Dino tank?

Waters · Oct 14, 2015

I am considering turning my 10 gallon quarantine tank into a dino tank so that I can throw some treatments at it to see what works and what doesn't. I would pull a few of the smaller pieces of live rock out of my DT (which sadly contains dinos

). I could test lighting, PH, medications, etc. without harming my DT. Does this seem possible? I have already tried 3 day lights out, bacteria dosing, increased skimming, and increased water changes with no changes to my DT. My biggest fear is that I won't be able to get the crap to grow when I want it to lol.

Tahoe61 · Oct 14, 2015

What worked for me

No water changes.
Clean substrate, rocks and corals daily with turkey baster, clean mechanical filtration after it settles.
pH 8.4/24/7 with kalk closely monitored.
Complete black out of 4 days.
Once the lights went back on as soon as I saw dino forming lights went out and I again cleaned the dino out daily.

I battled dino for about 3 months. The above interventions are what worked for me.

The only thing that did poorly when all was said and done were my zoanthids, clams and sps recovered nicely.

Waters · Oct 14, 2015

I have tried the above(doing 3 day blackouts rather than 4) along with the twice daily siphoning. My PH is naturally between 8.2-8.4. The only thing I didn't do was continue the blackouts as soon as I saw the dinos forming. What is the minimum amount of time you had between blackouts?

gmastr85 · Oct 14, 2015

I think a combination of things are important. The most important being raising PH slowly to 8.5-8.6. Also a 3 day blackout period seemed to help me. Other things that contribute to getting rid of it are vacuuming the sand bed's top layer right before the blackout, not doing water changes for a few weeks, the use of high capacity GFO, increasing flow along the sand bed, and increased skimming.

I had luck with doing all of these basically at the same time. What seemed to not help was doing water changes; and no medications seemed to work. I also think keeping your moonlights turned off (blue LED's that stay on all night) can help out.

twilliard · Oct 14, 2015

I wish I had dinos to grow out.
I do the same thing, grow out and find cures but I use a much smaller tank to do so as the tank needs a complete wash out between pests.
Send me some! I will pay all costs

Its strange that people are not willing to ship out stuff they don't want

gmastr85 · Oct 14, 2015

Not sure dino's would survive a shipment in the dark. I no longer have any.. I don't know that a cure is possible.. It's basically the same as red tide in the ocean.

Waters · Oct 16, 2015

These Dinos would survive in the dark lol. I have already done 3 blackouts over a couple of months with them coming back stronger than ever. I am going to throw them in a 10 gallon.....right off the bat, I will be able to see if 0 nutrients in the water has an effect since I will use newly mixed, 0 TDS saltwater. Thanks guys for the suggestions.

Too bad you weren't closer Twilliard.....you can have all the Dinos you want

twilliard · Oct 16, 2015

Ya not too many people on here from Washington
I need to start advertising R2R

Addicted2ACRO's · Oct 16, 2015

Following along ---
I started having Dino as well. My problem is I can't get my PH to stay over 8.2 for long periods of time. When I add Kalk my Calcium goes thru the roof. How can I increase PH to above 8.5 without increasing Calcium levels?