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DNA · 08/19/2018, 11:02 AM

I've got some very good leads for you to play with.

Today I took a quick look to see if the internet has come up with a solid solution for the dino epidemic and was disappointed to see it seems to be lost and confused.
With all those people with the same problem we should the further down the road already.

I've been able to keep my tank dino free for a very long time and to grow montipora successfully, but my test acropora frags usually fade away in a few months.

Even when the tank had no visible dinos at all I was able to make them reappear for a single day with two methods.

The first one was quite a surprise since I added only about 1 gallon of fellow reefers tankwater to my own and the following day I had a single patch about one square feet and the following day after it was gone for good.

The other one was an experiment that I was quite confident that would bring dinos back. I had been running the tank in algae based mode for the duration, but elected to give GFO a go at the accumulated algae in the display tank and to see if it would help with the sps. Over the years I've noticed that when you replace the GFO media there is always less of it to remove than it was before and if you put your sandbed in a bucket and leave it there for some weeks the white sides of the bucket will turn brown.
I opted this time to use more GFO than usual and not to throw away the dust that comes out with new media as I've always done and for a single day I got most of my sand covered with a thin layer of dinos. The following day I could hardly see them and then they where gone. After running GFO for a month or two the dinos slowly started to show up as the GFO in the reactor dissolved.

I've noticed that the tank is generally doing better when the skimmate is greenish rather than brownish and as some of you know iron is known for red coloring in nature so that has been in my spotlight as a player for dinos for quite some time. I can speculate that iron is vital for dinos or the effect that iron has on the water chemistry can cause a dino bloom or the combination of these or something entirely different is going on, but I leave with saying that iron is a major player.

Have fun!

08/19/2018, 11:02 AM	#4479
DNA Registered Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Iceland Posts: 1,516	I've got some very good leads for you to play with. Today I took a quick look to see if the internet has come up with a solid solution for the dino epidemic and was disappointed to see it seems to be lost and confused. With all those people with the same problem we should the further down the road already. I've been able to keep my tank dino free for a very long time and to grow montipora successfully, but my test acropora frags usually fade away in a few months. Even when the tank had no visible dinos at all I was able to make them reappear for a single day with two methods. The first one was quite a surprise since I added only about 1 gallon of fellow reefers tankwater to my own and the following day I had a single patch about one square feet and the following day after it was gone for good. The other one was an experiment that I was quite confident that would bring dinos back. I had been running the tank in algae based mode for the duration, but elected to give GFO a go at the accumulated algae in the display tank and to see if it would help with the sps. Over the years I've noticed that when you replace the GFO media there is always less of it to remove than it was before and if you put your sandbed in a bucket and leave it there for some weeks the white sides of the bucket will turn brown. I opted this time to use more GFO than usual and not to throw away the dust that comes out with new media as I've always done and for a single day I got most of my sand covered with a thin layer of dinos. The following day I could hardly see them and then they where gone. After running GFO for a month or two the dinos slowly started to show up as the GFO in the reactor dissolved. I've noticed that the tank is generally doing better when the skimmate is greenish rather than brownish and as some of you know iron is known for red coloring in nature so that has been in my spotlight as a player for dinos for quite some time. I can speculate that iron is vital for dinos or the effect that iron has on the water chemistry can cause a dino bloom or the combination of these or something entirely different is going on, but I leave with saying that iron is a major player. Have fun!