The thing is, unless I try something drastic like double my rocks, the dinos are just going to cover the rock that I add and smother it out. Unless I add it to my sump but then it's probably not much different than adding bacteria no? I really want to know what the dark brown (almost black) stuff is. I have a feeling that they're dinos in the cyst stage or dead dinos. When I did the paper towel test I was left with the dinos that regrouped in the water. I added a few drops of dinox just to see what it would do and after a few hours most of it disappeared and I was left with some black bits and green bits.
I would agree with thedon986. I first had Dinos sprout up around Feb 2020 as I ramped up my lights preparing to move my first couple of corals into my 4 month old tank. My nutrients were never low, but the tank was started with dry rock, CaribSea Arag-Alive Special Grade Sand, and Dr. Tim's bottle bacteria. I turned the lights back down to their original settings, but the dinos stuck.
I tried the patient method of reduced water changes, letting the water get a little dirty, and frequent removal. The GHA started dying off and the couple corals in the tanks started to suffer, so I upped my water changes. The GHA came back and the dinos got worse.
After seven months, I decided to try something different. I tired MB7, H2O2, blackouts, Dr Tim's and blackouts, pods, and phyto. Every attempt knocked them back initially, but they always came back. I had dinos covering the sand and GHA on my rocks.
Around 10 months, I got frustrated and decided to give it one more effort before draining and selling the tank. I threw the kitchen sink at it.
1. I added UV even though it isn't effective against Amph
2. Cleaned as much up manually as possible.
3. Did another 72 hour blackout/Dr Tim's
4. Replaced about 5 of 50ish pounds of rock with 15 pounds of rock from KP Aquatics
5. Added a mix n match special from IPSF including wonder mud, live sand activator, amphipods, ulva, etc.
Initially, the dinos stayed, but they were no noticeable dinos on the new live rock or areas of the sand bed where the IPSF items went. I had failed numerous times trying to grow Chaeto and Red Ogo in the sump, but the Ulva took off. Over the next few months, the GHA slowly dies off as my nutrients stabilized, and the dinos started to recede. Somewhere around the 14 months, I went to perform weekly maintenance and the sand was still white. from the previous. I gave it about a month and ramped my lights up to where I wanted them slowly over the next month.
They may not be 100% accurate, but my takeaways from the experience are:
1) You can have Dinos with normal to high nutrients ( Nitrates 10-35, Phosphate .1 -.3)
2) Transplanted diversity is at least somewhat resistant to dinos, if not fully responsible for my tank turning the corner.
3) Going to light for too long on water changes was a bad idea. The GHA died off, an acan receded and died, a candy cane receded, and 2 of 6 polyps bailed. It had no noticeable impact on the dinos in the long run.
I credit getting the nutrients under control and adding diversity for finally tackling the problem. I am a convert and will never start another tank without a decent mix of live rock/dry rock.
The tanks looks so much better,, the coraline has really started to take off on the original dry rock, the candy cane has recovered and a couple of the heads are splitting now. I have a bunch of cool hitchhikers from the rock. A ruby mithrax crab, spaghetti worms, a tunicate, an army of micro brittle stars, a chiton, and a pistol shrimp. I started a frag/qt tank with rock from the DT , it's been up for about 3 weeks zero cycle, no dinos, and about 30 frags and some CUC reinforcements getting ready to go into the DT in another 24 days.
