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Unread 08/22/2015, 01:35 PM   #1589
cal_stir
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: corunna,ontario,canada
Posts: 269
Quote:
Originally Posted by Billybatz9 View Post
I have read a lot on this thread and am battling dinos myself. It seems that there isn't much to do about this pest. If anything has worked for you? Do you mind sharing your thoughts for me please. I am at the last straw before I tear my tank down.
Sorry for the long post but...
First let me say I used algaeX to try to rid my bubble algae, HUGE mistake, it TOTALLY DECIMATED my micro fauna and brought on my dinos.
My params were stable, ca 420, alk 9 dkh, mag 1350, po4 and no3 undetectable.
Still have some bubble algae.
In the early days when infestation was heavy, I blew off corals and rocks daily and siphoned the sand bed through a 100 micron filter sock, ceased water changes, doubled my carbon, slowly raised alk to 12dkh, ran a turbo twist 12 36w uv (200 gal system) ran 100 uM socks on drains, supplemented bacteria(not sure if it helped), did 4 days lights out(did not help)did 4 days lights out and dosed h2o2 1ml/10g (did not help), reduced photo period(did not help), Skimmed heavy and wet, got a microscope and id'ed my dinos as Ostreopsis Ovata.
After @ 4 months and lots of research, I got 10uM filter socks for drains(ostreopsis @ 40uM), started siphoning sand and pumping water back in through a 5uM sediment filter, slowly put my photo period back to normal, stopped dosing bacteria(couldn't tell if it helped or hindered).
Was still blowing of rocks every couple days which by now was just a brown film that did not blow off well but could be wiped off, but corals were not really affected, mostly sand bed and brown film on glass that needed to be cleaned every few days.
After about 8 months, totally discouraged thinking I can't even give my livestock away with contaminating someone else system I stood over my sump in the next room with a bottle of bleach and contemplated getting out of the hobby for good.
I'm glad that I didn't do it.
After about 8 months I decided that since it likes the sand so much then the sand must go, I sucked it out over a 2 week period still filtering the water and still no water changes, I noticed that ca, alk and mag were rising all the time and by now I was dosing less than half as much alk, less than a quarter as much ca and had stopped dosing mag.
Continued blowing the rocks every other day and was having to clean the brown film on the glass daily.
The film on the sand and rocks was mainly dinos but the film on the glass was mainly diatoms with dinos.
My coraline algae was receding all the time.
I now decided I needed to rebuild my micro fauna as there was not so much as a single pod to be found. I decided to go "dirty" like the tank would have been when I first cycled it with real live rock and no shortage of diversity.
I shut off the uv, skimmer, gfo, carbon. Got 1200 amphipods pods from reef2go, got pods and phyto from the algae barn, copepods from get your pods, got crabs, snails, pods and pods+ from reef cleaners, got brittle stars, amphipods, spaghetti worms, bristle worms and sand activator Indo pacific sea farms.
I got phyto cultures from florida aqua farms and started culturing phyto, I got copepods from live aquaria and started culturing them, and I started culturing amphipods.
In the beginning there was attrition, I saw dead amphipods floating through the water column and lost some snails and crabs but don't know if it was the dinos. I started dosing phyto 200ml 4x a day. After about 3 weeks of no skimmer, carbon, gfo, uv, and feeding a little heavier green micro algae started to appear on the glass(still mostly brown but they did not occupy the same space) and hair algae on the back glass(which I let go for about a week then scraped off) and cyano on rocks and bottom, and now po4 @ .03 and no3 @ 3, I restarted my skimmer, started 1/2 carbon, started dosing lanthanum chloride to control po4 and dug my sulfur denitrator out of storage to control no3.
I continued this way for a few weeks and the brown film receded from the rocks and coraline algae started to grow, green micro algae had taken over the glass completely and was growing a crop daily, cyano was growing mats which I controlled by sucking it up with a turkey baster but always left some.
It's now about 6 to 8 weeks since I went dirty(should have kept a better log) and there are no signs of dinos, I decided to chemiclean the cyano away as per instructions.
Started doing regular water changes again and deemed myself dino free the first week of June.
Slowly installed a new sand bed (caribsea seafloor special) and lowered my alk back to 9 dkh, have been increasing my dosing and am back to pre dino levels.
Got some film showing up on new sand but only diatoms and algae present, I cut back the phyto to 100ml 4x a day.
Diatom bloom lasted about 6 weeks, coraline algae growing like a champ.
Tank looks beautiful and livestock well, still dosing copepods and amphipods from my cultures and running normal amount of carbon.
Po4 did increase from phyto to .05 but am slowly bringing it back down to .03, no3 is 4 ppm.
The diverse micro fauna/plankton was the key but the phytoplankton was the nail in the coffin IMO.


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