Dino outbreak preparing to attack! Any advice appreciated

ASIN28 · Feb 10, 2021

I recently over the past week have had a crazy outbreak of Dinos. My phosphates did hit 0 working on getting them back up. I suction off the rocks approx. 2 ties a day and they immediately come back. I am running a 120g tank, up and running 7 months now.
1. Do you guys recommend running a UV for Dinos?
2. I am going to start dosing Microbacter7. How often should I dose to attack this?
3. I’m doing extra feedings to raise phosphate. Anybody have any positive feedback from raising them with NeoPhos?
Any other comments, questions, concerns greatly appreciated!

afuel · Feb 10, 2021

Get nitrates and phosphates off the zero mark. Do not do any water changes. Turn off the lights. I used vibrant to help fight them but it was a long battle and didn’t come without a few coral losses. I installed a uv light as well that I feel like it helped me a lot. I hung it on the back of the tank and used a sicce pump dedicated for it. I pulled water out of the tank not the sump and sent the return right back in the tank. Once I won the battle the uv was installed permanently in a new location

Idoc · Feb 10, 2021

What is your procedure for suctioning off the dinos? ie...are you running through a 10micron sock and returning the water back to the sump, or are you actually pulling the water/dinos out of the tank and then replacing with new saltwater a couple times per day?

1. UV works for some types or dinos and not for others...you really need some microscope pics to determine the type of dino you have in order to come up with an attack plan.
2. Dosing MB7 is typically done every day or so...I don't think this helped one bit with my dino outbreak, though...but, not much did help with my small cell amphidinium dinos. I ended up doing the Elegent Corals dino recipe and that helped to get them under control in my tank.
3. I've never used NeoPhos -- I used to dose Seachem Flourish Phosphorous to increase my PO4.

brian.badge · Feb 10, 2021

You really need to diagnose the type and then treat based on what you have. Do you have a microscope or can get access to one?

saltyhog · Feb 10, 2021

My first recommendation is to get a video of your dinos under a microscope to ID which kind you have. Treatment varies with different strains and you don't want to spend money on treatments that don't apply to your kind of dinos.

Absolutely get your NO3 and PO4 up to 5-10 and 0.06-0.12 respectively.

EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal · Feb 10, 2021

Best long term and natural solution - add live phytoplankton.

ASIN28 · Feb 10, 2021

Idoc said:
What is your procedure for suctioning off the dinos? ie...are you running through a 10micron sock and returning the water back to the sump, or are you actually pulling the water/dinos out of the tank and then replacing with new saltwater a couple times per day?

1. UV works for some types or dinos and not for others...you really need some microscope pics to determine the type of dino you have in order to come up with an attack plan.
2. Dosing MB7 is typically done every day or so...I don't think this helped one bit with my dino outbreak, though...but, not much did help with my small cell amphidinium dinos. I ended up doing the Elegent Corals dino recipe and that helped to get them under control in my tank.
3. I've never used NeoPhos -- I used to dose Seachem Flourish Phosphorous to increase my PO4.

I am suctioning into the sock and replacing the filter sock keeping the water in the tank. I’m holding out on water changes for now.

ASIN28 · Feb 10, 2021

brian.badge said:
You really need to diagnose the type and then treat based on what you have. Do you have a microscope or can get access to one?

I personally do not or know where I would even go to get it done

brian.badge · Feb 10, 2021

ASIN28 said:
I personally do not or know where I would even go to get it done

I bought one but my LFS has one too. Were does the dino accumulate whats it look like?

ASIN28 · Feb 10, 2021

brian.badge said:
I bought one but my LFS has one too. Were does the dino accumulate whats it look like?

It’s all over the rockwork and attaching to corals. Here a few pics, best I got right now

brandon429 · Feb 10, 2021

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

now that's a starting attack.

do all the rest offered after the clean start, that changes the game bigtime by changing the target mass ratios.

all current dinos test runs applied after a rip clean = powerful

currently, most people apply them in the full mass condition. that's a skip cycle rip clean above. it works on any reef, any time, moving homes, upgrades, dinos, cyano, doesn't matter.

sometimes it doesn't work on dinos, but they're 80% reduced in veracity as a side benefit, and at least no green hair algae fuel in the system. the current methods that kill your dinos in-tank contribute to waste compounding in rocks and sand...opposite of above, and that fuels gha by july.

while rip cleaning a 30 gallon vs a 120 is very different degrees of hard work, wanted to show example of someone who didn't see gallonage as a stopping point, they rip cleaned anyway and there's the outcome.

brian.badge · Feb 10, 2021

ASIN28 said:
It’s all over the rockwork and attaching to corals. Here a few pics, best I got right now

Do you have a UV sterilizer? It may be ostreopsis which responds well to UV. Takes 1 Watt per 3 gallons running at 1 to 3 times tank volume per hour. You want the inlet and outlet of the UV in the display tank. If you don't have one I would get a scope on amazon and get them diagnosed before spending on a UV.

Other types respond better to silicate dosing, but without knowing you are shooting in the dark.

ThemytB · Feb 10, 2021

I will do my best to describe how I recently beat my recent dino battle.
Back story- understocked tank, huge upgrade in lighting, small algae bloom, suddenly 0 N03 and 0 P04- Dinos attacked and beat me up for 9 months- tried a few things along with black outs- always returned to full force within 4-6 days of lights back on.

performed 5 day blackout(no covering tank or anything just lights off) , turned skimmer all the way dry and cut from 24 hrs/day to 12 hrs/day- fed fish normal. changed floss in filter cups every morning.
on 4th day of blackout started dosing microbacter 7 heavily- at least twice the dosing rec. daily
also started dosing(supposedly live) phyto- heavy daily, added about a million dollars worth of live pods all the different species I could find local- somewhere around a 20$ bottle every other day to every 3rd day for 2 weeks

Lights on- fed fish heavy-- like hard to do heavy-- - as much food as I could bring myself to put in the tank(note I feed only frozen and nori)
fed stupid heavy for a month while stuffing my new tangs with copious amounts of nori at the same time
tripled my clean up and algae crew
left my skimmer on the dry setting 16/16 but running 24hrs a day
resumed normal 2-3day filter floss changes
dinos did not come back
no water changes for 10 weeks
p04 did get as high as .15- didnt bother with n03 testing as my prior experience showed me the dinos return the second p04 dropped to 0.00 even with elevated n03
about 3 weeks after lights on started feeding closer to normal, but more than I used to ( I think I fed too light- fish seem fatter/healthier and happier).

This may not work for anyone else, and I dont know what species of dino I had, but I am a firm believer in dinos being caused by an irregular balance in this mini eco system, not an imbalance, just a bad balance- I approached them the last time just thinking I need to foul out the current balance in the tank and then as it reestablishes, push it in the direction I want it to go.

Its been about 3 months now with no signs of dinos and everything in my tank is looking better than ever, maybe I just got lucky the last time, or maybe there is something to the balance theory.

Idoc · Feb 10, 2021

ASIN28 said:
I am suctioning into the sock and replacing the filter sock keeping the water in the tank. I’m holding out on water changes for now.

Ok, but you need to be suctioning into a 10 micron sock (or less)...I believe all dinos can go through a regular 100-200 micron sock. So if using a regular filter sock, the dinos are just going back into the system.

ASIN28 · Feb 12, 2021

brian.badge said:
Do you have a UV sterilizer? It may be ostreopsis which responds well to UV. Takes 1 Watt per 3 gallons running at 1 to 3 times tank volume per hour. You want the inlet and outlet of the UV in the display tank. If you don't have one I would get a scope on amazon and get them diagnosed before spending on a UV.

Other types respond better to silicate dosing, but without knowing you are shooting in the dark.

Got a scope, and ID what I 99% believe go be ostreopsis