Dino Devils!

I have a case of the dinoflagellates. It took me a while to identify them. At first, I replaced my return pump thinking it was causing the bubbles on my rocks. When I saw more layers of brown, I assumed diatoms and went after them. I was wrong on both counts.

When I finally recognized what I had, I had a lot. This past week and weekend I went after them with a vengeance. I bombed the tank repeatedly with a kalk slurry, fighting to keep an 8.5 pH for 3 days. I also went full lights out for the full three days. I syphoned and filtered continuously, trying to remove as much as I could. There was a lot; the dino's sloughed off in sheets.

Yesterday, the lights went back on; I wanted to see how much damage the treatment had done. Everything, surprisingly, looks a little angry but otherwise fine. My tank was covered in a calcium percipitate and my alkalinity had dropped to about 35ppm, but those are being corrected carefully.

It appears most of the dino's are gone. Good riddance. My concern now is keeping them gone. Yesterday I saw a few areas with a bit of brown and some bubbles forming during the day. I gave them a good syphoning but otherwise did nothing. I'm afraid more lights out and more lime will have a detrimental impact on my tank.

What I need now is advice on how long to wait before going after them again, ideas on prophylactic treatments (will UV or ozone, possibly run for a few weeks only, neutralize a mobile phase and finish the job on these?), and recommendations for alternate attach mechanisms so that I don't just end up breeding a resistant species.

Thanks all.

 

Congratulations on knocking it down a notch.

After the blackout I just kept up the daily cleaning of the rockwork and corals. Then clean the mechanical filter after the water clears.

I continued the lighting on just a 3-4 hours photoperiod for awhile after the blackout, no water changes, use of chemipure elite, purigen, pH maintained around 8.4 and magnesium of 1500-1600 maintained.

It took a couple months to get it under control but that is what worked for me.

Good luck

 

I recently had the same problem and I followed the same advice you did. Lights off for 3 days, turned off powerheads, physically removed what I could and cleaned filtersock etc. I gradually went to 3 hours lighting and increasing slowly. So far so good and fortunately, I have lost no corals or livestock. Good luck!

 

Ive been dealing with the same dino for a couple months..kalk daily, siphon, basting, and only doing 3 hrs of mh lights but still on 12hrs actinics.. getting better but we'll see in a few days.. i wonder if my blue actinic leds feeds this stuff or not.
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I wasn't sure either about my led actinics. The first day I left them on and then I decided to turn them off. I then went 3 days with nothing. Even darkened the windows. That was only about 5 days ago but so far so good!

 

well its worst today.. im going to do a complete 3day blackout, no lights and all power heads off.

 

I too have a case of bad dinos and I have been doing weekly water changes for about 2.5 months to rid myself of hair algae. I have heard that you should stop water changes when you have dinos. Would you do this even in my case since I have HA? The HA was just starting to get close to being under control. I added a phosban reactor and my phosphates have been reading 0 I feed very little since there is only one fish currently in the tank after I moved that is all I added (the tank has been up for at least two years, but has gone through several changes and most recently was the move from fowlr with a few corals to the attempt to make it a reef tank after I moved it about 2.5 months ago) I sold off all of my non reef fish and only have a 6 line wrasse at the moment with a toadstool, a couple of zoas, and a mushroom covered rock. This is also a 150 gallon display tank about 190 total with a lot of rock. All I have done thus far to combat the dinos is raise my ph to about 8.6 what else would you guys suggest in this case? Sorry this is so long.

 

I myself did not see any improvement with water changes at all, none. I do not recommend them with dealing with dino. It just did not work. I use chempure elite and purigen, but your running a reactor so you are probably good there.

The full black out, mag up as well. Manually clean as much as you can every day and clean mechanical filter after water clears.

Start the photoperiod around 3-4 a day after the black out.

 

I mentioned stopping water changes due to a lot of other sources stating that they actually make dinos worse: The Guide to get rid of dinoflagellates - Reef Central Online Community