dino experiment

[t4zalews]

Originally Posted by frank2926

I removed all my sand while fighting them. then put some back after it was clear for a long time.

I actually bought all new rock...BRS ecosaver rock. And I'm gunna purchase new live sand and use all new water. I may lose some of my corals, but I have already lost so many, it doesnt even matter at this point. I'd rather just start off with a new slate.

[doctorgori]

Originally Posted by frank2926

raise your alkalinity to 13/14 dkh , then just watch ph so it does not go over 8.5 ph will rise but will not stay. It is the alkalinity that is import to fight dinos, not the ph.

+1

[acrylic_300]

Here is what I am noticing:

I'd like to start by saying I've been battling dinos for about 3 years. The first year they killed all sps in the tank...the next couple years I just let them go and gave up on them basically reducing my tank to live rock, fish, and a few very hardy softies that are nearly impossible to kill (not thriving).

I started cleaning the tank up about a month ago...determined to exterminate the dinos this time. I did the normal routine with elevated PH and 72 hours of darkness every other week. It was so close to being gone it wasn't even funny and then I added a new fish that ended up dying somewhere.

At the end of the second 72 hour blackout I notice new dino patches reappearing. The dead fish is no where to be found. Basically three weeks of slaving down the drain. Peroxide time! Here is what I noticed.

The new areas of dinos look like tiny heat waves coming off the rocks and sand. It's only a matter of time before those little waves of slime turn into streaming threads of snot. The dinos recede a good bit when the lights are off and expand more and more during the light cycle.

I dumped 40ml in my 300 gal tank shortly after the light came on and I could see the new dinos waving. My zoas closed for a bit then reopened, but the dinos receded all day. *One patch of well established dinos in dim lit area expanded later in the day (I think it was retracted when I used the peroxide).


Today I turned the lights on two hours early and let them run for a couple hours. The spots of dinos that retracted yesterday were trying to come back out at about half strength. The well established patch of dinos was expanded and going pretty strong. I dumped 40ml of peroxide and the new patches went invisible while the well established patch remains sort of visible but retracted (just a flat mat). The zoas recovered more quickly today.

From this observation...I'm not sure if it does any good to add peroxide while the dinos are retracted. I think they need to be out waving in the water to be damaged real good. I hope like hell it's killing them or at least keeping them retracted and out of the light long enough for something else to take over.

I've decided not to remove the few small patches of dinos that remain so that I can more accurately judge the damage the peroxide may be doing to all the dinoflagellates that I cant see.

[Aquaman101]

How fast should you dose the peroxide? Do you pour your entire batch (1 ml per 10 gal) at once? Or little bits throughout the day?

[acrylic_300]

Originally Posted by Aquaman101

How fast should you dose the peroxide? Do you pour your entire batch (1 ml per 10 gal) at once? Or little bits throughout the day?

I think most people are doing all at once or maybe split in half. My only worry with half dosing is that the dinos may build a resistance.

On the other hand if you could figure out what dose causes them to retract then you could probably dose that amount several times a day to keep them beat down.

Today I used a small amount to nuke a mother spot where the dinos originally started with a syringe and it only took about 2ml compared to the 40ml I dosed the whole tank with earlier.

I'm dosing more than recommended and the strongest dinos still expand after about 3 hours. I may try cutting back the amount and dosing twice during the light cycle so I can get a good 6 hours of light without them rebounding. I may just double the dose though...everything seems to be doing fine.

[Aquaman101]

Is it safe to dose peroxide and try to maintain an elevated pH at the same time for a double-whammy?

[t4zalews]

Originally Posted by Aquaman101

Is it safe to dose peroxide and try to maintain an elevated pH at the same time for a double-whammy?

In my experience with dose peroxide, dosing it never really had an effect on my Ph.

[Beenalongtime79]

dinos... the gift that keeps on giving...

[Aquaman101]

I am on day 3 of turning the lights back on. I have the tank still wrapped in black trash bags, but I don't have the lights covered so the fans are able to let the heat escape. I have not turned the lights on for my regular 8 hour light period yet though. I started on Day 1 with 2 hours of lights, Day 2 with 3 hours, Day 3 with 4. I will work my way back up to 8 by adding one hour a day.

So far they haven't shown back up.........yet.

[Beenalongtime79]

Had a little bout of dinos and used the 3 day lights out w/ peroxide at 1ml/10 gal and it worked wonderfully.

I actually cheated and used some actinic lighting for an hour for feeding each day and then lights out again for the 3 days and just started a slow increase in light again.

It was pretty amazing how effective 3 days of lights out were. They just slowly died away. I've had a few small breakouts that eventually die out on their own, but they are always very annoying as they tend to kill the tips of my SPS so this time, I didn't want to even deal with it and used 3 days lights out (w/ 1 hour actinics for feeding) and the daily peroxide and wallah. Gone by the end of the treatment cycle. Has been roughly two weeks w/ absolutely no sign of dino life, but like I said before this is the norm even w/ normal light cycle, it just took 3 days instead of 2-3 weeks for the dino infestation to clear this time using the lights out/peroxide cleansing.

I normally run carbon and GFO and aggressively skim so these are in action as well, but I feel even with these measures, if you don't cut lights out and even use peroxide everyday, it takes awhile for them to burn out. With all measures in place though (I think lights out is absolutely critical), it tends to be an easy fix. (well at least for my tank setup)

Cheers,
John

[perikaruppan]

I am battling dinos for the last 6 months.. and man it has been a big pain...

tried 84hrs light outs.. with slowly increasing the lighting period...
then tried elevated PH.. and its amazing that at 10pm the ph is 8.45 and 8am it is 8.05!! so need to dose pretty hard (Calcium Hydroxide) to maintain PH...

but never did both together.. and never tried peroxide...

a shot of the dino's on my Zoans..


but never found it to kill my SPS.. except recently when the latched onto a dead spot on my Green BirdsNest and killed it by spreading all over it... other SPS are fine.. and growing...

It still keeps comming and comming... so can we do..
1. lights out + Elevated Ph + Hydrogen PerOxide

will that help?

[bertoni]

Some people seem to be successful with hydrogen peroxide. I'd be very careful with it.

When you did the lights-out treatment, did you cover the tank to keep all light out?

[frank2926]

Did you raise ALK TO 13 DKH? Raising ALK was more effective for me than just raising PH >

[perikaruppan]

First time didnt cover.. but for the 2nd slot of 4 days, did cover it... they didnt come up at all...

never tried raising Alk though... can do that also... as i have no other go but to redo my tank if this persists...

my Phospates are 0.08 (hanna Checker).. will start the lanthanum chloride test to reduce .. hopefully that has an effect...

[Homeytwist]

Hey everyone, I feel your pain and thought I'd share my simple cure; operation blackout. No light (and I mean NONE) for 10 days. Covered my entire tank, sump, hoses, EVERYTHING with tin-foil and kept it that way for 10 full days. Only time that changed was briefly in the morning and at night when I opened a small door I made in the foil for feeding. Water params during the blackout period were all standard stuff, no trickery there. On the 2nd or 3rd day the skimmer started working overtime removing the decaying algae and dinos. When the foil came off the tank was pretty much spotless. It's been close to 6 weeks now and no sign of the dino. Got a bit of cyano growing now, but that's much easier to handle. I've got a mixed reef with fish, inverts, LPS, SPS, and softies. Everything made it through the blackout fine except for one sad little SPS frag that was half-dead going in. Before that I made sure all params were good, fooled with PH and Alk, adjusted lighting etc. etc. etc. The only thing that worked was light depravation.

[Beenalongtime79]

Originally Posted by Homeytwist

Hey everyone, I feel your pain and thought I'd share my simple cure; operation blackout. No light (and I mean NONE) for 10 days. Covered my entire tank, sump, hoses, EVERYTHING with tin-foil and kept it that way for 10 full days. Only time that changed was briefly in the morning and at night when I opened a small door I made in the foil for feeding. Water params during the blackout period were all standard stuff, no trickery there. On the 2nd or 3rd day the skimmer started working overtime removing the decaying algae and dinos. When the foil came off the tank was pretty much spotless. It's been close to 6 weeks now and no sign of the dino. Got a bit of cyano growing now, but that's much easier to handle. I've got a mixed reef with fish, inverts, LPS, SPS, and softies. Everything made it through the blackout fine except for one sad little SPS frag that was half-dead going in. Before that I made sure all params were good, fooled with PH and Alk, adjusted lighting etc. etc. etc. The only thing that worked was light depravation.

10 days!! they probably thought it was the end of the world in there! Haha

[Homeytwist]

Yeah man! LFS told me how they dealt with the dino in their display tank... They recommended 7-10 days, and they did the full 10 in theirs and all livestock was fine (coral, anenomes, urchins, etc. etc. etc.), so good enough for me! I occasionally shone a flashlight in there to check on things, but it was all fine.

Forgot to mention, I have a pincushion urchin that got big and fat eating the dino before operation blackout. Mine looks just like the purple, white, orange, and green variant shown here:
http://www.aquariumdomain.com/viewMa..._marine_id=35# It did make a dent in the problem for sure, cleaning the rocks and walls bare but you know as well as I do how fast the dino grows, urchins would never keep up to eliminate the problem... I've also got a red & blue tuxedo urchin but it was never interested in the dino like the pincusion was.

[yuzaki]

i have the same problem as most of you here. it has been more 2 months since i had this problem and it very stressful/toxic to sps. you can look below for the film.

they will lessen during lights out and will become active with bubbles with the lights on. during light on i try to remove the dinos covering parts of the LR (with coral line) and dino which have attached to my sps. this has been my daily routine as to help my sps. I have filter sock connected to my overflow pipes and clean them every two days. I have yet to clean the detritus from my sump today and i have yet to siphon out dino from the sand and when i brush them.

I will try the lights out method for three days with only the blue/actinic light on. hope this helps as i dont want to try the peroxide approach now to the detriment of my LS.

my current parameters:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate 0 (as per API)
Phosphate: .0245ppm (hanna ULR phosphorous converted to phosphate)
Alk: 7.5ppm (API)
Cal: 420ppm
Magnesium: 1350ppm (ELOS)

Skimmer: Super Reef Octopus 5000int
Photoperiod: 10 hours total(9 hours white)(10 hours actinics/blue)

[Beenalongtime79]

Originally Posted by yuzaki

i have the same problem as most of you here. it has been more 2 months since i had this problem and it very stressful/toxic to sps. you can look below for the film.

they will lessen during lights out and will become active with bubbles with the lights on. during light on i try to remove the dinos covering parts of the LR (with coral line) and dino which have attached to my sps. this has been my daily routine as to help my sps. I have filter sock connected to my overflow pipes and clean them every two days. I have yet to clean the detritus from my sump today and i have yet to siphon out dino from the sand and when i brush them.

I will try the lights out method for three days with only the blue/actinic light on. hope this helps as i dont want to try the peroxide approach now to the detriment of my LS.

my current parameters:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate 0 (as per API)
Phosphate: .0245ppm (hanna ULR phosphorous converted to phosphate)
Alk: 7.5ppm (API)
Cal: 420ppm
Magnesium: 1350ppm (ELOS)

Skimmer: Super Reef Octopus 5000int
Photoperiod: 10 hours total(9 hours white)(10 hours actinics/blue)

I feel like if you are going to do lights out, you should do the full monty and just dose the peroxide at 1ml/10 gallons to give your best shot at knocking out the problem since you have already committed to 3 days of lights out....

Then again, you can always ramp upwards if the 3 days lights out doesn't work.

Cheers,
John

[perikaruppan]

I hear many of them tell that Dino's are toxic.. but in my tank.. they are growing very near to the SPS, and in some cases on the Frag Plug of the SPS but the SPS are not dying!!! - they are growing very very slowly... so is my problem exacty dynos?

But during the light's out Cycle they are totally Out!!!... still will the peroxide with so many "no Results" Work? or has it actually worked for anyone ?

my phospates are down to 0.03!!!! whola...

[frank2926]

Removing all sand, Lights out for 4 days and High Alk (which raised PH also) worked for me. No Peroxide used.

I siphoned out any visible signs daily. Running all water through a bucket rig with cotton floss and Carbon. Returning water to the tank so no water change would be needed.

[yuzaki]

Originally Posted by rufio173

I feel like if you are going to do lights out, you should do the full monty and just dose the peroxide at 1ml/10 gallons to give your best shot at knocking out the problem since you have already committed to 3 days of lights out....

Then again, you can always ramp upwards if the 3 days lights out doesn't work.

Cheers,
John

Will dosing peroxide hinder the function of the biopellets?

[Beenalongtime79]

I don't use biopellets, but my tank was pristine after the 3 days lights out and peroxide treatment. No issues w/ my tank, no sick fish... everything did fine so I imagine the bacterial population on the rocks/sand was not overtly affected. So, I imagine your bacterial population on your biopellets won't suffer too much of a hit.

Cheers,
John

[180+55reef]

if you dose peroxide should you do it after 7 or so hours of light? it seems they would be out the most then?

thanks

[Beenalongtime79]

Originally Posted by 180+55reef

if you dose peroxide should you do it after 7 or so hours of light? it seems they would be out the most then?

thanks

I don't think anyone knows... no one really even knows if the peroxide works either, but we still do it.

I think dosing peroxide helped me out, but it could have been due to just lights out for 3 days. Who knows?

Go with your gut feeling.

I dosed peroxide even during lights out and I think that may have helped.

Cheers,
John