Peroxide saves my Tank! With pics to Prove It!

[jedimasterben]

From what i remember, he (DNA) never truly got rid of his dino issue.

It's simply not possible. Remember that zooxanthellae are dinoflagellates. Any treatment that you do that could, theoretically, kill dinoflagellates would also kill the zooxanthellae in your coral.

[brandon429]

There are certain cures right in the peroxide thread from rc, it definitely can be cured just no guarantee. So many posts about dinos gone...but Id even consider merely changing up the timing of what you already do

 

pure hand removal like in the pic means only trace forms, not aggregates are left around the system

 

what about the taped off black out, then a slightly larger than normal hit of systemic peroxide right at that third day to cook nicely. Id even consider coral removal for the stressed ones, hold them and try zapping in this way if the problem persists

 

id not even let the peroxide stay in system until full disspation=burn time for nontargets. hit it faster and harder than normal for a good few hours then change out all that water. Backbreaking water changes are what make larger nanos harder to run, and my tiny ones so very easy. the net effect on blast exportive water changes on any reef system is very positive in all ways, that physicality alone is the sole reason my tank has been around this long. it solves so many variables predicted and unpredicted to just be able to do two back to back 100% changes across 15 mins if needed, broadcast invaders have a hard time with that. anything that has a water column transitory phase does, imagine trying to always nuke the cells in suspension but never actually physically exporting all that bad water, every time. at best, a weekends effort gets a big water change but what about the 4th in a row> i did this for some earlier cyano problems and beat that w no chemicals easy. simple blast changes, maybe the best tool even though the threads say wchanges made theirs worse. I think they were partial changes that upwelled nutrients and the dinos appreciated that, mine are total volume rips where the only dinos are what would cling to the rocks emersed and in films, pocketed areas. so much more biomass removal than those who leave the invaders in the system for the most part.

 

Im brainstorming this to say that if your tank was mine, id have a holding vat of rubber trash cans ready for changeout water and Id flush that thing like a kohler

 

I have personal proof you can bring home frags from a dino infested tank and not have an issue, my bowl is that. our lfs went through a good year battle in frag tanks where they just hand removed and actually had scopas tangs that ate it well. I just washed the frags well and a quick dip and along with my usual water changes which are 100% it just never had a way to take hold.

 

But its these seeded ones where a mass developed, thats tricky

[jedimasterben]

There are certain cures right in the peroxide thread from rc, it definitely can be cured just no guarantee.

I don't think you've read the thread, then, or are ignoring certain posts. There is a recurring theme throughout - they always come back.

[brandon429]

There are several posts in my thread of dinos simply gone, it is not classed like neomeris annulata is, its beatable. Thats easy to claim from the bench man but not after nearly five years of actual work on a thousand tanks. I think my statement of 'we've beaten it several times and its documented' holds well.

[jedimasterben]

Good luck with all that.

 

Unless you can A) identify the species that blooms in their tank, and verify, via microscopy, that there are no encysted dinoflagellates still living in the water column or on any substrate, then they have not been 'cured' and you should not tout peroxide as such.

[brandon429]

not me, the people who posted. I just found one in the linked rc thread that says peroxide and lights out beat it. you arguing with him? its wierd you would simply not look at that. I can google it and find more, but we can ignore self testimonies I guess.

 

Why is it that species of algae didnt really matter much in all of this? Not once did we consider species when battling dinos either, it either worked or it didnt.

 

not claiming the system is perfect, just that its easy to make statements without having to test a method over and over and over and over in a documented thread set. im personally glad I never got the stuff or my bowl might be dead././.

[brandon429]

first google return

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/how-i-beat-dinoflagellates-and-the-lessons-i-learned

[jedimasterben]

not me, the people who posted. I just found one in the linked rc thread that says peroxide and lights out beat it. you arguing with him? its wierd you would simply not look at that. I can google it and find more, but we can ignore self testimonies I guess.

Yes, I absolutely refute his claims unless data and evidence are provided. Correlation does not imply causation.

 

Why is it that species of algae didnt really matter much in all of this? Not once did we consider species when battling dinos either, it either worked or it didnt.

Algae and dinoflagellates are dissimilar, that's why it matters.

 

first google return

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/how-i-beat-dinoflagellates-and-the-lessons-i-learned

 

 

Read the comments.

[brandon429]

I read the first half of the comments that were positive, with Shane also saying they can be beaten. I guess we are down to some win, some dont, at least we can contrast that to your claim that all dont.

 

rather than press it any further, Ill let your opinion stand. these threads will just keep growing and all we can do is move on with them. I have beaten dinos using peroxide alone, let that stand. No prob if you dont agree, at least you dont have to try much to test it

 

 

any reader here can google "how I beat dinoflagellates" and see if they think all those statements about how it was beaten, and sustained, falls into line with Bens claim. that simple./ I never wanted to argue with ya man, but these threads have some documentation for it and it wasnt worth discounting it either. You were 100% on your claim, with no threads so I took it with a grain of salt and so does lots of search returns.

 

what does the OP of this dinos thread say was the outcome, midpage?

http://www.3reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates.143152/page-2

 

there is so much of this online, Ben is discounting it all? hmm. I dont need to convince ya man, we'll just keep on truckin as we do

 

Sure they could be lyin', guess you have to choose your side in the matter.

[jedimasterben]

If you're so confident that peroxide is a 'total cure', then why are you backing down and not giving evidence for your claims with data to back it up?

[Halo_003]

I have some bits of GHA. Should I try a light dose of H2O2 on the whole tank? It's a 20 long and I was thinking something like 1.2mL would be fine. I'm also having some weird bits of brown stringy hair algae.

 

I have it on some plugs as well, should I dip those in 50/50 RODI/H2O2? My peroxide is 3%.

[jedimasterben]

I've had good results by taking a spray bottle of peroxide onto pieces that can be removed (so like frag plugs and such), or you can do a dip. For the stuff in the tank, spot treating is best.

[Halo_003]

Sounds good, thanks.

 

I'd rather dip, I don't have a bottle handy. Would 50/50 RO/H2O2 be fine? How long should the frag be dipped?

[jedimasterben]

Yes, when I do 50/50 dips (I use saltwater, though, not fresh), I get good results from just a couple of minutes exposure. First, though, I remove as much as I can manually with my fingertips.

[Halo_003]

Sounds good I'll try that in a few and report back.

[brandon429]

also remember that dipping exposes polyps that could otherwise be kept free of it if we use a wet q tip or eyedropper to specifically place the drop, its just a nice way of concentrating the dose. the threads show dips work as well since most corals tolerate all kinds of dips just fine. On my acans that had some bryopsis around the skeletal border, I simply q tipped the bad areas w 35% and it went away.

[PorkchopExpress]

I'm fairly certain these pests types can be beaten. I do understand the zooxanthelle within our corals are a kind of dinos as well but from my understanding, peroxide does kill the dinos that are free floating in the water column. So there are slight differences. Also, the pest dinos do seem to react much more severely to complete darkness compared to the dinos in our corals. A few days of lights does work in inhibiting their growth and their blooms but does not kill them, especially if they are of the variety that form cysts. They can survive darkness for months. But if you attack these using several methods all at once, I am confident they can be beaten or at the very least severely hurt for a while. I have read success stories of people having been dino free as well. I think the longest I read was for 2 years and this is with keeping up with maintenance. Are they truly in fact "dino free"? Probably not, they are probably still there but they are no longer blooming.

 

I've also read that they are seasonal and tend to bloom in the Spring. I don't know the truth to that but I started getting mine mid-Summer.

I think my next course of action after my sps heal a bit and are nice and healthy is going to be a big one:

 

- remove much of my dsb

- lights out for 3 days, 1 day actinics only and small feeding, 3 days, 1 day actinics only and feeding, 3 more days

- dose peroxide daily at 2ml/10gal

- dose AquaVitro 8.4 every morning

- no water changes

 

I've also just bought some DinoXal. I think this is snake oil, much like Ultra Algae X was for me. But I'm going to try this anyway.

[PorkchopExpress]

Personally, my main concern is getting them to a level where they are not attacking my corals. At this point, that is all they are doing. They hang out on corals with exposed skeleton, bleached areas, dead or dying parts, etc. not allowing that coral to heal. I've already lost a beautiful golden hammer coral because they found exposed skeleton and irritated the hell out of it until it receded and receded. If they just stuck to the glass or the rocks like other algaes, I'd be fine with it.

[jedimasterben]

All I can say is good luck, expect them to bloom again in the future despite your best efforts. The only options for eradication are exposure to acid or to a salinity change greater than 20ppt.

 

 

 

Those pictures were taken several months after having last seen them bloom. Enjoy your tank while they're gone if you can beat them back.

[PorkchopExpress]

How are you doing with yours? It appears that you either have just learned to live with them or just gave up entirely? Or did you do the acid bath or fresh water dip?

[jedimasterben]

Both with no results, as corals and anemones can house them inside their tissues/stomachs/etc.

 

To fix the issue permanently, I'd need to throw out all living corals and fish, acid wash all rock, freshwater soak all sand and equipment and start completely over. Some of my livestock has been with me about three years now and that's something hard to just throw away.

[brandon429]

And Ben just to add to that, im not even sure that would help. we source these tanks from infected sources, its more important to develop an action plan even though I know this is easier said from a non challenged dino tank. Id be every bit as mad, I remember your battles from previously and it stinks to not have a better outcome. acknowledged.

 

I cant see that kind of start over as any kind of effective since we'll buy things that bring it back in, predictively. That shot of the fish slime importing it makes me think lost cause. if we use LFS in any way known to man, get ready for the std's

 

 

also, if i had a large tank Id have a pond uv sterilizer on it. not a reef tank, a ten thousand gallon pond uv. detract as we will, but thats a powerful setup, Ive used it before on large planted tanks to amazing success, and its indicated in any water transitory phase invader. Pond, not tank sterilizer is a heck of a bet w dinos as a combined approach imo

 

 

*green hair algae w grow in any reef tank even when its been obliterated via P, phospate removal, ats'ing or anything else, just like dinos. I know they are move invasive potentially, but you can see some of the thrashed tanks we worked off GHA infestations on a potential reinfestation, and people are kinda just happy to have a clean tank back. i try not to oversell the method.

[PorkchopExpress]

I had no issues with dinos for 2 years until I brought it in a few months ago from someone else's infected tank. At the time when I saw it in his tank I never even heard of dinos and I just thought it was some cyano or diatoms. It doesn't mean I never had them even before then but perhaps not this particular strain or they never bloomed until the perfect conditions. And I've noticed a lot more people are coming out with the same issues recently. I have a hunch it is due to all the carbon dosing people are now doing. It is throwing some things off balance and with more people getting them, they infect other people's tanks. The infected water coupled to my vinegar dosing and ULNS water is probably what kicked off the bloom. That is my best guess considering 2 years ago I was a total noob with no husbandry skills adding things to my tank left and right with no qt, no water changes, tap water etc and no dinos. Now that I have GFO, carbon dosing, RODI water, testing every other day, with no nitrates or phophates or silicates I all of a sudden get them...

[jedimasterben]

It takes only a single dinocyst to be the start of a bloom if conditions are favorable.

 

The toxic species of dinoflagellates so far all seem to be carbon limited - that doesn't mean that they'll always bloom in tanks that carbon dose, as it would still require their presence. Some dinos prefer ULNS, some do not. They are, though, typically easily outcompeted for nutrients by higher lifeforms, but this is not always the case. So if peroxide is used, this can actually hamper algal growth and allow the dinos to regrow more freely.

 

Peroxide directly kills free-swimming dinoflagellates of pretty much all species, but it doesn't have much effect (if any) on dinocysts for the species that take part in that, as the concentration does not induce the salinity change required to burst the cyst.

 

Either way, peroxide is in no way a 'cure' for dinoflagellates, and unless you get 100% of them to pass through the UV filter (which won't happen) and the kill rate is 100% on the first pass (which won't happen, even on properly sized setups), then they'll still be a problem. It's really shitty, but it's the reality of this particular subset of pests. People who get 'lucky' enough to get them and have them bloom must either destroy what they've built up to that point or just deal with them and hope that conditions become unfavorable.

[tibbsy07]

I mentioned this before in Polarcollision's 24g thread - usually a treatment occurs with a number of other better husbandry techniques. Unless the only variable that changed was the addition of a treatment, then you can't definitively say that treatment was the cure.

 

Dinos are a brute to get rid of. Just because you had them in 1 tank, transferred some corals, and didn't get them in the transfer tank doesn't mean you "beat them." It means you got lucky in that it is likely the dinos were not attached to the coral or frag. Maybe the new tank isn't a good environment for them. If peroxide helped get rid of your dinos, that is marvelous. But the range of dinoflagellates is vast. Not all are created equal - similar to bacteria, where not all antibiotics kill all bacteria, dinos are similar. They have evolved to adapt to many situations. It is not helpful to say peroxide absolutely CAN'T work nor is it helpful to say it absolutely CAN.

 

In order to treat your tank, you'd have to know what the dinos are, and what they are susceptible to.

 

tl;dr anecdotal evidence is useless. Unless you have actual data, qualitative AND quantitative, with statistical analyses you can't actually make any claim other than luck, good or bad.