How did YOU beat Dinos?

[JohnnyDreadlock]

Hopes and Prayers. Juuust kidding. I used phytofeast, oysterfeast, and fed heavier. That was for ostreopsis and haven’t had much come back aside for some Chrysophytes. Now all clean again.

 

[Sens2006]

Hi All,

I beat dino's in a few weeks. had an outbreak. The dino breakout followed after an breakout of bubble algae, i could not beat it with crabs and manual removal. So i finally used Vibrant, doubled the dosis on the bottle and the Bubble algae was gone within 6 weeks. my nitrate and phosphate were very low before the bubble algae removal. But continued to be low nitrate 2,5 (salifert) phospate 0.01 (redsea). the corals looked great and i was happy for a week.

Then my ICP test came in and it said my silicate was really high. so i added a silicate remover and an extra RO filter. Resulting in the no silicate. Then the dino's swooped in. It was a matter of 2 days and the tank looked bad.

I started to run over Activated carbon. increased feeding to lift the nitrate and phosphate. The nitrate rose to 20 but the phosphate remained below 0.01. (turns out I needed to add 0.06 phosphate a day to keep it at 0.02 and i am still adding 0.02 now to keep it at 0.08). The species identification lead to a species that goes in the water column. I got help from fellow reefers and i did manual removal, add bacteria, add copodes and add live phyto. this did not remove the dino's but made sure it did not get worse.

The next phase was removal/dimming of all light except blue's. This did nothing... then a total blackout for 3 days. During the blackout i kept adding food, phyto and bacteria. After the blackout it looked great! and then 1 week later i was busy and forgot to feed in the morning... you can guess it another breakout.

This made me decide to buy a UV 36w. After watching the BRS episode I stubbornly placed it in my sump because its ugly... the effect was noticeable withing 24h. The dino's where only left on the back wall.. again I was happy. and I decided to turn of the UV during the day... bad decision... another outbreak. This ticked me off, and I decided to plug in the UV to the main tank and help with manual removal. Now 2 removals in and My lights are back to normal intensity en settings and I can't see any dino's. So So far so good. I will keep adding bacteria and in 2 weeks I will try to lower the UV to the sump again.

Well that is my story, in short, the balance was going. There was no competition left, I removed bubble algae, I had no phosphate in the system and the bacteria lost the fight..

for pictures check my own post, greetings from the Netherlands!

 

[vlad2spinn]

I was fighting dinos for months. I tried everything: Hydrogen peroxide, blackouts, raising nutrients, dosing bacteria. Some worked better than other but I was not able to totally eliminate them until I installed large UV. After installing UV, dinos were gone within days. IMO properly sized or oversized UV is the way to go from the very beginning.

 

[BillFish Coral Lover]

Help? I've been fighting Ostreopsis Ovata since early spring and nothing has worked. Tried everything, multiple blackouts, raising nutrients, adding oversized UV, Dino-X, H2O2, copepods, phyto, 10 micron filter sticks -everything I've read.

I'm especially frustrated because the Ovata go into the water column and put a 40w Aqua Ultraviolet (tank is 120) and that hasn't helped. After all this is just worse than ever!
Any idea what flow rate I should use on the UV? I've tried 150 gph. 300 gph, 700 gph and even 1350 gph.
What gives? Beside my endurance and ability to stay in the hobby?

 

[ReefNBeer]

I tried it all. Black out, and UV for 3 days solved my issue almost effortlessly. Just make sure once it is beat that you dont let your nutrients bottom out!

 

[Quietman]

Ugh....never did beat them. Only thing I found that worked was blackouts but only temporarily. I finally got them to retreat permanently after buying a UV filter (properly sized) at 8x tank turnover. Also stopped carbon dosing (wasn't the dosing but it was too effective - needed higher phosphates once they showed up).

Now for normal running, I dial down the UV to 3-4x (flow rate limits of sump) and make sure my PO4 stay above .05 (up to .1+).

If I dial down the UV rate too far - they start to be visible. When I knock back my PO4 (rarely need to now as I've changed food to frozen) I keep my lights off for a few days or I end up with having to crank the UV flow back up.

They're still there, no doubt. But I've been managing them successfully since July this year (meaning not visible). But - just a couple months ago, knocked down my PO4 (was up to .3 - prior to food change) - and Hello!, we're back! Luckily, turned off lights for two days - cranked up the UV flow and gone within 24 hours. I may have done water change - but that's just a knee jerk reaction to anything bad. Week later dialed back the UV again and it's been fine since.

Next tank will have a closed loop flow just for UV so I can adjust flow for algae or protozoa as needed. Since it's now tied into sump main flow - it's kind of a pain and at top flow rates needed for dinos (8x), the overflow piping and valve is pushed far beyond limit for quiet ops.

BTW - several species - mine was Ostreopsis (one of the worst) - killed almost everything before I got it managed. Microscope was very useful. Some species do not have life cycle phase in the water column, which is why I feel UV worked. That said, I doubt I ever run a tank without a properly sized UV filter with the ability to adjust flow to cover the requisite exposures for types of targeted organisms.

 

[Cory]

I way overdosed hydrogen peroxide and trust me, it doesnt work, the dinos always camw back. I added 10ml of 35% h202 to my 125 gallons every second day. While it kills a lot of dinos, they keep coming back. Uv got rid of them.

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Ongoing, but I'll post here when I figure it out. Nasty amphidinium infestation at the moment.

 

[Heart of Dixie]

Had an amphidinium outbreak. I increased N03 up to 8 to 10, P04 to .04, added a bacteria package and they were gone in a few weeks.

 

[Silly clownfish]

It took a very long time, but I may have it beat in my 30g (just jinxed myself). No UV, raised pH, stopped skimming, stopped water changes (except with dirty water from changes in my 75 g that had relatively high nitrate and phosphate), dosed microbacter, nitrate, and phosphate. Went through the cyano phase as dinos went away, made the mistake of WC with new water and took a step backwards.

I think the tipping point was I added mud and such from IPSF over the summer and some good live rock from Gulf Live Rock this fall. I think that increased the biodiversity of microfauna to get the tank back in equilibitium.

currently, the dinos and cyano are are least not visible, but lots of hair algae. Going to scrub GHA and do a WC this weekend and hope I don’t regret it.

desperately need CUC, but need to wait until after the holidays because shipping has been a disaster lately.

 

[Dj City]

This is a detailed post of how I beat dinos.

I BEAT DINOS!!! You can too... Heres how to do it.

I posted this in the Dino thread but wanted to create a thread of my own detailing exactly what I did to defeat this scourge. I BEAT DINOS!!! It was not especially hard to do but I did need the right equipment and a multi pronged approach. 3 day blackouts Diatomaceous earth filter (optional...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Cory]

I don’t know the “science” behind it, but it does temporarily raise ORP, it makes your water sooo clear when dosing.. so I wonder if ozone would also kill it off based on this fact?

Ive read 1 account of someone raising their orp to 450 for a few days with ozone to kill dinos

 

[Dj City]

I've had my ORP up to over 450. Did nothing to dinos.
Hurt my corals though.

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Ongoing, but I'll post here when I figure it out. Nasty amphidinium infestation at the moment.

Just an update. I sorted this out with raised po4 and no3 and bacteria as well. I also added uv, since I had two strains in my tank, amph, and one that was free swimming.

 

[reefbeard]

Beat ostreopsis by dosing NeoPhos to bring up phosphates and dosed Bacter Clean-M which seemed to keep much of the nuisance algae at bay while fighting the dinos. Adding UV to the display was the nail in the coffin for those jerks. I maintain phosphate at .05 and No3 at 10.

 

[NMreef]

Had a bad case for a while. The procedure below finally cured it for good.

1. Dosed Nitrate and Phosphate
2. 4 day full blackout
3. UV during blackout <---- Most important factor in my opinion
5. Dose H202 daily
6. Dose Microbacter 7 daily

This knocked out 99%. Continued dosing reduced the dinos to zero over the next few weeks and they have not returned. I do continue to dose H202 and MB7 at lower concentrations, but not nitrate and phosphate.

 

[Timfish]

Outside of some manual removal I ignore them. They're just a symptom of a larger nutrient cycling problem and once that's fixed they'll disappear.

 

[xshmoox]

Tried all of the options in my last tank before we moved. Nopox dropped nutrients too low to fast. Had to result to bleach dosing. But they were gone in about 2 weeks.

 

[fishhead1973]

I was just curiuos. There are so many different methods. I had success by raising my nutrients and dosing live phyto!

No snake oil turn off the protein skimmer. For a couple of weeks new carbon. No phosphate remover take it out turbo snails help reduce light to 4 hours. 25 percent water change once a week. Clean sock or foam every day. most important be patient it will go away.

 

[fishhead1973]

I was just curiuos. There are so many different methods. I had success by raising my nutrients and dosing live phyto!

All tanks are different some things work different. But that’s what I did and it went away in a week most people don’t test to find out what is really going on so you really got to read between then lines. And give them many options to try.