Yup that's Dino for sure. You are in for a long uphill battle! I legit just got rid of this crap at the end of November, after a month+ battle and in the process lost some fish and coral. Mine appeared out of nowhere. I had it way worse then what I can see in your Picture. You are going to have to wage war and actively battle it because nothing eats it and there are no chemicals you can buy. Dino feeds off the light and a nutrients in the tank which aren't in an acceptable range. But when you cut the light, it actually feeds itself if you cut the lights, the initial light shot will kill some dino but then the living dino will eat the dead dino in a never ending cycle. First ill start off by saying there is no definitive way to get rid of dino its a tank by tank basis. That being said ill tell you how I got rid of it. I believe in my case I was running the tank so clean for months of all nutrients that nothing else could compete with the Dino. Since I knew it wasn't my water or old lighting. First I tried complete blackout with chemiclean for a full 48 hours. I can tell you 100% that isn't going to work, as soon as the lights come back itll come right back with a vengeance. Long story short I beat it will a variety of things that include the following....
1. Physical removal by blasting it off everything in the tank with a turkey baster everyday and let it get trapped in a filter sock to be removed as soon as the DT water clears.
2. I got so frustrated that I ended up dropping a good chunk of change and put an entire ozone set up on the tank. I firmly believe in my case anyways Ozone was 90% the reason I was able to get rid of this stuff, without it I wouldn't have been able to beat Dino before it killed everything in the tank or before I gave up on the tank. It works by dismantling and exploding Dino on a chemical level. In theory not letting any living Dino able to consume itself.
3. I also bought a 25W UV filter because I was so frustrated. Not sure how much of an effect it had on the Dino because it came way later then ozone also by the way it works sterilizing water.
4. It came to a point where the dino die off leveled off and was almost unnoticeably still dieing off. So I decided to try something different with thoughts that the tank was running too clean. So I took the GFO offline, only ran the carbon reactor in line with the ozone when the ozone was running based off my reeefkeeper, stopped using filter socks in all except for a short time after blasting the rocks and just let the skimmer, ozone, UV and tank itself do their thing. After this its just disappeared overnight and haven't seen it since. My acro's have actually been gaining the deep color that I have never had in this tank since its been running. I sucked my tank so dry of nutrients that it took a month and doing the above, before I was able to read any sort of phosphates and nitrates. I also don't have what some might say a light bioload either with 4 tangs among other fish that I heavy feed everyday.
I have never been so happy to see hair algae in my life after getting rid of my dino, I look at it as a joke to get rid of. Youll be the same after you get rid of yours haha. Im not advocating anyone that they need to go out and drop $800+ on ozone and UV not taking into account whatever you decide to use for a ORP controller or what I did will work for everyones tank. It's just that this is what worked for me, Every tank is defferent. Although I will say you wont regret having ozone on the tank, that's another topic. But can say the following paragraph is what you absolutely need to do.......\
From my unfortunate experience I conclude the following things to be non subjective, unopinionated and need to be followed like its your religion or youll never get rid of Dino. You have to actively fight this horrible creature, doing it over a long period of time isn't going to work. Whatever you decide to do be very persistant and try to do it all at once (ie not once thing for a week or two then something different and so on). Do everything possible with the time and money you have without sucking the tank dry of nutrients. You need another organism in the tank whatever it may be, to outcompete the DINO. As long as your levels are within an acceptable level you shouldn't freak out and buy phosphate and nitrate removers it'll make your dino problem worse due to the fact nothing is outcompeting it for survival. Zero phosphates and nitrates are not what you want believe it or not.
