Hydrogen Peroxide and Dinoflagellates

[jlscrug]

Hi all,

 

Just wanted to share a recent experience.  I bought a frag from a local, dipped in Coral Rx before I added to my DT, and came home to a beginning dinoflagellate outbreak about 2 days later (yes, it was dinos...brown string with bubbles that you could almost watch grow when the lights were on).  I panicked because I am OCD about my system and it was spotless...as in zero nuisance algae or other pests.  

 

After a lot of reading and recommendations, I decided to do the 3% hydrogen peroxide dosing.  I had been running lights for almost 12 hours so I drastically cut that to about 2 hours a day...basically, long enough for my tail spot goby to try to find enough to eat.  After cutting the lights, I seriously didn't have enough diatoms to feed the fish so it started eating my pods, which is not what one wants when trying to battle a dino outbreak because pods eat the dinos.  I ended up having to feed the tail spot.  I also read the recommendation to not do water changes during an out break...after I did a water change and saw the dinos get worse the following day.  I started feeding my LPS a little heavier (also read this should be done to combat a dino outbreak because it feeds the organisms that compete with the dinos).  

 

Im going to estimate my system (IM 30L) to be about 26 actual gallons.  For the first 2 days I dosed .1 mL per gallon (NOT 1 mL per gallon) which ended up being 2.6 mL total.  It kept everything in check.  I noticed when I would turn the lights on, there would be no dinos present but after the lights had been on a bit, I could start seeing them reappear and by the end of the abbreviated light period, they were growing in several places.  Two other things I noticed was that my water looked SUPER clear and that my zoas and sympodium would instantly close up when I added it.  I have several pieces of LPS (acans, chalices, and a duncan), two SPS pieces (birdsnest and lepto), zoas, mushrooms, pipe organ, and sympodium.  The only things that seemed to be aware that I was adding it were the zoas.

 

On day 3 I upped the dose to 4 mL total and added this does twice that day (once in the morning and once in the evening).  On days 4-7 I upped it again to adding this 4 mL dose 3-4 times a day.  Again, nothing seemed to notice but the zoas and sympodium...possibly the pipe organ as well, but everything opened back up after about 30 min.  

 

The dinos totally disappeared around day 4-5.  For the past 2 days I have run a modified normal light cycle (I am keeping them on about 6-8 hours) and have seen zero trace of the dinos reappearing.  My tank is SUPER clean and clear now, to the point where I am a little concerned that my snails and stomatellas are going to starve.  To combat this, I may do a water change with some of my well water which I know is a bit high in phosphates, and hopefully that will start a dino bloom.  

 

I will update this if anything changes, but I'm calling this a success story at this point.  I will also be dipping future incoming frags in not only Coral Rx, but also a 50/50 mix of peroxide and tank water.  

[brandon429]

hey that is great info, linked to the p threads both here and at R2R to add to the catalog. Its been awhile since we've had peroxide updates, alternate dosers are hitting the market that seem to work well for the same invaders. Thanks for the input though our threads were running a bit slow nowadays

[Kyl]

H2O2 dented my dino problems, but they would come back almost instantly after stopping. I even did the three day black-out, and the dinos kept coming back. Vibrant managed to solve my problem, but good to see you had success with peroxide.

 

In terms of dipping frags, be careful with some SPS and especially chalices. I did my chalice frags and two acro sticks in a 4:1 water:h2o2 dip briefly and they still haven't recovered colour wise 3 months later.