chemiclean for Cyano and when that was gone the Dino's took over. Lost 3 Acro colonies. I took my UV that I had in storage and set it up to run over night when the lights are out and the Dino's are in the free swimming stage. Right before lights out I would take the turkey baster and blast off the rocks of Dino's to get them in the water column for the UV. I did this for about 2 weeks until I was Dino free.

 

[dragon99]

Thanks, @Velcro @jd371 I ordered a UV last night and will hopefully get it going this weekend.

Nice to know there's hope.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Thanks, @Velcro @jd371 I ordered a UV last night and will hopefully get it going this weekend.

Nice to know there's hope.

There are other positive options now too. Just in case the UV doesn't work. Not saying it won't but just in the off chance it doesn't.

 

[Gramps13]

You could also look into H2O2 dosing. That's how I got rid of my Dino issue, again after using chemiclean for cyano.

 

[ncaldwell]

I had zero issues with h2o2 and sps. I was dosing 10 mil morning and night for about 2 weeks in a 120, along with a couple blackouts.

 

[Velcro]

If it's a dino that goes into the water column at night i qould 100% try UV first. I'm convinced that blackouts killed my SPS more than the dinos themselves ever did and I always lost inverts with h202 dosing.

 

[ncaldwell]

I wonder why it goes well for some and terrible for others. Sand sifting star, Halloween urchin, snails, fire shrimp all perfectly fine for a month of dosing. But others have huge die offs

 

[dragon99]

Well I came home yesterday from being gone for a couple days and found that many of the strands had turned a whitish/gray and the brown strands were far fewer throughout the tank. I dosed some Vibrant on Friday evening before I left because... I felt like I needed to do something. Maybe it helped? Maybe it's not dino's? Maybe the higher pH over the weekend had something to do with it?

I didn't get the UV hooked up last night because I didn't have any 3/4" tubing handy, so I'll be stopping at Lowes on the way home tonight and getting that hooked up tonight.

 

[jd371]

Sounds like the Vibrant might be working for you. I tried it and it didn't help with my Dino problem, what works for some doesn't work for others. My last resort was to hook up the UV again. I used to have it plumbed under the stand but it was always in the way when I would be working in there, and I was forbidden from plumbing it outside the stand so I had to remove it.
I wanted to use it when I got Dino's so I hooked it up to a canister filter I had. With this set up I can have it up and running or take it down within 10 minutes.

 

[dragon99]

I guess it was the Vibrant. Didn't even hook up the UV last night because there was almost no sign of the dino's anymore. In the span of 72hrs I went from a complete infestation to almost no trace of them having existed.

I did a water change last night and vacuumed the sand and it pulled out a fair amount of brownish funk, but the strings are gone.