dino's

[whiteice669]

Does anyone have any new info on ridding your tank of this, successful stories ?? any help........ thanks

[michika]

I hear they go extinct after a few million years.

http://www.dinosaurtypes.net/images/home_page/DinosaursRef.gif


- Water changes
- Good flow
- Established biological filtration
- Regular syphoning of the actual dinos themselves.

[Skimmerking]

Hey there if you look on the noet it gives you lots. I know of some members on here that have been in contact with the dino's most of the time if you black out the tank for 5-7 days will rid of the dino's

[whiteice669]

lol, cant wait that long
did a 3 day black out, 4 55 gal water changes, changed out zeo rocks, carbon, sucked out 70% of sand and goo, today, no better

[Skimmerking]

it can take months of doing this my friend I bid you good luck........ I would never wish t his on my worst enemy.....

[fkshiu]

Aside from what has already been suggested and blackouts, RHF suggests keeping pH up to fight dinos.

Good luck - you'll need it.

[vicious]

I`ve been fighting the dino for years now and recently I finally got it beat.
I`ll tell you what worked for me and what didn`t.

What didn't work !

3 Day black out; it worked but if you don`t solve the underlying problem it`ll just come back (I lost a few corals due to the stress too!)

Raising PH; I didn't see any difference.

GFO; It didn't make much of a difference for me but I still recommend its use in general.

No water changes; Didn`t work in my experience


What worked!
Carbon; This made a big difference in my experience! Lots and Lots at least 1 Cup per 50G. The more the better.

Changing RO Membrane; I believe this was the main problem. If your not getting 0 TDS then your going to have Algae problems.

Good Husbandry in general.

What may also help for you is using a diatom filter and running some silicate absorbing media through a reactor.

If you feed frozen foods you should rinse them before adding to tank.

Good luck

[ScubaSteve]

I had a dino problem for a bit. I still get little flair ups from time to time (is it like the Herpes of SW tanks?) but it is more or less gone now. What worked for me was carbon (lots of it), continually blasting the rocs with a baster and vacumming often. Oh, and one other thing... I have no way of backing this up, but whenever I have dosed iodine in small amounts the dino seems to die back... no idea why, but it works in my tank...

[lorenz0]

They are a pain to get rid of. I am still struggling with a bit in my tank.

run carbon and gfo

don't change your water every week, this only causes more break outs. I honestly haven't changed mine in a month but have been dosing to keep everything up

this is what has worked for me

another method i read about is running a powerhead with a filter on it at night (like the small fluval ones) and cleaning the filter every morning

[burgerchow]

I raised ph, magnesium and total blackout for 4 days. I mean TOTAL. Not a sliver of light into the tank. I used my motorcycle cover and put it over the whole tank.

[bvlester]

I've had a couple of small outbreaks on one part of my sand bed and on 2 rocks. what worked run carbon i've been running at minumum 1 Lb. added a couple of ocilating power heads this helped. I have also added a tuxedo urchin he eats every thing but has not gone on the rocks that I want him to as I have 3 rocks that have Hair algae on. I have a shortened light on time from most others this helps for alot of thing.
My fish pick at it but not much so once a month I pluck and I get quite a bit of the root matter, it will not grow back if you can get the root matter out also. I think the urchin is prity cool cleans the rock better than the sea hare I borrowed, the urchin takes it right down to rock no green tint left as compared to the sea hare. In a couple of months I maybe able to get ride of mast of the hermit crabs I will probably keep a couple of the smaller ones.

Bill

[whiteice669]

well I am still battling this, at my witts end, am running 4 liters of carbon, have tryed 5-6 periods of total darkness lasting 5-7 days, new filters in ro,tryed raising ph, as high as 8.8 for a period of 2 months, and it keeps coming back, have lost 2/3's of my coral, all shrimp and snails, zeovit does not seem to make a difference ( have tryed running with and without ) Is my only alternitive to tear down the tank and recook everything and start over ???

[bvlester]

Get a good sand bed crew I have a slider conch, 6 Tonga snails and a sand sifting Gobi it is a orange diamond Gobi. zeovit is good for combating phosphates dinos are caused mostly from organic tissue dieing and breaking down in the tank. you can try these 3 animals they seem to work great for me if some thing dies the Tonga snails are on it in a snap and you can find it in no time they will congregate at site of death and will even pull it into the open some times if the dead critter is small so all Tonga's can eat. hermits and shrimp get the leftovers it seems. by the way if your snails, shrimp and corals are dieing then they could be causing the dino troubles. Check your water for copper you may have some rock that was treated with copper.

1. get tank parameters in check and in order before doing any thing else get a good cleanup crew and a sand bed maintenance crew.
2. once cleanup and sand bed crew are in the tank and do OK. change light cycle to 2hrs on 2hrs off 2hrs on 2hrs off for 8 hrs a day for a couple weeks leave all lights off at night. the fish will adjust and this will help combat dino's you may have to do this for some time till dino's are gone.
3. do water changes every week 10% will do till dinos are gone then you can go to every 10 days.
4. keep a log for everything to do with your tank parameters, equipment maintenance live stock added live stock deaths everything that happens to the tank should be logged. You can build a log in excel so it's not difficult to do.
I don't know what parameter you test for but you should buy all test kits and test and log them all each and every time you test for some thing even if it was only one test. This can help you solve some problems Dino's will appear about 1 day after something dies in the tank.

Bill

[whiteice669]

I have removed the entire sand bed, all corals that have died have been removed, doing water changes seem to feed it, but have done 25% 2-3 times a week, all levels appear normal with sailifert test kits

[kien]

I didn't see any mention of a UV Sterilizer.. would that not at least help ?

[whiteice669]

I have thought about one, not sure if it would help or not

[kien]

It should at least help reduce the spread of it, as it should kill the free floating spores that get pulled into the sterilizer. Meanwhile, the rest may die off with the other methods you're employing. Something like this requires a multipronged attack I think.

[bvlester]

A UV sterilizer will help kill and control anything that is suspended in the water column. I think if you are do that many water changes in a week then you may be stuck in a constant tank cycle.
What do you have in the tank right now?
What size is the tank again?
Do you have Po4 test kit?
Do you have a Kh, Mg, Ca and copper test kits?
I consider these the basic test for a reef along with Ph, salinity, amonnia, nitrite and nitrate.
So there are 10 basic test you need to do and find out where those peramiters are to start to figure out anything.
You could test for about 100 different things but IMO these are a must.
Can you get these peramiters for us?
and slow down on the water changes you may be going more harm than good doing that many all the time. If you don't have the test right now most LFS can do them for you and get the number from them for each test. Lets get down to the bottom of this.
there is a forum in the US if you want help you have to get these parameters before anyone will help it is a known thing on that board I guess.
Your corals could be doing badly for more than one reason too many water changes they don't like to be disturbed to much or have things change to dramatical all the time.
25% water changes 2-3 time a week could be a contributing factor to corals closing up and dieing. I don't know at this point need parameters.

Bill

[christyf5]

My final kick at the cat when I had this issue was removal of the sandbed, powerwashing the rock and pretty much a complete start over. You may have to cook the rocks if they're releasing the nutrients that are fueling the dinos. For me it was the sandbed (even though it was new it had tons of detritus build up on it that looked like grey dust). After the sandbed removal and rock powerwash I was good to go and haven't had a problem since (I had a horrible cycle with caulerpa though, dinos would subside, caulerpa would grow, I'd yard out the caulerpa and then the dinos would flourish on whatever the caulerpa released during the pruning).

Sorry you're still having a time with this, dinos have sent many a reefer running screaming from the hobby.

[Werbo]

I am battling dino's currently as well. This has been going on over 2 months. I am making progress via running a high PH dripping kalk. I'd stop doing water changes and replace all your filters on your RO unit (to reduce silicates). Once dino's subside via high PH then re-try a period of darkness.

If I ever have a problem I consult reefkeeping. Here is an interesting read regarding dino's.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-11/rhf/index.php

Here is a nice summary with a picture as well. The picture is exactly what I am battling.

http://www.rimlessreef.com/1/post/2009/04/dinoflagellates-and-the-treament-of.html

The main things to do are:

-Period of darkness for 48-72 hours
-Raise the Ph with kalk to 8.4-8.5
-Add good bacteria to out compete the bad (Microbacter 7/Biodigest)
-Run a Po4 remover such as GFO
-DO NOT conduct any water changes!!!
-Siphon out what you can
-Running a 100 micron filter will aid in capturing any free floating Dino's

[staceyd72]

Hi,

I battled dinoflagellates for four months. My tank is running on the full Zeovit method for about 16 months now, I was in my eight month when it started. I only dosed Start2 and Bak (both reduced by 50%), everything else I stopped. But I assume you are not dosing any Zeo products now?
- No water changes.
- Drip Kalk to maintain pH of 8.5
- Run filter socks(25 micron) on all drains- changed daily
- Carbon (passive) and GFO (low flow)
- One day of darkness every three days, lighting schedule was also reduced to only two hours of full light, supplement eight hours.

In 28 days it was all gone. I can't say for sure what exactly was the contributing factor in the eradication, but I think all of this helped.
I personally would not bother with a clean up crew, snails anyway, as dinoflagellate is poisonous to them. Wait till the dinoflagellates has fully gone then add a new CUC.

Hang in there, it just takes a lot of patience.