Dinoflagellates update 3/13/13 blackout part 2

My battle with dino's has begun, I have completely blacked out my tank and hopefully will see some good results in 3 days time.

I'm running GFO and skimming wet so we'll see how things turn out.

Thanks go out to evolved and 2in10 for help with identifying the dino's and treatment method

 

Good luck, let us know how it goes. If it is really Dino's blackouts alone probably won't help much. Although, I had what seemed to be Dino's (but wasn't actually as confirmed by a microscope). A blackout in the case did finish them off. So, who knows. If your doing other stuff, GFO, GAC, heavy skimming, siphoning, high pH, that stuff can help a lot, so, a combined approach is probably best if really Dino's.

 

Good luck to you.

It probably took me 3 weeks until the Dino was completely gone, after 3 months of doing all the wrong things.

There is no quick fix unfortunately.

Try to keep your pH and or ALK level up. Manual cleaning everyday helped me a lot as well.

 

I'm sending you some positive karma! Here's to wishing you the best and that you beat them!

 

yeah I'm trying a multi-pronged attack, should have mentioned, my ph is at 8.4, my alk is at 12 and as soon as the 3 days are over I'm going to perform as large a water change I can, syphon out all the crap I can find, only have the blue lights on for a week and I might even start dosing hydrogen peroxide (any thoughts on this would be appreciated)

the other thing too is that I was reading that its possible that vodka dosing could cause dino's to bloom, I use an aquaripure filter injecting 8ml of vodka once a week. I'm wondering if I should stop dosing the vodka and see if that helps. Has anyone heard anything similar?

and thank you all for your support

 

man o man I can not even tell you how nerve racking it is to not be able to look or see into my tank. I have no idea if the nem is moving or has moved or god forbid got into a powerhead or the filter inlet again , how the clam is doing or even how the fish are coping being in utter darkness :-/

I need Wednesday to get here fast!!

 

1 more day to go...this morning I decided to uncover the top of my tank as I could tell the water was getting warm, I looked at the thermometer and it was close to 84 which is the highest it's ever been so yeah I uncovered the top. I run an open top anyways so I'm hoping this will allow the temperature to go down, who knows the two may not even be related but I'm hoping they are and I don't have a bad heater.

I tested the PH last night as well with an API test kit and it came out to be a purplish/pink color a color I've really never seen before lol, it looked like it was between 8.2 and 8.4 so my guess is that its 8.3, I hope I'm right and my PH isn't way off the chart

 

I guessed you wouldn't totally make it without peeking

 

well come to find out its a good thing I did peek cause my MJ 1200 fell off its damn suction cups and was blowing sand all over the freaking place, now my skimmer is going absolutely insane.

I can still see fish swimming which is a good thing and I still have the black plastic around the front and sides so its still pretty dark in there. I just hope this works, cause I don't think I could do this a second time lol

 

ok so I took the remaining plastic off my tank this morning, I did not turn my lights on immediately as I was heading to work. I was how ever able to see into the tank a bit from ambient light and the rocks look 10x better then they did and all the corals, clam and anemone seem to be doing just fine.

So far I've found all my fish with the exception of my royal gramma.

I came home tonight and turned on just my actinics at 40% that was at 6pm, I only left the lights on for about 3 hours, I did not see any kind of bubbling like I would have before. I'm not getting my hopes up yet though as I know this is only the first day.

Unfortunately I found my royal gramma lying on the sand floor, I'm not sure what killed him to be honest I checked everything out and all params are great, amm = 0, Nitrite = 0, nitrate = 0 phos = 0.25, ph = 8.4 so I'm not sure what happened to him. kind bummed out about it to be honest he was a cool looking fish

anyways I plan to slowly ramp up my lighting over the course of the next week and hold off on any water changes for a little while and just syphon out what ever I find with a turkey baster. I also decided to start dosing H2O2 as I've heard that this helps in fighting this nasty stuff and I want to come at it at all angles. I'm only dosing 1ml/10gallons so not too bad.

I will keep you all updated...