I have a 2 1/2 year old 105g peninsula tank and for the past year I have been battling dinos. I've watched so many videos on dino identification & eradication, bought a microscope and attempted to ID my dino variant, manually removed through bi-weekly water changes with a 1/2" siphon hose, shut down refugium, etc., all to no avail. The root cause of my issue was, I believe, caused by the fact that I had 0.0 nitrates and phosphates. I fed massive amounts of food, cut my water changes down to a month+, did not regularly change my filter socks, fed reef roids in heavy doses, etc., and related. The dinos eventually overtook my SPS and they are just generally one of the ugliest looking thing in a reef tank. I tried manually dosing nitrate and phosphate, but I wasn't able to do this consistently with travel and other work/family responsibilities and I was seriously considering hanging it up.
About a month ago, I was in my LFS lamenting on my problem and my anxiety re: adding any additional corals. One of the guys in the store who I really respect recommended that I dose phosphate. He highlighted the importance of all of the other parameters, including nitrates, but he said if he could pick the single most significant two that promote healthy coral growth and dino elimination, it would be steady dKH and phosphate. Several months ago I bought a Red Sea ReefDose4 and was only using three of the pumps (Alk, Mg and Ca). Even though I knew dosing phosphate was in the cards, I was always hesitant because I didn't want it to get out of hand and create algae issues. However, I was at the end of my rope and, having an open pump, I figured I had nothing to lose. I started at 5 ml/day and have gradually bumped that up to 7ml and my phosphate is holding steady at 0.05. Interestingly, by doing nothing else, I started having detectable nitrates (currently 0.29). Not exactly the Golden Ratio and I know that there are many that run tanks with much higher nitrates/phosphates, but almost immediately I saw signs of the dinos disappearing. And now, four weeks later, my dinos seems to be completely gone!
I am using Brightwell's NeoPhos and, at 7 ml/day, the entire bottle lasts almost 2 1/2 months. I'm not sure if I'll ever wean my tank off of P04 dosing, but this was such a simple fix (for me) to such a terrible issue. If you have dinos, before following the popular videos/instructions that almost require you to quit your job to implement, I'd recommend a simple PO4 dosing regimen: not much to lose.
On a related note, Red Sea's ReefDose4 is my first dosing pump. Although I have no basis of comparison to other dosing pumps, the unit itself, calibration, app that controls everything, etc., is incredible. The ability to customize dosing schedules & volumes that might appeal to the most experience aquarist as well as the easy to use/intuitive 24 regular doses at the top of every hour is just bulletproof and I would give it a 10/10.
About a month ago, I was in my LFS lamenting on my problem and my anxiety re: adding any additional corals. One of the guys in the store who I really respect recommended that I dose phosphate. He highlighted the importance of all of the other parameters, including nitrates, but he said if he could pick the single most significant two that promote healthy coral growth and dino elimination, it would be steady dKH and phosphate. Several months ago I bought a Red Sea ReefDose4 and was only using three of the pumps (Alk, Mg and Ca). Even though I knew dosing phosphate was in the cards, I was always hesitant because I didn't want it to get out of hand and create algae issues. However, I was at the end of my rope and, having an open pump, I figured I had nothing to lose. I started at 5 ml/day and have gradually bumped that up to 7ml and my phosphate is holding steady at 0.05. Interestingly, by doing nothing else, I started having detectable nitrates (currently 0.29). Not exactly the Golden Ratio and I know that there are many that run tanks with much higher nitrates/phosphates, but almost immediately I saw signs of the dinos disappearing. And now, four weeks later, my dinos seems to be completely gone!
I am using Brightwell's NeoPhos and, at 7 ml/day, the entire bottle lasts almost 2 1/2 months. I'm not sure if I'll ever wean my tank off of P04 dosing, but this was such a simple fix (for me) to such a terrible issue. If you have dinos, before following the popular videos/instructions that almost require you to quit your job to implement, I'd recommend a simple PO4 dosing regimen: not much to lose.
On a related note, Red Sea's ReefDose4 is my first dosing pump. Although I have no basis of comparison to other dosing pumps, the unit itself, calibration, app that controls everything, etc., is incredible. The ability to customize dosing schedules & volumes that might appeal to the most experience aquarist as well as the easy to use/intuitive 24 regular doses at the top of every hour is just bulletproof and I would give it a 10/10.
