Dino Help and Advice

Okay guys,

I really need some help and advice here. I have been fighting dino for about 4 months now. I'm fairly sure it is dino and while it doesn't seem very toxic, it isn't good. I've tried a lot of treatments. My most recent attempt was a 4 hour light cycle for 3 weeks along with regular treatments of DinoXal (yeah, I spent the cash on the german stuff). For the last week of it, the tank looked perfectly sterile.

Within 1 day of turning the light cycle up, the dino was back. It's back to getting worse and my corals can't take any more.

My next option is to do something drastic and this is where I need advice. I'm going to pull all the livestock I can, but I want to leave everything that operates in the tank in, then does the thing with something sufficiently toxic as to kill any chance of dino remaining in the tank. I will then add about 20lbs of live rock and recycle the tank.

1. Anyone got a brilliant idea for eliminating this stuff that will actually work before I get drastic?
2. Failing that, whats the best way to sterilize everything?

Thanks all.

 

Well, you can't be impatient. We cut our light cycle down to 4 hours for about 3 months, blew off and sucked out all we could every day. After a month and half, I'd read water changes fuel it, so we stopped that for a month and a half...major improvement. We continued to blow it off, but after skipping the first water change, there was no brown stringy stuff, just bubbles on top of the rocks at the end of the day.

You can't go right back to the full light cycle right away, you have to build back up. We added an hour to ours, and started to get a few bubbles on the rocks again, but no brown stringy stuff. Blew them off every day till they went away. Cyano picked up a little again with the increased lighting, but it's getting better as we give it the same treatment as the dino (except we do water changes now). We'll probably add another hour to the cycle in a few weeks, then another, etc. until we're up to 8.

Everything in this hobby takes time.

You can take out the rocks and start over, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen all over again since you'll be re-cycling the tank...

 

Well, after about 6 months of fighting dino I kinda gave up. I moved all the coral out of the tank and have had the light off for 9 days now. Anyone know enough to say when I can turn them back on with a close to 100% chance of having killed the dino off?

I have also added more live rock; I feel like my tank was a bit sterile and that allowed the dino to rule the roost. We'll see if I get a more balanced bloom when things go back on.

 

have you tried raising your pH?

any treatment that you do for dino takes months of sustained effort.

 

Yep,

I tried raising the pH for a while, but decided without a dosing mechanism it wasn't stable and I was risking nuking the cycle. I actually think I had it dead or mostly dead before I went with a more drastic lights out solution, but the truth is my corals were on their last leg in this fight. They're coming back in my wife's tank now while my tank can rest without any light at all and hopefully completely kill off any dino remaining.

My plan is to get a couple of tester frags back in the tank at about 21 days of lights out and start up with a 2 - 3 hour light cycle. If I light acclimate the corals over 3 weeks I'll have gone a total of 21 days of no light and 21 days of lowered light on the back of already weakened problem dino and I can hope that will be the end of it.

What I'm really curious about though is if anyone can attach a number to the amount of time it takes with no (ambient room) light before I have a fair chance of saying its all gone and being right.

 

It's seems to be the alk more than pH from what I understand. That said, high pH can actually drive some strains of dinos, so, it's trial and error. Also, I've found GAC to be extremely effective against dinos. I've come across a number of research lately that shows some dinos are mixotrophic and can actually utilize organics directly. So, carbon, as it is very effective at removing organics may be helping in that way. Also, siphoning and I've found water changes to be useful (I know many people say not to do water changes, yada, yada, yada, but that isn't my experience and water changes maintain the overall health of your tank in the process just my .02).

 

I beat dino by turning off my lights completely, and wrapping the front and sides of my tank with towels, a complete blackout for 10 days. It had no ill effects on my coral, clams, or inverts whatsoever. It may sound drastic but they can go for quite some time with no light. Also I turned on my lights one time for 1 hour at day 5 to feed my fish and then the lights went right back out.

During this time I kept up with my normal dosing and water change schedule and when the 10 days was up I was dino free.

 

I wish I had realized it was as bad as it was right at the beginning. I did several 3 day total blackouts over the course of six months and in between the tank suffered low, erratic, or nonexistent light. If I had known what I was up against, I would have done what you did right at the beginning. I think corals can survive without light for a couple of weeks, but can't survive the long term abuse of little and changing light over months.

 

This is what worked for me.

1. Total blackout, no ambient light allowed, for 4 days.
2. ph up to 8.4-8.6 consistently, 24 hours, no swing lower at night.
3. Magnesium up to 1450-1500.
4. No water changes during blackout.
5. Blow dino off all rocks and corals daily and clean mechanical filters ( sponge, floss) after water clears.

I battled it for close to 3 months. Probably one of the most disheartening episodes in my reefing history.

Purigen and Chemipure Elite did nothing to alter the dinoflagellates.