Long, losing battle with Dinos

[RDaber]

I am looking for advise on a major Dino outbreak that I have been fighting for several months. My tank is about 2 years old WB220 mixed reef. I have tried many of the remedies provided in the threads here and still cannot seem to clear them up. I believe the root cause was low nutrients(both N and P) which I have addressed and test for daily to make sure they don't bottom out again. From the microscope the Dinos appear to be Prorocentrum so I have not tried UV yet.

So far I have tried:
- 3 day total blackout followed by Dr Tim's method.
-Reducing light intensity and using a bluer spectrum
-Vacuuming Dinos off sand/rock and dosing microbacter 7
-Dosing Phyto
-Adding Hydrogen Peroxide nightly (1ml/10G)
-Last week I started to dose silicates

With the above I have seen slight improvement however the Dinos are still at plague levels. I have lost several inverts and a Mandarian as a result.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I am trying everything to not have to throw in the towel.

 

[Troylee]

You’re doing everything correct but blowing them into the water column for a uv light to help you fight the battle! Diatoms will help once they get going thou!

 

[Relled]

I did... no water changes, manual removal, microbacter clean heavy dosing daily(probably didnt do anything?), but i think the main thing was running a uv 24/7. Once things cleared up I started running the UV at night and lowered the dose of microbacter until nothing completely stopped and have not had anything but minor hair algae outbreaks from that point.

 

[RDaber]

As far as UV is concerned is the Aqua Ultraviolet 57W suitable for a ~180G display if I run about 3x tank volume an hour through it?

 

[UnderWater1051]

As far as UV is concerned is the Aqua Ultraviolet 57W suitable for a ~180G display if I run about 3x tank volume an hour through it?

I have a 90 gallon Red Sea Reefer which has been up for 2.5 yrs. It took me 8 months of dosing silicates to eliminate LCA dinos only to have them return after I performed a water change but not as bad. I started dosing silicates again immediately and did everything 'Relled' did. It only took a couple months to eliminate them this time. Then, I replaced my sand, 50% at a time. I left a large area in the center of the tank bare bottom trying to keep the dinos from crossing to the other side. It has been several months and I have a diatom bloom still going on but at least they serve as food and should dwindle after the silicates are reduced via water changes. However, no dinos under the scope even though I performed my first water change two weeks ago. Even though LCA dinos supposedly dwell only in sand, I found them on the rock and my overflow box so I cleaned the weir thoroughly. Prior to starting to change the sand, I siphoned and blew the sand and rocks weekly running the siphon through low micron filter socks I placed in the sump. Before doing this, I stuffed aquarium floss in the overflow box and throughout the sump which I continuously changed trying to eliminate as many dinos as possible. I believe when you start siphoning the sand regularly, the sand dwellers move up onto the rock so I also took tufts of floss and anchored them next to the bottom of the live rock allowing the rock dwellers to move into the floss. Fortunately, the dinos love the floss. I would leave it in a couple days, remove and replace. I did not dose hydrogen peroxide for fear it would kill my inverts. For added diversity, I alternated mb7 with Prodibio digest weekly and added copepods. Go to the manufacturer of your uv sterilizer to determine how fast your pump needs to move water through the sterilizer to kill algae as opposed to parasites. I had to purchase a larger pump. It has been a long and trying battle but hopefully, I have rounded the corner. Persistence is key. Good luck!

 

[ScottB]

As far as UV is concerned is the Aqua Ultraviolet 57W suitable for a ~180G display if I run about 3x tank volume an hour through it?

It should just cut it. I would combine a blackout WITH the UV. They need encouragement to get moving into the water column. Once, we blacked out a tank with Proro but left the night time fuge lights on schedule. They moved down there, lol.

 

[ScottB]

I wrote up this back in Jan 2022. Most folks got a decent outcome following the different protocols.

A Dinoflagellate Treatment Guide

As the title suggests, this is intended as a short guide on what to do when you suspect dinoflagellates are trying to overtake your system. It is an attempt to boil down the protocols discussed across 11,000 posts in this "Are you Tired" thread...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[zimmer]

try mack's reef... dinoflagellates support group on FB. awesome resource.

 

[FlyinAg]

Did you try raising water temp? That seems to work for some or at least help.

Seems like a combination of things is required to really slow them down enough to allow something else to ultimately out compete.

I am doing:
blue light spectrum
Raised temp
UV
Filter floss in overflow/display
Phyto/pods
Limit water change
Stir sand/blow off rocks daily sometimes more
peroxide dosing

Also tried reduced lighting but didn't seem to do much

 

[Kmst80]

I am looking for advise on a major Dino outbreak that I have been fighting for several months. My tank is about 2 years old WB220 mixed reef. I have tried many of the remedies provided in the threads here and still cannot seem to clear them up. I believe the root cause was low nutrients(both N and P) which I have addressed and test for daily to make sure they don't bottom out again. From the microscope the Dinos appear to be Prorocentrum so I have not tried UV yet.

So far I have tried:
- 3 day total blackout followed by Dr Tim's method.
-Reducing light intensity and using a bluer spectrum
-Vacuuming Dinos off sand/rock and dosing microbacter 7
-Dosing Phyto
-Adding Hydrogen Peroxide nightly (1ml/10G)
-Last week I started to dose silicates

With the above I have seen slight improvement however the Dinos are still at plague levels. I have lost several inverts and a Mandarian as a result.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I am trying everything to not have to throw in the towel.

Carefull with the silicate, I did that and then doubled the original dose without testing and ended up with a bacterial bloom(brown water) that killed one of my acros and nearly killed my galaxea. All corals and inverts were in a bad way. Even the snails didn't like it.
Don't dose what you can't test for. On the other hand I am dinofree.