Got the dreaded Dino’s

[SteelRain]

Woke up today to find dinos in the tank. I’ve got kind of a unique situation so I was wondering if anyone had any tips to beat these suckers back.

Here’s my tank parameters:
Salinity: 35
Alkalinity: 10.2
Calcium: 400
Magnesium: 1500
Nitrate: 0.0
Phosphate: .23

My nitrates have been at zero / undetectable for the last month. I turned off my skimmer and removed my chemipure. I’ve started dosing neonitro at a rate of .5ppm a day but I’ve seen zero upticks in nitrates. I’ve been feeding an insane amount as well - probably double what I normally do. My phosphate has been below a .08 for the last month until today when it spiked to .23 - I run a media reactor with GFO and carbon. I’m confident that my dinos are a result of low nitrates. All the info I’ve read is tailored to people with low nitrates and phosphates. Any tips to raise nitrates / beat back the dinos? Also why are my phosphates high with undetectable nitrates? Thanks

 

[thedon986]

Keep up with dosing NeoNitro. You can up it to 1ppm per day and see what that does.

It’s easier for phosphates to get out of control than nitrate.

 

[Lps_lover12]

In order to beat Dino’s you need to get a scope of them to determine which ones you have. Different species have different methods of beating them

 

[SteelRain]

In order to beat Dino’s you need to get a scope of them to determine which ones you have. Different species have different methods of beating them

Isn’t there there only one type that comes from low nitrates?

 

[thedon986]

Are they only on the sand? Sand and rocks? Only rocks?

 

[brandon429]

The most important factor is missing

Tank size, gallonage

Only large tanks have to keep dinos and risk other outbreaks by dosing nutrients

Nanos have a special way of getting rid of them quickly: without ID without testing, without dosing nutrients and getting massive gha outbreaks

 

[Lps_lover12]

Isn’t there there only one type that comes from low nitrates?

It could be from something else. Whatever you do don’t do a blackout, they don’t work and only provide temporary relief. You have to get to the root cause

 

[SteelRain]

The most important factor is missing

Tank size, gallonage

Only large tanks have to keep dinos and risk other outbreaks by dosing nutrients

Nanos have a special way of getting rid of them quickly: without ID without testing, without dosing nutrients and getting massive gha outbreaks

This is my nano, IM 25g lagoon. I’ve got a uv sterilizer coming in today that I will swap with the skimmer.

Edit: I’ll put other info here. It’s definitely Dino’s. They’re on the rock and the sand. They have little air bubbles at the top of the algae strands and the sand looks like snot. At night all the algae disappears into the water column and re-emerges when the lights come back on. My root cause of the issue is my nitrates being so low. I’ve starved the beneficial bacteria. Does anyone have any long term tips to up my nitrates? I’ve never had a problem with low nitrates before. I am currently dosing neonitrates and microbater7. This tank is new but I performed a tank transfer when I set it up - same rock and a little bit of seed sand that I had for over a year coming from the tank I upgraded from. I dosed turbo start and ammonia and tested and all of the ammonia was gone within 24hours - I barely had a cycle.

 

[pal98111]

Add copepods. They eat Dinos. It worked for me in my 10 gallon. One bottle worked great. The fish like them too.

 

[brandon429]

The assessment of starved bacteria and nitrates being the cause isn't correct. Try all those options first
Right before you take down the tank due to continued invasions let me run a rip clean on it to fix it. Nobody will do that first, they follow what the big threads think will work and it gets them full of alternate invasions after months of trial

We like working the hard tanks though it could go so much easier just cleaning the tank during these early stages. Lemme know when ready to fix it

Notice in the 800 page dinos thread in the nuisance algae forum it's not really very many cures at all? They just add stuff for pages and pages and counter invasions are posted, perhaps one cure every 20 pages? That means they don't know what causes dinos or it would be one cure per page.

 

[SteelRain]

The assessment of starved bacteria and nitrates being the cause isn't correct. Try all those options first
Right before you take down the tank due to continued invasions let me run a rip clean on it to fix it. Nobody will do that first, they follow what the big threads think will work and it gets them full of alternate invasions after months of trial

We like working the hard tanks though it could go so much easier just cleaning the tank during these early stages. Lemme know when ready to fix it

Notice in the 800 page dinos thread in the nuisance algae forum it's not really very many cures at all? They just add stuff for pages and pages and counter invasions are posted, perhaps one cure every 20 pages? That means they don't know what causes dinos or it would be one cure per page.

I’ve seen some of your posts over on nano-reefs. How do I go about a rip clean? Thanks for the help

 

[brandon429]

they are ideal because they reduce offending mass -99% right off the bat then you fight against the 1% it’s much more effective

the old methods have you leave all the mass in the tank and try and kill it, this rots all the offending mass down into the sand and rock crevices -if- it can be killed which is only the minority of the time

usually, per the huge dinos thread, all the nutrient guesses and response just fills up the tank with cyano or hair algae

check this procedure collection: seven of the top rip cleans each done the exact same way: tank is taken apart, animals held in totes, rocks cleaned outside the tank, sand is washed 110% outside the tank, the tank itself is wiped clean, all of it is reassembled totally cloudless clean and no recycle happens.
then from the clean condition, you begin to fight the dinos with much reduced tank lighting intensity for two months, continued siphon removal of any growths, introduce pods at that point, install UV etc. the removal comes before any of the corrective steps

can you post a pic of your tank here so we can see how it presents

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Idech]

You can’t beat dinos if you don’t know what kind you have. Different methods need to be used depending on the type.

Get a cheap microscope from Amazon and take pictures so someone can ID your type. Then you can start researching solutions and we can help.

People often buy this microscope. It’s cheap and does the job :

AmScope M150C / M150C-I 40X-1000X All-Metal Optical Glass Lenses Cordless LED Student Biological​