Hi Chuk,
I just became a member and am setting up a reef tank now. I am a chemist/biochemist with knowledge in microbiology and am astonished at the number of snake oils or proprietary products being sold in the hobby. I think I.can pretty find the 'secret formula' for any product. It took me about 30 minutes to track down the chemical structure of the active ingredient (In Germany apparently all products have to registered with the Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschultz und Arbeitsmedizin. Fortunately, I took German in college as their database is only in German and was able to find the CAS number for the active ingredient, which allowed me to find the structure.) It turns out Dino-X is just a commercial algacide used in swimming pools. I have pasted the structure below along with the CAS number (every unique compound is assigned a CAS number). This is a polymer made of repeating units called monomers (this is depicted in parentheses in the structure below, the n refers to the number of monomers, which is typically variable) I can probably purchase solution of this for less than 1/1000 the cost that Fauna Marine sells it ($50 for 500 mL). I would probably want to first compare the composition and concentration of the Fauna Marine solution to a bulk product from a chemical manufacturer and perform quality control to confirm purity, but in theory this isn't too much work. Dino-X is used to in the hobby to clear dinoflaggelates and doesn't work for all dinos (there are over 1200 marine dinoflaggelates species). Corals of course are symbionts with algae (including dinoflaggelates - a type of algae), bacteria, viruses and even fungi. It's no surprise that Dino-X may kill some species of coral that house symbiotic algae and dinoflaggelates). Dino-X has broader antimicrobial activity as well and is probably bactericidal to some beneficial bacteria. Hope this helps. Let me know if you want to know about other products.
Courtney
