Dinoflagellates!!!!!! Help

I have been fighting Dinoflagellate slime stuff for weeks now and cant seem to get rid of it completely and I really hate the stuff. I have tried cutting my lights down to as low as 4 hours for about two weeks, it helped but not all the way. I have been doing a water change every week! Does anyone have any GOOD, PRACTICAL suggestions on how to make this better?

 

You might try using a coiled denitrator and/or a refugium to eat up the excess nutrients in your tank.

 

I have a HOB Refug with lots of macro in it! I really am worried about what could come out of this nasty stuff.

 

Well I am battling dino's right now. I kept thinking they were cyano and I did everything imaginable to get rid of them. I added a phosban reactor, I already ahd a refug, I did weekly water changes, I siphoned them out..to the point that daily I was using my hands to get it out...I cut the feedings by over half of what they were getting, I reduced my lighting schedule...nothing worked. Kept getting worse and finally got on my corals and killed some of them. I had noticed a color change of the "slime" nad hte thickness but until it killed corals I just thought it was cyano.

With the help of a friend who has a lot of reef experience we decided it was dino last Monday! This is what I did.....
1. Turn off your lights ALL together. Leave them off completely for at least 5 days. I turned mine off Monday and just started turning them on Friday (I have SPS and clams and everything is FINE!)
2. Bring up your pH. I was dosing with 2 part and my pH was 7.8 to 8. I did a few doses of kalk slurry and then on Tuesday I started to drip kalk nightly. I still dose with 2 part in addition to 1tsp of kalk dripped overnight (do this versus the slurry..safer) Test your pH, kH and your calcium daily! My pH is up to 8.4 and has stayed there since Wed. My kH is 9 and my calcium is staying steady at 440.
3. Friday I turned my T5 back on normal schedule..they are the acentics. I turned my MH back on for 2 hours only. Each day I have increased the length the MH are on by an hour or so. As of today I have no sign of dinos...HOWEVER THEY ARE STILL THERE I KNOW. So I will keep dosing kalk and keep my pH up. I have kept the feeding down
4. I had a UV sterilizer that went down around the time I started noticing the "Cyano". I added a new sterilizer in the tank on Wed also. I think this has helped also tremendously
5. Keep your skimmer running.
6. DONT BE TEMPTED TO TURN YOUR LIGHTS BACK ON
7. I have read where people throw a bunch of snails and crabs in there...well I have read that it can kill them. I dont know if it is true but I have a lot more empty shells right now..so I am buying hte fact that anything that eats this stuff will die. So dont go and dump a bunch in

Good luck..

 

oh yeah..from what I read by Bob Fenner in the Coral Propagation book...manual removal is kind of a questionable thing.....no significant evidence that wtih DINO's it makes any difference. If it is covering your corals you want to squirt it clean with a turkey baster...but you will notice real fast that once the lights are off you will notice a BIG BIG decrease in it

 

How's going now? I have a bad case of them now. Ever since my tank over temp disaster nothing has been the same.

 

Elevated pH, via kalkwasser will help, decreased nutrients, added carbon, heavy skimming, and herbivores.
Most herbivores prefer dinos over anyother algae.
IF it is on the sand, snails have a hard time eating it, look at conchs or other strombus sp. or tangs in the ctenochaetus genus.

Oh, almost forgot, water changes typically hinder dino removal...
Eliminate ALL phosphates and silicates, esp the silicates as thats what dinos use to make their shell.

On reefkeeping mag online I think Randy Holmes Farely has a few articles regarding dinos.

Good luck and happy reefing!

 

How's it going with the Dinos? Mine went away.
I've read on some forum that once the soak up the silicates they will go away. I'm gonna get these nitrates back to 0 if it kills me.

 

I Was figthing them as well. I havent done a water change in awhile. I ran Carbon for a week. Skimmed heavy and had the lights off for four days.

Its now turned white. And I have something else growing, that dosent look near as bad as the dinos. lol

 

dinos suck but they go away eventually... well mine did anyways.