dino experiment

[JamesHolt]

Originally Posted by Montireef

Just a simple microscope

Dont have one, its on the list but havent purchased it yet.

[JamesHolt]

Came home just now, and part of my condylactis is hanging out of the powerhead, the rest is in a puddle on the tank bottom,, I forgot to cover the power head on the tank I moved everyone to while treating my DT.. Just about ready to hang it up..

[JamesHolt]

Every day I have been pulling the rocks out and spraying them with H2O2 ,then scrubbing,FW rinse, vacuuming the sand and dosing H2O2.. (Only 40g breeder with 4 large rocks in it http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/blog.php?b=778 )

Took the dose up to 10ml per 10g this morning, and within 5 minutes there were pieces of dino flying everywhere, filled a filter sock in 4 hours, the water looked like mud had been dumped in it..

Power heads are now pointed more toward bottom, to keep it stirred up till socks catch it all

The shrimp and fish had to go back in DT yesterday, without their rocks to hide in it was a major fight scene,,I dont have any more cured rock to put in for them.. (another item for purchase list)

I have not changed my lighting at all still running 10 hours a day(2 175w MH 20k)
Very few patches showing in the sand..

[JamesHolt]

None showing anymore, has been several days now..
Havent dosed in two days..
Started putting DT back in order.. All coral back in tank on frag rack..
Added several new rocks (been soaking in FW and peroxide for three days),,
Rearranged rockwork..
Added Lawnmower Blenny, and 1 pistol shrimp..

My losses so far are,, several emerald crabs, sally light foot, and some smaller snails..
Didnt lose any shrimp though..
Some of my paly clusters havent opened back up but they are still intact
My Pulsing Xenia started coming back two days ago (it had totally melted in the FW dip, only left little nubs hooked to the rock)..
My Acan and Trumpet corals opened fully today,actually bigger than before,, time to feed them, very glad to see they made it through the torture...
Getting a mini-cycle from the new rockwork, hoping the dinos are gone and not hiding as I have to do a water change in the AM..

[Montireef]

Glad to know!
I wish you'd been able to I'd them.

[JamesHolt]

Me too, they were not the toxic ones i dont think,, cause the turbos and conch were having a blast munching on them..

[Montireef]

Lucky you!

[JamesHolt]

just hope they stay gone

[JamesHolt]

OK,, just finished a 4 day lights out just to be sure of their demise..
On my way to pick up stuff for a water change.. here goes noting

[jrp1588]

Originally Posted by JamesHolt

OK,, just finished a 4 day lights out just to be sure of their demise..
On my way to pick up stuff for a water change.. here goes noting

On my old tank, when I had huge issues with these, I did a week long blackout after vacuuming up what I could, dosing H2O2 during the blackout. They happily came back in full force after a few days.

I eventually found out my RO/DI unit was defective and was letting through about 60ppm water. Once I got that corrected, they eventually went away on their own.

[JamesHolt]

Did the water change 25%,, just waiting now

[stan zemanek]

Ok, so I am going to dive bomb on in here and join the group of frustrated reefers. I to am dealing with Dino Mania. Heres a little background. I originally had a 150 gallon tank set up in my living room. Decided it was time to do a Man Cave, In Wall 200 gallon, down in the basement. After 2-3 years of construction I was finally able to transfer all my stuff from the 150 down to the new 200.

When I did the transfer everything was seamless, that is to say that 50% of the water was first siphoned down stairs to the new tank and then I began to move all the rock, coral and fish down in buckets of tank water. When I did the transfer I was careful to not expose anything to the air. Once I had all the stuff moved down into the new tank, I siphoned down the remaining water from upstairs. then I only had to add about 25 gallons of new salt water to make up the difference in tanks sizes.

All seemed to be going good for about 6 months and then WHAM! DINO MANIA!
I have since been blowing off the rocks and siphoning like mad (bare bottom) every couple of days. Changing filter socks etc. etc. Also have been running my skimmer (Reef Octopus 3000 super wet) with a dual carbon and Rowa reactors, but nothing seems to kill them off. This is crazy I start at one end of the tank blowing off the rocks with a turkey baster, and by the time I get to the other end, the little bubbles are already back where I first started

Here are some pics. If you look close you can see the tiny bubbles everywhere.
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Heres a pic of my sump after I swapped out my return pump for a slower one. before I was turning the sump over about 10x/pr hr now its running at about 5 times per hour and the bubbles are now collecting in the sump and theres is like an almost snot like film on the top of the water. Pretty gross huh?

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So here's my next plan of attack. I just finished plumbing in a new 40 watt UV sterilizer. I am using a little Mag 5 pump so with head loss I think I am probably pushing about 300-400 gallons per hour through it. I think at that rate pretty much there's nothing can survive that goes through it. I am wondering however if perhaps doing a blackout in conjunction with UV would not be better. wouldn't a blackout cause the bubbles to release from the rocks and get into the water column, and thus trough the skimmer? Any thoughts?

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Here's a little eye candy for ya when tank was first set up.............
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[JamesHolt]

Read back through this thread some, I dont think the UV will kill them by itself, as it may not be strong enough.. It should help some..
Increase your flow back up and get some tighter filter socks( 100um or smaller)..
https://utahbiodieselsupply.com/bagfilters.php

If you have the space pull your corals and fish out and dose with Peroxide while doing the lights out..
DO NOT do a water change until you beat them, they love it...
I got rid of mine by doing the dosing ( I was dosing large amounts (10-15ml per 10 gallon), little dangerous to fish and corals), pulling rocks out, scrubbing and fresh water dipping them daily..
I put everything I did in my blog..
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/blog.php?b=778

I did lose some corals and most of my crabs..
Dosing does turn Chaetomorpha Algae to goo also..
But if it is in your sump it is contaminated with dinos already..

I dont advise the large amounts I used, but I was getting ready to start a new job and if I didnt do it, they would have taken over by the time I could have enough free time to deal with them..

Meanwhile the dinos have overwhelmed my QT tank.. Going to leave it running till I get a microscope so I can ID them... Wish payday would hurry up and get here.. Been three weeks since I got a check...lol

[stan zemanek]

[QUOTE=JamesHolt;23609266]Read back through this thread some, I dont think the UV will kill them by itself, as it may not be strong enough.. It should help some..
Increase your flow back up and get some tighter filter socks( 100um or smaller)..
https://utahbiodieselsupply.com/bagfilters.php

If you have the space pull your corals and fish out and dose with Peroxide while doing the lights out..
DO NOT do a water change until you beat them, they love it...
I got rid of mine by doing the dosing ( I was dosing large amounts (10-15ml per 10 gallon), little dangerous to fish and corals), pulling rocks out, scrubbing and fresh water dipping them daily..
I put everything I did in my blog..

Thanks for the reply, At this point, if I have to pull all my corals, and rocks out to net my fish, I will just break the whole tank down and get out of the hobby. It's just not worth the aggravation anymore. As far as sump turn over rate.....I would think that the longer you can keep them in your sump the better chance you have of getting them to the UV. Why would you just want to whip them through the sump and back to the tank? If anything you would want to twist the hell out of the water inside the tank via power heads to get the bubbles to release and get them to the sump processing.

[JamesHolt]

Catching them in the sock filters is the purpose of increasing your flow..
Try the lights out with the UV first,, It cant hurt

[stan zemanek]

Ok small update. UV has been running steady since Sunday afternoon. Around 8 last night I blew the entire tank with a turkey baster to get as much in suspension as possible.

Woke up this morning and went and checked the tank and I would say nearly 99% of the bubbles that were on top of the water in the sump are gone. What does this mean? I have no idea. I am curious to see what happens this afternoon when lights come on. Normally by 5 in the afternoon the tank is bubble crazy.

Sump before UV
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Sump after 14 hours of UV
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[JamesHolt]

Are you doing lights out with this, or just the UV??

[stan zemanek]

Originally Posted by JamesHolt

Are you doing lights out with this, or just the UV??

For now just UV. I want to see how the tank looks after a few days of UV and the standard lighting cycle I have it on. I don't want to throw to many things at it at once because I won't know if it was one thing or a combination that was the cure. My guess though is lights out, and STROOOOOONG UV, will be best.

[ponokareefer]

So I've battled through dinos and have finally got to the point of no visible signs of them for the last 24 hours after a 75 hour black out period. How long should I wait until I return my lighting back to normal? I'm running it at 4 hours/day now and my corals and anemones are not looking great.

Also, my long spine urchin has lost a lot of spines and may be on its way out. Other than that, I only lost 1 anthias during my first black out period.

[JamesHolt]

What I have seen so far , three days is what everyone seems to be trying

[JamesHolt]

well mine are back with a vengance,
started dosing again, getting ready for a long blackout

[rog2961]

With the weather getting warmer now, I'm going to leave my windows open for an extended period of time and change nothing else. Hopefully the effect on pH will cause something to happen with the dines. My house is a newer construction and they tend to trap more co2.

I've had this issue with dinos before, I'm thinking the rocks from my previous system caused the current outbreak in conjunction with adding GFO and carbon dosing to the system. This falls in line with the low nutrient issue. Another commonality between this and last time is that I let my RO filters go too long. Last time I caught it way too late - 150ppm, this time I caught it at 45ppm. During both instances the dines got way worse. Snowball effect, don't check RO water enough, see algae in tank, change water heavily with bad water, Dino feed off trace elements, change filters, keep changing water with clean water now. You can see how it happens.

[Jonesrd1]

I did not have the time to read the whole thread so I don't know if it has been mentioned that zooxanthellae/symbiodinium are dinoflagellates. So you kind of walk a tightrope when trying to fix a bloom in the water column or sediment. Good luck. Sorry if this is just a repeat.

[mathman7728]

i beat dinos doing the following:
1) MH lights out for 5 days but kept the blue LEDs on 5 hours/day. the room was completely dark when LEDs were not on
2) dosed algae fix marine (i know it is typically used for hair algae) at slightly higher amounts than recommended (i was desperate)
3) after 5 days andover the course of about 2 weeks, I gradually increased in MH to typically photo period….done and no come back.

[adamwheel]

I had my new DIY 178 gal up and running for less than a year when dinos took over and wiped out my SPS colonies I'd had for 3-4 years. I do not have a positive ID on the species but did bring a microscope home from work to confirm I have dinos.

There were some maintenance issues I wanted to deal with anyway, so I decided to do a complete tank tear down.

All fish and inverts went to QT and are currently there awaiting the restart. Inverts were dipped in fresh water and hydrogen peroxide prior to entering QT.

One of my QTs was getting enough light to allow the dinos to bloom. I had it placed near my grow light for this year's garden. That QT was shut down and all inverts and fish are now in a 40 gallon breeder that only receives ambient light.

Questions: I'm worried about introducing them again during restart. I plan on running fresh water through the system before adding salt.

I have some nice inverts but wonder how to add them with confidence.

Any suggestions on both fish and invert additions?

Sorry for the long post and thanks for the help,

Adam