Drewe
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2018
- Messages
- 163
- Reaction score
- 131
- Location
- Richmond, Virginia
- What state or country do you live in
- Virginia
Hello,
My largest tank, 75 gallons, 105 gallons system total, had a breakout of dinos a couple of weeks ago. This is something I had never dealt with before. My best guess is that it came in from a frag of questionable source I had recently purchased.
At first I thought it was hair algae and assumed it would either take care of itself or my snails would deal with it. That was mistake #1.
I then increased the lighting period on my refugium so the chaeto would grow faster, thus eating up the rest of the phosphates and nitrates in the tank. Mind you, this tank only has one fish in it, a small yellow & purple coris wrasse. This was mistake #2.
When the hair algae didn't recede and in fact kept spreading, I finally tested my phosphates and nitrates. They were both zero, which I thought was wildly inaccurate so I brought it to a LFS and their testing came back the same. It was a low range phosphate test. I then decided to keep the lighting schedule the same to see if it took care of itself. Mistake #3.
A few days later I noticed the dreaded bubbles on the algae, and the stringy junk all over a few of my LPS, and a particular Stylo that had zero polyp extension.
So, I tried the blackout method. 72 hours. That helped the problem for about 8 hours. I then started targeting patches of it with hydrogen peroxide in an oral syringe. Approximately 25-35ml per day. That definitely killed a good bit of them but they were still growing back, albeit at a slower pace.
I then combined this with a blackout for 48 hours, targeting with H2O2 twice a day. After 48 hours, the majority was gone, and the growth rate had nearly come to a stop.
Slowly I returned to my regular lighting schedule, and wouldn't ya know it, the GD dinos were back after 4 days of seeing none of them.
So I went nuclear on this junk. Took out 3 of the rocks it was on, soaked them in peroxide. Then returned one to the tank, cut the lights, targeted the sand bed with 50ml of peroxide. Cut the lights, laid blankets over the tank. Dosed 60ml of SeaChem pristine.
Kept the blankets on the tank for 3 days, dosing 40-50ml of peroxide per day, broadcasting it since I didn't want to remove the blankets to target it.
It has been 7 days since I've taken the blankets off, and no sign of them. None. I'm continuing a 20ml peroxide dose per day, and I am continuing to add pristine.
No coral was harmed during this, except a hammer coral that I wacked with the turkey baster while blowing the dinos off of it. That lost some polyps but seems to be okay.
I'll update if there are any changes. I just wanted to share what I did that seemed to help. I wish I could pinpoint exactly what it was that did it, but it may have just been all of the above.
My largest tank, 75 gallons, 105 gallons system total, had a breakout of dinos a couple of weeks ago. This is something I had never dealt with before. My best guess is that it came in from a frag of questionable source I had recently purchased.
At first I thought it was hair algae and assumed it would either take care of itself or my snails would deal with it. That was mistake #1.
I then increased the lighting period on my refugium so the chaeto would grow faster, thus eating up the rest of the phosphates and nitrates in the tank. Mind you, this tank only has one fish in it, a small yellow & purple coris wrasse. This was mistake #2.
When the hair algae didn't recede and in fact kept spreading, I finally tested my phosphates and nitrates. They were both zero, which I thought was wildly inaccurate so I brought it to a LFS and their testing came back the same. It was a low range phosphate test. I then decided to keep the lighting schedule the same to see if it took care of itself. Mistake #3.
A few days later I noticed the dreaded bubbles on the algae, and the stringy junk all over a few of my LPS, and a particular Stylo that had zero polyp extension.
So, I tried the blackout method. 72 hours. That helped the problem for about 8 hours. I then started targeting patches of it with hydrogen peroxide in an oral syringe. Approximately 25-35ml per day. That definitely killed a good bit of them but they were still growing back, albeit at a slower pace.
I then combined this with a blackout for 48 hours, targeting with H2O2 twice a day. After 48 hours, the majority was gone, and the growth rate had nearly come to a stop.
Slowly I returned to my regular lighting schedule, and wouldn't ya know it, the GD dinos were back after 4 days of seeing none of them.
So I went nuclear on this junk. Took out 3 of the rocks it was on, soaked them in peroxide. Then returned one to the tank, cut the lights, targeted the sand bed with 50ml of peroxide. Cut the lights, laid blankets over the tank. Dosed 60ml of SeaChem pristine.
Kept the blankets on the tank for 3 days, dosing 40-50ml of peroxide per day, broadcasting it since I didn't want to remove the blankets to target it.
It has been 7 days since I've taken the blankets off, and no sign of them. None. I'm continuing a 20ml peroxide dose per day, and I am continuing to add pristine.
No coral was harmed during this, except a hammer coral that I wacked with the turkey baster while blowing the dinos off of it. That lost some polyps but seems to be okay.
I'll update if there are any changes. I just wanted to share what I did that seemed to help. I wish I could pinpoint exactly what it was that did it, but it may have just been all of the above.
