Help with Dinoflagellates!

[Zach W]

So I have been dealing with dino's for several weeks now and want to start a proper course of action to get rid of them. Originally I thought they were diatoms because my tank is still young (6 mo) but they are stringy and rust colored with air bubbles which seems to be the tell tale sign of dino's. My Tank info and parameters are as follows:
Tank: IM Fusion 20
Light: NanoBox Duo plus M
Pumps: Sicce 1.5 & Aqamai KPS
Filtration: Filter Floss & Chemipure Elite
Salinity: 1.025 (refractometer)
Alkalinity: 8.1 (Hanna)
Phos: 0.04 (Hanna)
Calcium: 420 (Aquaforest)
Nitrate: ~10 (Redsea)
Nitrite: 0 (Redsea)
Ammonia: 0 (Redsea)
pH: 8.2 (Redsea)

I have been religious with 2-3 gallon weekly water changes thinking this was a different type of algae but now that I am realizing that it is most likely dino's, it seems as though I have been shooting myself in the foot. Why does fresh saltwater promote the growth of dino's? I do not currently run a skimmer but yesterday I ordered the reefglass skimmer and plan to get that running asap. I also will be dedicating one of the chambers in the back to a refugium to try and out compete the dino's (also ordered the light yesterday). From what I read dino's seem to spring up when there is a gap in beneficial bacteria in the tank as well. I am thinking I have two options to best go about this"

1.) Stop water changes, dose more beneficial bacteria (Biospira), continue to run chemipure, run skimmer and get refugium running. introduce more pods which feed on dino's. Be patient and let nature run its course

2.) 72 hour blackout followed by DinoX treatment.

How have those out there conquered dino's and what would your recommendations be?

 

[TexasReefer82]

So I have been dealing with dino's for several weeks now and want to start a proper course of action to get rid of them. Originally I thought they were diatoms because my tank is still young (6 mo) but they are stringy and rust colored with air bubbles which seems to be the tell tale sign of dino's. My Tank info and parameters are as follows:
Tank: IM Fusion 20
Light: NanoBox Duo plus M
Pumps: Sicce 1.5 & Aqamai KPS
Filtration: Filter Floss & Chemipure Elite
Salinity: 1.025 (refractometer)
Alkalinity: 8.1 (Hanna)
Phos: 0.04 (Hanna)
Calcium: 420 (Aquaforest)
Nitrate: ~10 (Redsea)
Nitrite: 0 (Redsea)
Ammonia: 0 (Redsea)
pH: 8.2 (Redsea)

I have been religious with 2-3 gallon weekly water changes thinking this was a different type of algae but now that I am realizing that it is most likely dino's, it seems as though I have been shooting myself in the foot. Why does fresh saltwater promote the growth of dino's? I do not currently run a skimmer but yesterday I ordered the reefglass skimmer and plan to get that running asap. I also will be dedicating one of the chambers in the back to a refugium to try and out compete the dino's (also ordered the light yesterday). From what I read dino's seem to spring up when there is a gap in beneficial bacteria in the tank as well. I am thinking I have two options to best go about this"

1.) Stop water changes, dose more beneficial bacteria (Biospira), continue to run chemipure, run skimmer and get refugium running. introduce more pods which feed on dino's. Be patient and let nature run its course

2.) 72 hour blackout followed by DinoX treatment.

How have those out there conquered dino's and what would your recommendations be?

When my tank was new I had a dino outbreak and the product called Vibrant from UWC fixed it for me. I wouldn't use it long term and I'd keep an eye on your nitrate and phosphate to make sure they don't go down to zero. There are existing threads on here about Vibrant that are full of information.

 

[Darwin stinton]

Reading this other post's I'm confused. We don't want high phosphate (po4) or high nitrates and to get rid of dino's we need to lower them, Correct? But are we also saying lower but do not let them go to zero, and if so what happens?

 

[TexasReefer82]

Reading this other post's I'm confused. We don't want high phosphate (po4) or high nitrates and to get rid of dino's we need to lower them, Correct? But are we also saying lower but do not let them go to zero, and if so what happens?

Sorry for the late reply to this. Our corals need some nitrates and phosphates in the water to feed their own symbiotic algae and also, in my opinion, to produce certain protective pigments. It seems that corals are able to hold a small reserve of these nutrients but when their concentration in the water column is zero for an extended period the corals can show show signs of distress such as poor color, bleaching, and in the case of acropora STN.

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

If you are serious about beating any matted invader in a nano, there's 16 pages of constant examples all free info/strategies shown across all tanks


You rip clean them out, without delay.

Any form of partial water change is opposite of how we manage tanks above

Post a pic, you might have cyano not dinos but genus doesn't matter. We don't ID, nor ask for test parameters. We skip cycle clean everything there. If you don't want to rip clean then dosing stuff might work, but if you do want to then it's easy to do in any nano. Only large tanks have to endure invasions, nano keepers can opt out in the first week.