intense sadness

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by reef_raf

Just to clarify, dinos are NOT diatoms. 2 different beasts. A diatomaceous earth based filter may help, but essentially siphoning them out, darkness and time are required to get rid of dinos.

Thanks Brad, I'm not too clear on this diatom filter thingy but I pretty much figured that the filter may keep any dinos out of the water column but certainly not clean your tank of them.

The only thing I have had luck with so far has been the complete covering of my tank with blankets and lights out for at least 2-3 days. I did this the first time I had dinoflagellates (2002) and it seemed to fix the problem. However at this time I did not have SPS corals and wasn't concerned about losing any corals (softies rebound from lack of light better than SPS it seems). Then in the fall of 2003 I had a brief bout with dinos and still haven't figured out what I did for that. This batch of dinos just wasn't interested in going away at all. I did lights out for 4 days at first, then tried just actinics for a few days, tried boosting alk, increasing skimming (mainly just adjusting knobs randomly ).

Oh and of course I'm not discounting the fact that by the time I get home today the dinos may have started up again. I really wouldn't be surprised at all. They're persistent little buggers thats for sure.

Christy