dino

help me help me

i am sick of this devil dino stuff what is the best way of getting ride of it plz help i am getting sick of this stuff

 

Reducing available nutrients will remove dinos by removing its food source. I would use a skimmer, activated carbon, regular water changes using a descent slt mix and RO water, plus any of the following methods; ATS, macro algae followed by harvesting, bacterial and carbon source dosing, anaerobic filter zeovit style. It may take a few months to see the desired effects

 

I heard not to do water changes to decrease iron, which is something it feeds on.

Everything else is good advice that i'm going to try myself!

Can you elaborate on what harvesting macro is and ATS? I have chaeto in my sump... i cant say ive ever harvested it though

 

Also once you get you water conditions in check, try shutting the lights off for three days. I did this and it all died. And if you have corrected the source it wont come back. This speeds up the time it takes to die off.

 

Run some GFO in a reactor or a canister filter.. That will help reduce PO4 which is what dinos feed on..

 

The problem with not doing water changes is that a lot of other minerals are replenished during a water change which help keep a closed system stable. Plus lots of other organisms including chaeto require trace amounts of iron
By regularly (once a month) pruning the macro algae (seaweed e.g. caulerpa, chaeto etc) you will be exporting the locked up nutrients and in the case of caulerpa; stop it going sexual and releasing spores everywhere.
ATS stands for Algal Turf Scrubber, see link;
http://www.3reef.com/forums/refugium/ats-algae-turf-scrubber-32396.html

 

iron deprivation treatment is certainly not ideal for the long term sustainability of your tank, but if you replace other elements, (cal/mag/alk) as needed, the traces aren't to important. Maybe your chaeto will die, but I am pretty sure at this point you will trade the chaeto for dinos. So far, I have some reports that the iron deprivations and alk raising has worked for some people.

 

but when you start the ATS its says it will first be green hair algae then turn into turf.
but when green hair algae first apears wont hair algae get into your DT?

 

The idea is that the hair algae grows on the ATS because you provide the perfect habitat for it and then clean it off (the turf is GHA) so that it is just using up nutrients and being harvested. The tanks I have seen using ATS have not got GHA growing in the DT. I have heard that it can be a bit smelly though. A lot of people using ATS say that it is that good that you don't have to run a skimmer

 

Dying chaeto will release bound iron, nitrate and phosphate from the rotting chaeto. Which will fuel other opportunistic algae. You need to remove the source of the nutrients or find a better way of removing the problem nutrients before the GHA in your DT has a chance to.