Transferring Dinos

bevo5 · Apr 27, 2020

I set up a little invert QT and got a bit overzealous on feeding my few torch/hammer corals....and I'm pretty sure I got a decent wave of dinos. I didn't bust out the microscope, but I saw a couple little bubbles forming and a decently thick covering on the rocks. I immediately did some water changes and went to a shorter light cycle (dunno if that was right but I did it). And I also added about 200 snails - QT'ing a reef cleaners package for a 200g tank in the 30g QT.

Regardless - it's all gone now. I've got a bit of hair algae that I'm spot-pulling, but otherwise not much else growing on the rocks in there that I can see.

So question - are dinos always going to be present in that system and/or are they always present in all of our systems? If they're not omnipresent - is there anyway to prevent moving them over with the corals/inverts post QT?

Thanks.

Spare time · Apr 27, 2020

What happends is that they are able to take off when your nitrate and phosphate are very low, supposedly low enough to kill other microbes that compete with them but not low enough to kill the dinos. People often make the mistake of trying to remove waste products when they have dinos but its what allows them to survive. I would worry less about having them get into the tank but rather not letting them proliferate. I doubt you would be able to completely prevent them from getting into the tank.

bevo5 · Apr 28, 2020

Gotcha - and totally understand. The relationship to nutrients is totally contrary to general aquarium wisdom, and definitely an interesting struggle to grapple with.

Is it basically assumed that dinos are present in EVERY setup due to the constant transfer of corals/rocks/snails etc? So I'm not really running any additional risk putting elements from this tank into the display tank?

Spare time · Apr 28, 2020

bevo5 said:
Gotcha - and totally understand. The relationship to nutrients is totally contrary to general aquarium wisdom, and definitely an interesting struggle to grapple with.

Is it basically assumed that dinos are present in EVERY setup due to the constant transfer of corals/rocks/snails etc? So I'm not really running any additional risk putting elements from this tank into the display tank?

I just think that trying to prevent a microscopic organism from entering your tank is extremely difficult and beyond what most would be willing to do for their tanks. I really don't think that it is a problem