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Need Help with Dinoflagellates


Zach W

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So I have been dealing with dino's for several weeks now and want to start a proper course of action to get rid of them. Originally I thought they were diatoms because my tank is still young (6 mo) but they are stringy and rust colored with air bubbles which seems to be the tell tale sign of dino's. My Tank info and parameters are as follows:

Tank: IM Fusion 20                                                   

Light: NanoBox Duo plus M

Pumps: Sicce 1.5 & Aqamai KPS

Filtration: Filter Floss & Chemipure Elite

Salinity: 1.025 (refractometer)

Alkalinity: 8.1 (Hanna)

Phos: 0.04 (Hanna)

Calcium: 420 (Aquaforest)

Nitrate: ~10 (Redsea)

Nitrite: 0 (Redsea)

Ammonia: 0 (Redsea)

pH: 8.2 (Redsea)

 

I have been religious with 2-3 gallon weekly water changes thinking this was a different type of algae but now that I am realizing that it is most likely dino's, it seems as though I have been shooting myself in the foot. Why does fresh saltwater promote the growth of dino's? I do not currently run a skimmer but yesterday I ordered the reefglass skimmer and plan to get that running asap. I also will be dedicating one of the chambers in the back to a refugium to try and out compete the dino's (also ordered the light yesterday). From what I read dino's seem to spring up when there is a gap in beneficial bacteria in the tank as well. I am thinking I have two options to best go about this.

 

1.) Stop water changes, dose more beneficial bacteria (Biospira), continue to run chemipure, run skimmer and get refugium running. introduce more pods which feed on dino's. Be patient and let nature run its course

 

2.) 72 hour blackout followed by DinoX treatment.

 

How have those out there conquered dino's and what would your recommendations be?

 

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Do research on 3 % peroxide dosing.

 

It's worked for many of us.

 

I had bryopsis and stringy algae(looked like dino's) in my 5g.

 

I started dosing peroxide and the algae all went away.

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Household peroxide works pretty well. Beneficial bacteria and algaes will also get burned up by peroxide. Corals, fish and other inverts can also be damaged by it so it's use really should be tightly managed.  I'm more of a fan of spot injection with peroxide on nuisance algae. Shoo away any fish or curious inverts when you use it.

 

To cure it long term, more frequent water changes with RO/DI filtered water and good sea salts will help. Weekly or bi-weekly depending on your tank size (smaller the tank, the more frequent the changes). Raising magnesium levels in your water to about 1600ppm (just slightly elevated) also helps arrest dinoflagellates. Competition for nutrients is also beneficial for control of all nuisance algae including dinos, so consider growing macroalgae in your tank somewhere (sump, display, etc.) and/or consider feeding your corals with small doses of live phytoplankton once or twice a week. Copepods eat it. Trochus snails and tiger conchs also eat it. 

 

Last, consider your light schedule. Cutting your lights back can also help control it. How best to do that depends on your light rig, but for my LED's, i'm running eight hours of blue and four hours of daylight and it works pretty well. 

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2 hours ago, Clown79 said:

Do research on 3 % peroxide dosing.

 

It's worked for many of us.

 

I had bryopsis and stringy algae(looked like dino's) in my 5g.

 

I started dosing peroxide and the algae all went away.

 

1 hour ago, OPtasia said:

Household peroxide works pretty well. Beneficial bacteria and algaes will also get burned up by peroxide. Corals, fish and other inverts can also be damaged by it so it's use really should be tightly managed.  I'm more of a fan of spot injection with peroxide on nuisance algae. Shoo away any fish or curious inverts when you use it.

 

To cure it long term, more frequent water changes with RO/DI filtered water and good sea salts will help. Weekly or bi-weekly depending on your tank size (smaller the tank, the more frequent the changes). Raising magnesium levels in your water to about 1600ppm (just slightly elevated) also helps arrest dinoflagellates. Competition for nutrients is also beneficial for control of all nuisance algae including dinos, so consider growing macroalgae in your tank somewhere (sump, display, etc.) and/or consider feeding your corals with small doses of live phytoplankton once or twice a week. Copepods eat it. Trochus snails and tiger conchs also eat it. 

 

Last, consider your light schedule. Cutting your lights back can also help control it. How best to do that depends on your light rig, but for my LED's, i'm running eight hours of blue and four hours of daylight and it works pretty well. 

Thank you for the insight. This is my first foray into battling algae so I am a little bit cautious/nervous about remedies that can harm my livestock be it fish or coral. Someone reached out to me with the recommendation of a product called Vibrant which apparently works on nuisance algae and does not cause harm to any livestock. Do you have any experience with this? I have also read that dino's love fresh saltwater and for that case to cut back or stop water changes for the treatment period, but I am seeing the comment to up my water changes. I am just trying to understand the full picture here to get a good sense of how best to proceed. I have been only using distilled water for mixing and top off and use aquaforest salt. 

 

In the meantime I will start growing some chaeto for nutrient competition and dial back my light schedule. I currently have my schedule for 11hrs per day from 9-8 and 5 hours of that whites are on as daylight. I have a protein skimmer on the way and will be running that as soon as it arrives. 

 

@Clown79 what was your peroxide dosing regime? 

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1 hour ago, Zach W said:

 

Thank you for the insight. This is my first foray into battling algae so I am a little bit cautious/nervous about remedies that can harm my livestock be it fish or coral. Someone reached out to me with the recommendation of a product called Vibrant which apparently works on nuisance algae and does not cause harm to any livestock. Do you have any experience with this? I have also read that dino's love fresh saltwater and for that case to cut back or stop water changes for the treatment period, but I am seeing the comment to up my water changes. I am just trying to understand the full picture here to get a good sense of how best to proceed. I have been only using distilled water for mixing and top off and use aquaforest salt. 

 

In the meantime I will start growing some chaeto for nutrient competition and dial back my light schedule. I currently have my schedule for 11hrs per day from 9-8 and 5 hours of that whites are on as daylight. I have a protein skimmer on the way and will be running that as soon as it arrives. 

 

@Clown79 what was your peroxide dosing regime? 

Peroxide is safe as long as it isn't over dosed.

There is a ton of advice online and I recommend it be researched prior to treatment.

 

 

I like spot treatment for gha in small amounts.

 

For dino's ot has to be dosed.

 

1ml per gallon of water(actual gallons)

 

 

I dosed 1.5ml every day for a week in my 5.5g. I went with less than what others used. 

 

 

 

Do lots of research on the various methods of dino treatments before choosing 1.

 

 

 

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