Treatment for dinos and cyano

Holy handgrenade · Mar 10, 2022

I have dinos growing on the sand bed and no where else. Tank is sitting at 4ppm no3 and 0.09po4 i know that itits not free swimming. In the morning when i turned on the lights, it looked like it was almost gone from the sand (just a small outline of where it was) after about an hour it was back to looking bad

i also have what i believe to be cyanobacteria growing on the sand, rock and glass. Its like a mix of cyano and a green algae of some sort.

any suggestions on what i should do? I have zoas, gsp, gorgs, rics, and an anemone in the tank. Dont know what i should use to treat the tank without killing anything

thomas_neil · Mar 10, 2022

Holy handgrenade said:
I have dinos growing on the sand bed and no where else. Tank is sitting at 4ppm no3 and 0.09po4 i know that itits not free swimming. In the morning when i turned on the lights, it looked like it was almost gone from the sand (just a small outline of where it was) after about an hour it was back to looking bad

i also have what i believe to be cyanobacteria growing on the sand, rock and glass. Its like a mix of cyano and a green algae of some sort.

any suggestions on what i should do? I have zoas, gsp, gorgs, rics, and an anemone in the tank. Dont know what i should use to treat the tank without

Holy handgrenade said:
I have dinos growing on the sand bed and no where else. Tank is sitting at 4ppm no3 and 0.09po4 i know that itits not free swimming. In the morning when i turned on the lights, it looked like it was almost gone from the sand (just a small outline of where it was) after about an hour it was back to looking bad

i also have what i believe to be cyanobacteria growing on the sand, rock and glass. Its like a mix of cyano and a green algae of some sort.

any suggestions on what i should do? I have zoas, gsp, gorgs, rics, and an anemone in the tank. Dont know what i should use to treat the tank without killing anything

Check these videos out, they might help.

If they don’t hyperlink just look up BRS dino, the did a video on both dinos and cyano.

Holy handgrenade · Mar 11, 2022

What i dont understand is why i have dinos even tho my nutrients didnt bottom out. I raised no3 from 2ppm to 4ppm and po4 from 0.06ppm to 0.09ppm. I was trying to get the cyano out complete the dinos but it seems that the dinos are thriving more then the cyano....

Thinking i should try a 48 hour black out with h202 dosing at night? Dont know how much the coral and nem are going to like that.

Uncle99 · Mar 11, 2022

Hydrogen Peroxide will destroy some of the good guys so IMM, is counterproductive to solving Dinos.
I’ve tried both Peroxide and Dino-X which solved the dinos, but made my corals very, very unhappy.
Even worse, they all were back in 30 days.
As you, nutrients never bottomed out and ran 5ppm nitrate and .1ppm phosphate.

What did work for me was, sucking them out each day, before lights went out and 24 hour UV.

Second was blowing them up into the water column just as lights went out and changing socks every day

I kept doing this as the good guys population increased and in 30 days they were totally gone and have not returned in 6 months so far.

Holy handgrenade · Mar 11, 2022

Uncle99 said:
Hydrogen Peroxide will destroy some of the good guys so IMM, is counterproductive to solving Dinos.
I’ve tried both Peroxide and Dino-X which solved the dinos, but made my corals very, very unhappy.
Even worse, they all were back in 30 days.
As you, nutrients never bottomed out and ran 5ppm nitrate and .1ppm phosphate.

What did work for me was, sucking them out each day, before lights went out and 24 hour UV.

Second was blowing them up into the water column just as lights went out and changing socks every day

I kept doing this as the good guys population increased and in 30 days they were totally gone and have not returned in 6 months so far.

So i have a 20 gallon and was thinking of getting a UV but all the ones i saw where for bigger tanks. The dinos that i have arent free swimming as far as i know so the only option i think i have would be, as you said, to manually remove them. I think im going to get bottled bacteria from a few different brand names to get a cocktail of different things.

Thank you for the insight my friend!

Uncle99 · Mar 11, 2022

Your welcome but your post does indicate that your Dino’s are leaving the sandbed when dark and UV can easily pick these up and stop there reproduction.
Should be UV for smaller tanks
Always think Lessing them by any means and if you stick to that, you will win.
There comes a point where Dino population is too small to complete any further, and they disappear in a couple of days.
One thing I will never do again is use any liquid Algicide, even when used as directed, it killed a bunch of stuff and it took 3 months to recover.
Good luck

Holy handgrenade · Mar 11, 2022

Thanks man i appreciate it. Yeah im trying my best to not use chemicals unless its a last resort. Thankfully this problem has been going on for a month and still isnt out of control, i just havent had time to spend on the tank. Time to take action now

saltyhog · Mar 11, 2022

Holy handgrenade said:
What i dont understand is why i have dinos even tho my nutrients didnt bottom out. I raised no3 from 2ppm to 4ppm and po4 from 0.06ppm to 0.09ppm. I was trying to get the cyano out complete the dinos but it seems that the dinos are thriving more then the cyano....

Thinking i should try a 48 hour black out with h202 dosing at night? Dont know how much the coral and nem are going to like that.

That's a common misunderstanding. While the majority of dino infestations seem to happen in ultra low nutrient tanks, it's not the low nutrients that cause it. It's the lack of biodiversity that's present, partly because of the methods used to get to the ULN state. I've seen dinos often in quite high nutrient tanks.

Your slide looks like Large Cell Amphidinium. In my experience they are best treated by dosing silicates (water glass) to about 2ppm to elicit a competing diatom bloom. Dosing phytoplankton and keeping nutrients up (around 5-10 for NO3 and 0.05-0.1 for PO4) is good/important too.

Holy handgrenade · Mar 11, 2022

saltyhog said:
Your slide looks like Large Cell Amphidinium. In my experience they are best treated by dosing silicates (water glass) to about 2ppm to elicit a competing diatom bloom. Dosing phytoplankton and keeping nutrients up (around 5-10 for NO3 and 0.05-0.1 for PO4) is good/important too.

Thank you for mentioning that, i forgot to ask if i should dose silicates. I have another question now. I have lots of pineapple sponges in the tank which i thought was due to high amount of silica. I dont have a test kit for it but am thinking i should get one now. I dont really want to spend the money but want to get the job done right. Should i get the salifert test kit or not?

Also kind of a stupid question but by dosing 2ppm of silicates, is that total amount present in the tank or the amount you add to the tank so to gain 2ppm more silicates?

Should i be dosing phyto after the dinos are dead or now to keep up nutrients?

Thank you for your time

Spare time · Mar 11, 2022

Holy handgrenade said:
So i have a 20 gallon and was thinking of getting a UV but all the ones i saw where for bigger tanks. The dinos that i have arent free swimming as far as i know so the only option i think i have would be, as you said, to manually remove them. I think im going to get bottled bacteria from a few different brand names to get a cocktail of different things.

Thank you for the insight my friend!

Green killing machine might work. It won't help with cyano though

saltyhog · Mar 11, 2022

Holy handgrenade said:
Thank you for mentioning that, i forgot to ask if i should dose silicates. I have another question now. I have lots of pineapple sponges in the tank which i thought was due to high amount of silica. I dont have a test kit for it but am thinking i should get one now. I dont really want to spend the money but want to get the job done right. Should i get the salifert test kit or not?

Also kind of a stupid question but by dosing 2ppm of silicates, is that total amount present in the tank or the amount you add to the tank so to gain 2ppm more silicates?

Should i be dosing phyto after the dinos are dead or now to keep up nutrients?

Thank you for your time

You don't need a test kit to dose water glass for dinos. That's fortunate because there is not a hobby test kit for silicates that's worth a flip. It's not needed because silicon is not toxic at all. I've seen massive over doses (over 100 ppm) that resulted in no negative consequences (except for a prolonged diatom bloom

)

Dosing 2 ppm daily is what I recommend. That's approximately 0.2 ml of water glass per 15 gallons of water volume. Dose daily. For example a 150 gallon water volume would get 2.0 ml daily. Put it in about 250 cc of RO/DI, mix well and slowly pour it in a high flow area. It's very alkaline and will precipitate if added directly to reef tank with pH over 8.

Yes dose phyto now to contribute to and promote biodiversity.

Spare time said:
Green killing machine might work. It won't help with cyano though

This type of dino never enters the water column and isn't treatable with UV. Even so the Green Killing Machines are terribly ineffective for UV sensitive dinos....most likely because of their built in pump which is too high volume for the dino application.

Holy handgrenade · Mar 11, 2022

saltyhog said:
Dosing 2 ppm daily is what I recommend. That's approximately 0.2 ml of water glass per 15 gallons of water volume. Dose daily. For example a 150 gallon water volume would get 2.0 ml daily. Put it in about 250 cc of RO/DI, mix well and slowly pour it in a high flow area. It's very alkaline and will precipitate if added directly to reef tank with pH over 8.

Yes dose phyto now to contribute to and promote biodiversity.

Good to know, thanks.

Spare time · Mar 11, 2022

saltyhog said:
You don't need a test kit to dose water glass for dinos. That's fortunate because there is not a hobby test kit for silicates that's worth a flip. It's not needed because silicon is not toxic at all. I've seen massive over doses (over 100 ppm) that resulted in no negative consequences (except for a prolonged diatom bloom )

Dosing 2 ppm daily is what I recommend. That's approximately 0.2 ml of water glass per 15 gallons of water volume. Dose daily. For example a 150 gallon water volume would get 2.0 ml daily. Put it in about 250 cc of RO/DI, mix well and slowly pour it in a high flow area. It's very alkaline and will precipitate if added directly to reef tank with pH over 8.

Yes dose phyto now to contribute to and promote biodiversity.

This type of dino never enters the water column and isn't treatable with UV. Even so the Green Killing Machines are terribly ineffective for UV sensitive dinos....most likely because of their built in pump which is too high volume for the dino application.

Ah I thought I read it was one that did my bad

Miami Reef · Mar 11, 2022

saltyhog said:
That's a common misunderstanding. While the majority of dino infestations seem to happen in ultra low nutrient tanks, it's not the low nutrients that cause it. It's the lack of biodiversity that's present, partly because of the methods used to get to the ULN state. I've seen dinos often in quite high nutrient tanks.

Your slide looks like Large Cell Amphidinium. In my experience they are best treated by dosing silicates (water glass) to about 2ppm to elicit a competing diatom bloom. Dosing phytoplankton and keeping nutrients up (around 5-10 for NO3 and 0.05-0.1 for PO4) is good/important too.

Great explanation!