Controlling dinoflagellates with Metronidazole
 

My problem with dinoflagellates started about 5 months ago. At that time I have bryopsis that I had had for at least 10 years (tank has been running for at least 15 years). 5 months ago I treated my tank with Fluconazole to control the bryopsis. The fluconazole killed all the bryosis. After about a month I got cyno. I tried heavy skimming large water changes etc to no avail. I eventually used chemiclean to control the cyno.

Then after a month along comes dinoflagellates. They came with a vengeance and covered everything. I would remove the dinos and they would be back in 15 minutes. I was manually removing dinos at least 2 times a day and still making no progress. I tried large water changes and still no success. My corals in the tank were receding fast. Dinos release toxins in the water. I had these corals in the tank for over 10 years. I have another tank that is doing fine and I have copies of all my corals. This tank has been a bit of an experiment. I read up an article on using Metronidazole to control dinos.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/wi...dazole.254861/

Apparently it affects the ability of the dinos to multiply. I added a magnum micro filter and blow off the rocks a couple times a day. I change the filter every 3 days.

I am on day 7 of a 10 day treatment with Metroplex (Metronizide) adding about 15gms per 10 gallons of tank water daily. It is amazing the dinos are almost all gone and the polyps of the corals are opening up. It has been a month since the polyps opened up. I am hopeful that it will do the job.

Is this an in tank treatment? Will it kill corals and inverts? I'm fortunate my dinoflagellates took a Time out but they are still there (appear dormant). They have not flared up again covering anything quite yet but I know they are capable of destroying my Reef.

Keep me posted on your progress :smile:

It is a protozoan parasite treatment and it appears to not have affected anything else in the tank. I have sps, lps, shrimp, snails and shrimp. I appear to have good success. Read the article I posted it is a good read. It is also a long read.

Day 9 in the treatment. Its amazing my frogspawn is actually coming back. The dinoflagellates had caused the large frogspawn to decline to the point where there was only a bit of green left. In the past 4 days the frogspawn has started to fill in. On heads where there was no green left on them are starting to show some green. It is too early to be celebrating yet. The dinos aren't completely gone but they are not really actively growing. I will do the 10th treatment tonight and will keep you posted.

I had tried everything including blacking out the tank and could not stop the dinoflagellates. I am cautiously optimistic.

DinoX works on dinoflagelates. I had "Ostreopsis Ovata", probably the toughest dino around.
DinoX worked for me in conjunction with an UV sterilizer ( probably the most important piece of equipment when you have a dino outbreak) and with some minor blackouts (no longer than 48 hours). The UV sterilizer is actually more important than DinoX and the blackouts.
By the way, dinoflagelates love water changes.

Out of curiosity, if a tank has been running for such a long time where would the dino have come from? Is it something that happens from spores in the air finding water like some algae's or is it something that needs to be introduced via corals or live rock?
Or is it something like cyno which is bacteria with the ability to photosynthesize?

How does anything we don't want get into our tanks. From the live rock, from live sand, from corals we add. Likely the dinos have been there for a long time, once conditions became ideal their population exploded.

According to what I have read the reefers trying the metronidazole had already tried the other methods including Dino-X. The great thing about the metronidazole is I did not have to black out my tank which further stresses the already stressed corals. I have read about many failures with Dino X.
I have not tried the UV Sterilizer. Might give it a try if the dino's return.

along with this i've also been following a couple threads on dinos that promote the use of uv. interestingly, one of the more lengthy threads outright claims that metro has little to no effect on 95% of the dino strains subjected to it.
while i don't have any visible results to show just yet in my battle, the latest strategy is simply keeping nutrients consistently above zero. the thought is that untraceable nutrients are creating a perfect environment and supposedly a big reason why dinos are taking hold the first place.
uv is also mentioned as a good strategy while doing this as well so i can see myself skimming over amazon today for an entry level model to test this out with.

DinoX alone will not do the job, if you relay on DinoX only you will loose coral color and/or corals. However used together with an UV sterilizer, it works great.
I believe that the minor blackouts and DinoX make the dinos uncomfortable enough so they get in the water column trying to relocate and the UV sterilizer does the killing.

Do not overdose DinoX !!!