Anyone successfully wait out Dino’s?

[Nubomb]

Realizing there are different strains...I don’t have a microscope at the moment so not sure which form I have. They are generally not in the sand bed and mostly on my rock and frags - reddish slime/snot like strings that grow up towards the light during the day with bubbles on them. They go away at night.

My nutrients bottomed out but have since elevated them and stopped water changed.

Tank is only 5 months old. Haven’t lost any fish or CUC. Corals aren’t the happiest but hanging in there.

The Dino’s haven’t gotten worse since I elevated the nutrients. Can I wait this out As tank matures or am I in denial?

 

[SMSREEF]

I would suggest going after them rather than waiting. For better ID you could get a microscope and post a pic so you know what your dealing with.

My suggestion is based on what worked for me...

Since you have the kind that disappear into the water column, I would suggest to keep doing what your doing with higher nutrients and:
1. Get a UV sterilizer for the tank (at least 1 watt per 3 gallon). There are some cheaper options too. I used the green machine.
2. Dose some bacteria (microbacter 7, etc). Turn UV off for 24 hours when you do this.
3. Put some copepods in
4. Dose Phytoplankton.

 

[brandon429]

How many gallons? no nano reef has to endure dinos that’s only for large, inaccessible tanks that can’t simply clean them out the right way in one pass. size of tank should determine initial approach

large tank: random months to fix.
nano-100% clear by tomorrow, you spend next few weeks lightly hand guiding out due to your delay, it comes under full control soon.

post pic of your tank, from that we can see unspoken details

have you ever noticed that the smaller tanks get, the less dinos manifest? it arrives at this: no pico reefs have ongoing dinos though they keep all the same corals as large tanks.

somewhere in the middle of size and willing access is a one day fix for you, if we're talking 10-40 gallons or so

 

[andrewey]

Sent you a message- if you can mail out a sample, we can ID it for you/send back some photos of what you're dealing with.

 

[SkinnyMcGinny]

I fought an epic dino battle, went on for about 6-8 months as I recall (I try to forget it). I tried a lot of things, and failed with most. Definitely the hardest battle I had in the hobby. Ultimately, what worked for me (I think) was actually increasing nutrients, getting the dinos to "convert" or be taken over by some kind of green algae, and then a squad of Mexican turbo snails munched it down. VERY satisfying win. btw, my dinos looked ugly as hell, brown snotty slime all over, but didn't really effect fish or corals.

 

[ramboisreal]

I fought an epic dino battle, went on for about 6-8 months as I recall (I try to forget it). I tried a lot of things, and failed with most. Definitely the hardest battle I had in the hobby. Ultimately, what worked for me (I think) was actually increasing nutrients, getting the dinos to "convert" or be taken over by some kind of green algae, and then a squad of Mexican turbo snails munched it down. VERY satisfying win. btw, my dinos looked ugly as hell, brown snotty slime all over, but didn't really effect fish or corals.

Same boat as you. I battled this stuff for almost a year. Ultimately what helped me, similarly, was increasing nitrates and phosphates and a UV sterilizer. I tried ignoring it but it got worst until I actually did something about it.

 

[BenitaSolo]

As people mentioned above it is important to get a microscope to ID what kind of dino you are dealing with. It sounds like you have it narrowed down some, but it's important.
I more or less waited out amphidinium. They are the sand dwelling type and are non toxic. I upped my nutrients and did smaller water changes. The minimum amount of water exchanged to removed satisfactory amount of dinos. I spent a lot of time each week with a small hose sucking the dino off he sand. Eventually I just kind of noticed they were were gone...

I also stopped running carbon at this time! My tanks HATES BRS Rox 0.8 carbon for some reason.

This was about a three month process. I had i seen a issues with the live stock, I would have changed my approach.

 

[Wampatom]

A related question is how heavy does the infestation has to get before it is a danger to the CUC, fish, or coral? I have a mild (or so I think) case of Ostreopsis. Can I wait to see what happens? I have noticed the coral seems to have more sweeper tentacles in the morning.

 

[andrewey]

It's really hard to say, but I would advise not waiting it out with ostreopsis. I've had cases that weren't so bad and they progressively got worse and my current case where I started treatment while it was extremely mild, and yet it still managed to kill a bunch of my CUC and 2 corals before I turned the tide. I wouldn't risk it personally and would start immediately!

 

[ramboisreal]

A related question is how heavy does the infestation has to get before it is a danger to the CUC, fish, or coral? I have a mild (or so I think) case of Ostreopsis. Can I wait to see what happens? I have noticed the coral seems to have more sweeper tentacles in the morning.

I don’t know that they’ll go away on their own. You could increase your nutrients and see if other, more manageable algae outgrow the dinos. An algae that your clean up crew can take care of. Under the right conditions though, dinos will take over your tank and suffocate your coral.

 

[Mike N]

What is your phosphate and nitrate levels? As others have mentioned, raising the phos/nitrate will absolutely help in the battle against dinos. That method alone allowed me to overcome dinos in about 2-3 weeks.

 

[acro-ed]

Short answer: "yes."

I had Ostreopsis ovata years ago now. I tried peroxide, blackouts, etc. I did not try a UV, however. What worked was turning off the skimmer, feeding more, and lowering the lights. I also added some funky rocks from my other tank's sump and swished them around in there to get all the bacteria-laden detritus dispersed in the water. I added some macro algae which I think helped out-compete the dino's. Ultimately they went away and have not returned (it's been several years).

 

[GeoSquid]

I'm close to winning! I've been fighting them for about 4-5 months or so and I think I'm about 90% there. I had decided to treat the dino's just like a normal algae succession. I was running a ,somewhat undersized, algae turf scrubber and noticed the Dino's really liked to grow on it. So, I decided to add an additional large ATS to the system and it seems to have worked pretty well. The Dino's have mostly moved from my display to the ATS. I'm not sure if this would be winning but it's so much better than it was. I was having to blow off corals and rocks multiple times a day. Now, I need to blow the coral off about every three days, rocks are pretty good and only a little bit left on the sand by the end of the photo period.

 

[Nubomb]

Thanks everyone!

Lost power today so it will be a little while before I can get a picture with some Dino growth. My tank is an EVO 13.5G.

Nitrates around 10. Phosphate sub 0.25 (API test kit - I know I know).

 

[Nubomb]

Not as much snot today. Lights were on a few hours less due to power outage.

 

[waleedreef]

keep nitrate 8-10 and phosphate 0.03 - 0.1 ppm.

 

[GeoSquid]

My Dino scrubber. $35 diy

 

[anth]

Im currently at the tail end of my dino outbreak. Heres what i have done so far.
A week before the outbreak I did a huge water change and accidentally switched on my rowaphos reactor which had been sitting full of rowaphos and water for a few weeks. I didnt think anything of it at the time but a week later i sent away an icp test and it showed very high iron and a very small but detectable amount of copper.
They suggested detox and water changes.
I couldnt get detox so i had to wait.
A couple of days later my sandbed was smothered in dino’s and they would not budge.
Bought a uv steriliser
Syphoned some of it out
Detox arrived so used it
Did a 3 day blackout and every trace of it disappeared and my phosphate rose from 0.02-0.25 and nitrate from 1-7.5 due to algae and dino die off
Used lanthanum to reduce phosphate
A light dusting reappeared 2 days ago so done a 60-70 percent water change
There was no sign of it coming back yesterday but started using gfo to absorb the rest of the excesses phosphate and any silicates
Will update

 

[Sallstrom]

We had an outbreak in a large coral propagation system a couple of years ago at work. Did the recommended black out and treatment, but it didn't work at all. We didn't have that much fish and the nutrients were low. We decided to add nutrients, skim less(we had an overkill sized skimmer), feed more andto don't look that close at the tanks for a while. It worked But I can't remember if it took a month or three. It was no quick fix.

 

[Reeferbadness]

I am at the tail end of a Dino outbreak in mt 150G tank I have thrown everything at it including:
- 3 day black out
- raised PH to 8.5
- Hyrdogen Peroxide dosing every night (1 ml to 10 gallons)
- Syphoned extra out of the sand bed regularly (small water changes 3x a week)
After the black out, the Dino's were in retreat for about a week but came back. Hdyrogen Peroxide seemed to do very little.
Then I started using Vibrant. This stuff is the real deal. I upped my dosage from the recommended 1x per week to 2x per week using 1 ML / 10 G . After about the 3rd dose the Dino's were in full retreat. Now on 5th dose and they are almost gone. The entire battle has been about 2 months.