Lab for dino testing?

EricTheRed · Apr 18, 2015

Hey, all.

Pretty sure I have dino's but they don't look like the typical stringy snot variety. I have a golden brown variety that disappears at night and then covers the sb during the day. It doesn't get stringy and actually looks like a thick coat of diatoms but isn't. Snails and sps are dieing.

I want to have it properly diagnosed before starting aggressive tx and/or tank breakdown.

Can anyone recommend a lab, or even skilled reefer, where I could send a sample for microscopic diagnosis.

wangspeed · Apr 18, 2015

Good luck. After months of being Dino free, they are back trying to gain a foothold in my tank

serious pain to deal with.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 18, 2015

I don't know of any, sorry.

julz1257 · Apr 19, 2015

I had what sounds like the same exact strain of Dino about 4 months ago. I tries peroxide dosing an a few other things an to no avail it kept coming back. I lost most of my crabs an snails along with a mandarin goby, firefish, an 2 heads of my hammer. I have a 35 gal setup and decided to do weekly water changes of 5-7 gal including vacuuming the Dino off the sand bed over a period of a month and thank goodness it is all gone.

wangspeed · Apr 19, 2015

I ordered a bottle of Fauna Marin Ultra Algea X from Germany. Potent stuff, but from what I've read, it works.

I also found a post about someone researching them under a microscope. He said they are destroyed with water under 1.14 SG, so I've been blasting the worst areas with a mix of H2O and RODI.

Reefltx · Apr 19, 2015

There's a forum member "pants" that I've sent samples to and he help confirmed that I didn't have Dino. It's been a few years, so I'm not sure if he's still active here.

EricTheRed · Apr 20, 2015

Thanks, all.

archaic37 · Apr 20, 2015

I have the same algae, it dissapears at night, covers the sand bed in the day and forms a redish brown mat but isnt quite a red cyano.

From my microscope test it appears to be a cousin to lyngbya named oscillatoria. They are cyano cousins. Under the microscope there seemed to be some sort of dinos but there was not that many.