Uh-oh, Dinos.

[asylumdown]

So since the fish started going back in the tank, I've been feeding more (obviously). The tank hit a nice ULNS with the small amount I was feeding while it was fallow for 4 months, and the water, rocks, and glass we crystal clear. I've been monitoring N and P closely since the fish started going back in, and the levels have consistently stayed in the undetectable to trace range, but I was noticing a teeny tiny patch of what I thought was cyano in one corner.

over a week the patch kept getting bigger and bigger, and then I started noticing what I thought was a diatom bloom on my sand and on my rocks. The 'diatoms' and cyano also happened to coincide with a melt down of my RO membrane, so I assumed the water was getting an influx of garbage from Calgary tap water.

Cleaned, bleached, and fixed my RO unit, drained, cleaned, and refilled my RO reservoir, and did two back to back 50 gallon water changes over the course of two days, and the problem didn't improve. Not one to let something get out of hand, I turned off my skimmer and phosphate reactor, and dosed chemi-clean as per instructions yesterday. One teeny tiny little spot of cyano (not the big patch that caused the initial concern) died in a few hours, but today, oh man. The sand bed has almost disappeared under a carpet of brown, stringy, bubble entrapping goo, and the rocks look like snotty brown cobwebs have draped themselves all over everything. It's starting to look to me like I don't have cyano after all, and what I'm dealing with is in fact Dinoflagellates. A quick search online says that chemo-clean might actually make dinos worse.

I'm getting conflicting information on how to deal with this. Some accounts say total blackout for three days, lots of siphoning and water changes, activated carbon, phosphate media, and raised pH. Some say no water changes at all and to just let the bloom run it's course.

nutrient levels still test undetectable, and there's no other nuisance algae in the tank. What have you all done to beat this?

ETA: spelling and auto-correct fails

[mseepman]

Wow...dinos scare me as there doesn't seem to be any specific fix. My best understanding is that silicates can be a big contributor.

After fighting dinos for 6 months one our local reefers who was previously a TOTM threw in the towel on his reef.

I would go dark and do water changes together.

[jostafew]

Sorry, I feel your pain. I fought the dyno and won, but it was a long bloody war. Low nutrients, high nutrients, one thing after the other, nothing worked. The only remedy for me was total blackout, and I mean total. Complete blockage of light on all five sides of the tank, transparent plumbing, sump, everything. And not for three days, I'm talking 7-10 days. I did 10 days on my mixed reef with no casualties other than the dyno (and algae). Granted I did not have an advanced SPS reef, but I did have various inverts, LPS, a couple hardier SPS colonies, a couple softies.

If you're up for a read have a look at this thread: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=1962886

The big blackout was the recomendation from my LFS and was ultimately what worked for me. Sucks for sure, but the dyno is a tough one to deal with. Good luck

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by jostafew

Sorry, I feel your pain. I fought the dyno and won, but it was a long bloody war. Low nutrients, high nutrients, one thing after the other, nothing worked. The only remedy for me was total blackout, and I mean total. Complete blockage of light on all five sides of the tank, transparent plumbing, sump, everything. And not for three days, I'm talking 7-10 days. I did 10 days on my mixed reef with no casualties other than the dyno (and algae). Granted I did not have an advanced SPS reef, but I did have various inverts, LPS, a couple hardier SPS colonies, a couple softies.

If you're up for a read have a look at this thread: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=1962886

The big blackout was the recomendation from my LFS and was ultimately what worked for me. Sucks for sure, but the dyno is a tough one to deal with. Good luck

Did you dose peroxide?

[asylumdown]

I should add, I don't know if I could do a 10 day blackout. A couple Gs in SPS in there, I don't think they'd do well with 10 days no light

[asylumdown]

Just read through that entire reef central thread. I'm going to try a lights out period starting tomorrow and dose peroxide. I'm going away for 16 days next friday. good lord why do these things always have to happen when I'm not going to be here to stay on top of it?

[jostafew]

No, no peroxide no fooling with SG, just pure darkness. It seems there are different strains which react differently to certain treatments, maybe you will get lucky. For me a few days wasn't enough so I had to go to extremes. But at that point I was so fed up I was open to extreme measures and risking some livestock for the short term.

[Werbo]

Can you post a pic

Are snails dying or appear sick? Most dino's are toxic to snails.

I have had Dino's and they almost drove me to quit this hobby. I read a lot and learned a lot. First off there are several types of Dino's. So raising ph may work on one type but not another. Likewise a period of darkness may work or may not depending on the strain but more than 3 days will stress corals. Tried peroxide and it did nothing but it apparently works for some.

My tank was ulns and that was the trigger. After trying everything what worked was:

1. Stop carbon dosing
2. Increase bacteria (mb7, zeobac, ect)
3. Let nitrate and po4 rise. Actually try and grow hair algae. C'mon I know you can do it. Dino's in a ulns system can use sulphate (in salt mix) as a food source.
4. After all this I ended up breaking all my sps of the rockwork and removing my sanded. Scrubbed every rock in the sink with a toothbrush, rinsed in old tank water and put no rocks back in tank(rocks in sump). All sps went on eggcrates.
5. With the higher nutrient levels, clean rocks and no sand I never saw them again.

In hindsight i would siphon out as many as you can and try a period of darkness (total blackout) for 3 days. Stop carbon dosing. If this doesn't work I would remove your sandbed and scrub the rock daily wih a toothbrush. Hopefully you do not have to break he corals off.

Good luck.

[asylumdown]

Well today it was as bad as it's been. I got married in my house today so I wasn't allowed to put garbage bags over the tank until everyone left, but I'm starting a blackout period now. Thankfully it's really easy, as the tank is fully enclosed in a cabinet, so I just need to cover the two exposed panes of glass.

I'm also going to try dosing hydrogen peroxide at the same time, and keep the tank blacked out for 4 full days. My dinos aren't nearly as bad as some of the images I've seen on line, but today was the first day I really saw them starting to coat corals. I'm leaving town for 2 weeks on Friday, so I'm hoping that if this doesn't work, it at least slows it down enough so that it doesn't overwhelm my tank when I'm not here to do anything about it. If there's still dinos when I get home I'll try a longer blackout period, and will start looking in to making pH adjustments, as that's the other thing online that people have said works.

Question for people who've done black-outs - did you have to adjust the rate at which you dose calcium and alk? I would think that the absorption rate would bottom out with the lights off.

[jostafew]

That's a good point which I did not consider during my blackout. That being said my dosing consisted of periodic measurements and the appropriate top up on params, nothing structured enough that I would notice a change in consumption. What I did do though was to add some sheet seaweed on a vegie clip a couple times near the end to feed my herbivorous inverts. After 2-3 days algae quickly began dying off, and with it went their food source.

Congrats on the wedding BTW!