Ready to call it quits against Dino.

DanielCervantes · Nov 3, 2016

As the topic reads I'm ready to call it quits with this small Dino outbreak I have and start all over.
I have a 50 gallon tank with a 10 gallon 4 stage sump with a refugium.
I have dosed metro for 4 days, I have dosed h202 before. Done the whole lights out for 3 days and ran only actinic lights for a week afterwards to only have them show up again.
Nitrate:1
Phosphate: .02
Mag:1400
Tank is 6 months old.

Core · Nov 3, 2016

Don't give up took me a year for my tank to settle in. went through the whole rack of problems just keep at it be patient worth it in thee end.

Garia666 · Nov 3, 2016

do you have a sand bed?
It might be an idea ifso to remove it .
Untill its under controle and then try again.
i asume you already Encreased water flow, checked your lighting schedule. ect ect

Are you sure its dino`s?

Other wise i could advise "Mycosidol" if your realy desperate.
its reef safe however it will destroy all bacterial life. ( the bad but also the good one`s )
So you will need to add them again. With stuff like "Seachem Stability"

Waters · Nov 3, 2016

I was finally able to beat Dinos using the above mentioned methods, along with installing an over sized UV unit.....they were gone within two weeks of installing the UV.

G8trBait16 · Nov 3, 2016

I had a small patch of dinos and I dosed my 2nd dose this week of that vibrant stuff. After the first dose it started to clump together, not saying it will work, but keeping my fingers crossed. As much time and effort as we put into our tanks, not to mention money. I would try anything before giving up.

just my 2 cents

Reefer1978 · Nov 3, 2016

Which dinos do you have?

brandon429 · Nov 3, 2016

Waters that's awesome

UV is secret punch agreed and go big or keep dinos. Hand siphoning/removing all that can be seen before installation is amplifier trick

Reefer1978 · Nov 3, 2016

brandon429 said:
UV is secret punch agreed and go big or keep dinos. Hand siphoning/removing all that can be seen before installation is amplifier trick

UV did nothing for me, thus I thought I ask which species.

brandon429 · Nov 3, 2016

Oversized is key, we have a few good tanks done/fixed on nano reef.com where using any normal uv is grossly oversized. We try to take immediate action when first seen, against the common grain of literally do nothing as the mass blooms.

If I had a large tank and wanted to win I would use a pond sterilizer and change out the sandbed along with external peroxide treatment of the rocks immediately upon visual detection of the invasion. Even though we aren't using species-level ID for the dinos in nanos I'm not sure ostre couldn't ever be there...they seem to appear rather commonly in the microscopy posts as pages go by

Larger tanks can't do the cleaning in a practical manner so the war is reduced to water actions only, agreed.

Anyone with a nano getting these invasions should strip clean the whole tank using skip cycle technique and do a full water change ASAP matching temp and salinity. Attack the blooming self supporting mass

Then hopefully oversized UV handles resurgence from fish vectoring etc...

It's not unfounded to surmise that once robbed of communal mass, a communal organism might have a harder time thriving. The aggregations are insulation for one, food catching goos #2, etc

Someone should be purposefully infecting test nano setups with known virulent strains to see how well physical vs chem interventions work, speed up our knowledge without sps in tow...

I claim the worst initial move 90% do is farm the mass on purpose, the inaction reaction to dinos, many species like that mode apparently.

Perhaps there is a finite time the cells can live without the communal resources... This would allow for known QT times matching that death cycle, and it might give an idea how long keepers like Waters have to run the UV preventatively after the initial gains

DanielCervantes · Nov 3, 2016

Waters said:
I was finally able to beat Dinos using the above mentioned methods, along with installing an over sized UV unit.....they were gone within two weeks of installing the UV.

What size uv unit do you think I should install?

250mixreef · Nov 3, 2016

H202 can take time I beat Dino's in a 250 with it. Btw Dino's are probably the one of the smallest hurdles you can pass in this hobby. It's all about educating yourself . These are tiny ecosystems there all different. What works for one may not work for another. Try only one fix at a time and wait your system will not respond overnite. UV may help but generally it only kills what's in the water column not what's on your sand bed or rocks. IMO Dino's are caused by a bacterial imbalance you want to consider carbon dosing

DanielCervantes · Nov 5, 2016

250mixreef said:
H202 can take time I beat Dino's in a 250 with it. Btw Dino's are probably the one of the smallest hurdles you can pass in this hobby. It's all about educating yourself . These are tiny ecosystems there all different. What works for one may not work for another. Try only one fix at a time and wait your system will not respond overnite. UV may help but generally it only kills what's in the water column not what's on your sand bed or rocks. IMO Dino's are caused by a bacterial imbalance you want to consider carbon dosing

What dosage were you using on your 250?
I was doing 1ml per 10 gallons is that not enough?
I was thinking about taking out the sand, doing a 60% water change, adding a uv and dipping the rocks in H202

Wiz · Nov 5, 2016

Run a syphon from display to sump. Put filter pads ranging in micron size at the end. Let the syphon run constantly and periodically vacuum the dinos that are visable. After each vacuuming, clean the pads. The syphon constantly running will help. But after a while they will stop returning.
This method worked on my tank and another r2r members that I suggested it to. A bit of work but no possibility of fouling the system.

Wiz · Nov 5, 2016

I used this method after all others failed. Took about 6 weeks of syphoning to completly stop. But were less noticeable every day

Steadyreef42 · Nov 5, 2016

After dosing h202 and lights out failed . I let tank get dirty and lit my fuge 24 hours to let other algeas take over. I let my display lit 6 hours a day Dinos may still be present in tank but I have not spotted a single one in months . I'm sure different things work for different tanks . I do feel for you as I was right about to give up. Even started a pico tank by the time that was cycled my Dinos were gone

DanielCervantes · Nov 5, 2016

Wiz said:
Run a syphon from display to sump. Put filter pads ranging in micron size at the end. Let the syphon run constantly and periodically vacuum the dinos that are visable. After each vacuuming, clean the pads. The syphon constantly running will help. But after a while they will stop returning.
This method worked on my tank and another r2r members that I suggested it to. A bit of work but no possibility of fouling the system.

I was thinking about about running a syphon into a filter sock with filter pads and filter floss stuffed inside the sock. Think that'll work? Should I let it run 24/7 while constantly changing the filters or just after each vacuuming?

Wiz · Nov 5, 2016

Yes that is exactly what I did. A net bag usually use for carbon filled with pads of varying size. & I clean them after every vacuum because that is when most of the junk was getting into the pad. But cleaning them as often As possible would not hurt. The dinos got less and less everyday until finally they just stopped coming back. I let the syphon run for about another week after I last saw them