Uh-oh, Dinos.

asylumdown · #1 02-02-2013, 05:17 AM

Quote:

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 · #2 02-02-2013, 05:18 AM

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 · #3 02-02-2013, 05:59 AM

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 · #4 02-02-2013, 06:23 AM

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 · #5 02-02-2013, 06:31 AM

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 · #6 02-04-2013, 03:39 AM

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 · #7 02-04-2013, 05:26 PM

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!

Delphinus · #8 02-04-2013, 05:32 PM

I just abandoned dosing during the lights-off when I had dinos. You can always get your params back in check afterwards.

daniella3d · #9 02-05-2013, 02:47 AM

First, you should id the stuff under a microscope because the key to the treatment is to correctly identify the culprit.

I had 100% success killing dino with higher PH. Worked like a charm and it never returned, ever.

I used Seachem OH to raise the PH to 8.5 for a week.

http://www.aquavitro.com/products/balance.html

I took a sample of the stuff before and looked at it with the microscope before to make sure what I was dealing with and it was positive id for dino.

Diatom won't react to the same treatment, neither cyano so ID is important.