How safe is H2O2 when battling dinos?

[DrMMI]

I've had dinos for quite some time now. I've tried multiple 3 days blackouts, plumbing the UV directly to/from my display, dosing microbacter7, phytoplanktan, and pods without any long term success. At this point, I'm think I'm ready to try something a little less "natural," but I don't want to kill everything in my tank in the process. Just wondering what everyone's experience is with dosing hydrogen peroxide when trying to get rid of dinos? I do have a cleaner shrimp, some peppermint shrimp, and a few rainbow BTAs and I heard they can be a sensitive to that. So how safe is H2O2 in a mixed reef?

 

[HellaDudes]

People usually use 1 ml of 3% H2O2 per 10 gallons of water to dose the tank for broadcast treatment. I feel like the safer way to do is probably use half that amount and spot treat the dinos instead. I'd turn the pumps off for half an hour if you do this, especially if you have biological media in your filtration.

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

I had/have dinos in my 13.5 evo due to no phosphates or nitrates, I have been battling it now for over 4 months. I never got a confirmation what breed of dino under a scope, but it was the long stringy bubbly one. I first done a water change, what a big mistake that was. It made it 10x worse. So what I started doing was turn all the flow off, blast everything with a Turkey baster to get it into the water column, then siphon the dinos into a bucket through a filter sock. Pour the filtered water back in the tank.
I did that 3 times a week, with dosing nitrates and phosphates. But the dinos still came back just not as bad, so I lowered the lighting time and have blues only for 7hrs with a white period for 2hrs in the middle. Also at lights out I dosed 0.5ml of 6% peroxide (in my head equivalent to 1ml of 3% per 10 gallons) as that's all I could get. The only negative I could see was the zoas closed up just after adding it, they open up just fine afterwards.
I dosed it every day for 14 days.
With dosing nitrates and phosphates the tank started looking really neglected and I just resisted cleaning the glass or doing anything apart from feed the fish and bta for 2 more weeks while still testing and dosing nitrates and phosphates. The algae that was growing was out competing the dino.
I did a clean of the glass and a tidy up of it 4 days ago, but not a water change just filter the crud out through a sock. now touch wood it still looks good. I hope some of this can help. I'm not 100% on the shrimp though
This was back at the beginning of the year

Today

 

[DrMMI]

People usually use 1 ml of 3% H2O2 per 10 gallons of water to dose the tank for broadcast treatment. I feel like the safer way to do is probably use half that amount and spot treat the dinos instead. I'd turn the pumps off for half an hour if you do this, especially if you have biological media in your filtration.

It's going to be hard to spot treat my tank as I have a 260 gallon tank and the dinos are pretty wide spread. I probably would feel safer using half the dose to start out with.

I had/have dinos in my 13.5 evo due to no phosphates or nitrates, I have been battling it now for over 4 months. I never got a confirmation what breed of dino under a scope, but it was the long stringy bubbly one. I first done a water change, what a big mistake that was. It made it 10x worse. So what I started doing was turn all the flow off, blast everything with a Turkey baster to get it into the water column, then siphon the dinos into a bucket through a filter sock. Pour the filtered water back in the tank.
I did that 3 times a week, with dosing nitrates and phosphates. But the dinos still came back just not as bad, so I lowered the lighting time and have blues only for 7hrs with a white period for 2hrs in the middle. Also at lights out I dosed 0.5ml of 6% peroxide (in my head equivalent to 1ml of 3% per 10 gallons) as that's all I could get. The only negative I could see was the zoas closed up just after adding it, they open up just fine afterwards.
I dosed it every day for 14 days.
With dosing nitrates and phosphates the tank started looking really neglected and I just resisted cleaning the glass or doing anything apart from feed the fish and bta for 2 more weeks while still testing and dosing nitrates and phosphates. The algae that was growing was out competing the dino.
I did a clean of the glass and a tidy up of it 4 days ago, but not a water change just filter the crud out through a sock. now touch wood it still looks good. I hope some of this can help. I'm not 100% on the shrimp though
This was back at the beginning of the year

Today

You're tank looks great now! Did you add anything like microbacter or vibrant while dosing the hydrogen peroxide?

 

[ramboisreal]

I just fought with dinos for about 6 months. I haven’t seen dinos in my tank for about a month. One of the most important things to do is identify the type of dinos you have under a microscope. That will help you plan you attack better since they don’t all respond equally to the same treatment. H2O2 may or may not be helpful depending on the type of dinos you have.

This was my tank in February and two days ago:

 

[DrMMI]

I just fought with dinos for about 6 months. I haven’t seen dinos in my tank for about a month. One of the most important things to do is identify the type of dinos you have under a microscope. That will help you plan you attack better since they don’t all respond equally to the same treatment. H2O2 may or may not be helpful depending on the type of dinos you have.

Supposedly I've got large cell amphidium or possibly ostreopsis. I posted a video in another post I made that was a little clearer than the pictures.

 

[ramboisreal]

Supposedly I've got large cell amphidium or possibly ostreopsis. I posted a video in another post I made that was a little clearer than the pictures.

H2O2 helped me out. But the key was dosing at night (since some types of dinos enter the water column at night) and dosing consistently for two weeks.

Also, I added a UV sterilizer and did a 6 day blackout since 3 days didn’t work the two times I had tried it before. After the 6 day blackout, I continued to dose H2O2 and ran only the blue lights for 3 weeks. I turned my white lights on after 3 weeks but only for 2 hours a day.

Another thing that I think helped was raising my nitrates and phosphates since they were undetectable before. I dosed nitrates and phyto to raise my NO3 and PO4. My tank is now consistently at 12 ppm NO3 and 0.10 PO4. I think that’s helped keep the dinos away.

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

It's going to be hard to spot treat my tank as I have a 260 gallon tank and the dinos are pretty wide spread. I probably would feel safer using half the dose to start out with.


You're tank looks great now! Did you add anything like microbacter or vibrant while dosing the hydrogen peroxide?

Thanks, no I only dosed nitrates and phosphates in the form of diy solutions of potassium nitrate and potassium phosphate, this was to help increase the neutrients and help algae compete, This could be why it's taken a while to defeat it. I did add a piece of well established 15 year old live rock from my main tank with plenty of bacteria on it to help with that side of it , I just put it in the filter section so I don't get algae growing on it.

 

[Phil D.]

I have consistently dosed Peroxide and have had only good results from it. I have a shrimp, clams and a mixed reef. As stated above, the zoas close for a little bit but otherwise no issues. It's an oxidizer and does a good job on dinos and GHA.

 

[taricha]

h2o2 as a broadcast is quite safe ( except for a couple of invert exceptions with a really low tolerance for it) at the common doses attempted in the hobby.
Others have given their success stories, but on the other hand there are many who find it does almost nothing for their problem algae.

 

[brandon429]

Thats exactly how I like to use it when large tanks consider the dosage. We set known safe levels, hit it with a burn, if it works it works if not no harm.

lysmata shrimp are the most likely to die of any organism in reefing to any level of direct peroxide addition. but if it helps beat dinos/ possibly acceptable collateral must choose.

we have seen lysmata survive large tank dosing, they die about 80% of the time.

all corals we commonly see posted in tanks are safe at one or two mils per ten gallons added, common 3%. if you have an STN piece on its way out/outcomes vary.

huge anemones might retract a few days, they're on known sensitives list under lysmata.

all fish we keep are known tolerant regarding patterns from work threads. no form of peroxide dosing has ever harmed a biofilter measured for us in the hobby, gross overdoses included. we couldnt get an ammonia spike on reefcentral when a dude's doser malfnctnd and put a quart of 35% in, all at once. he lost mass corals. H202 is a safe dinos tool to consider because its very predictable regarding safety.

efficacy on target/dinos? all of them range, nobody is closing in above 30% likely to beat dinos using any method.

 

[DrMMI]

Thanks so much for the reassurance and advice. I'm going to try to consistently get my nutrients up a little more, maybe try one more 3 day blackout while the UV is running to/from the display (previously it was plumbed directly to the return so the flow might have been too fast for dinos), and if that doesn't work, then I'm going with the H2O2 because I've had enough of this stuff!

 

[waleedreef]

I tried H2O2 on dino and it removed it for 2 months and come back again because i didn't solve my nutrients issues. Then i used Dino X for one month treatment and never comeback.

 

[Simon Reefing]

Hello! I know this post is a little old but did this work for you? Also should I turn my skimmer and uv off durning the dosing period?

 

[DrMMI]

I ended up doing elegant corals dino treatment at the time, which uses hydrogen peroxide as part of the treatment. Because I had such a bad infestation, it took 3 weeks in a row of the treatment. I was dino free until I realized that my nitrates had gotten to over 100ppm without water changes and heavily dosing nitrates. I did a series of 30% water changes every day for a week straight and they came right back. Haven't been able to get rid of them since.

 

[Simon Reefing]

Oh wow sorry to hear that! Mine is not to bad at the moment but it is bother some corals do you think it’s worth the try?

 

[DrMMI]

Oh wow sorry to hear that! Mine is not to bad at the moment but it is bother some corals do you think it’s worth the try?

Yeah definitely. I had dinos in my office tank too and elegant corals dino treatment took care of them. I've made sure to keep my nutrients in check and the tank has never looked better.

 

[Simon Reefing]

Thank you so much I will take a look at it I have never heard of that Dino treatment did you keep the skimmer and Uv on? Glad your tank is looking good

 

[DrMMI]

Thank you so much I will take a look at it I have never heard of that Dino treatment did you keep the skimmer and Uv on? Glad your tank is looking good

https://elegantcorals.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/65232970_1058036854395643_2307032019369984000_n.jpg

I left the uv off so it didn't kill off the beneficial bacteria that I was adding. As per the instructions, you leave the skimmer off the first 3 days.