Rip cleaning my 20 long

[Jessereef]

Ive got a bad case of dinoflaggelates. Amphidium to be exact. Now ive tried everything to get rid of it. I can syphon it out all day and 2 hrs later its back.  Id rather not use any chemicals at all its only a 20g.

Tank is 8 months old.

 

5 day blackouts

No water changes for a month

Upping the nutrients

Water changes

Decreasing the lighting 

Increasing the feeding

 

Nothing is working. I use ro/di water only. TdS is 0. 

Ive been reading about rip cleaning. I want to say the user is Brandon429 that swears by this. Has anyone used this method and got rid of dinos for good? Is there any examples of it working on this forum? 

[Frag Factory]

https://www.ultimatereef.net/threads/esoxs-guide-to-getting-rid-of-nuisance-dinos-and-cyano.886819

 

This is the best guide I've seen to tackling Dinos. It's chemical free and just uses biology against the dinos themselves.

[paulsz]

4 hours ago, Jessereef said:

No water changes for a month

Upping the nutrients

not sure what rip cleaning is but these two things you mentioned are what helped me with amphidinium. Is it small cell or large cell amphidinium?

 

No water changes period. Not once a month. Just don't do any. If you need to replenish alkalinity, calcium or magnesium, dose it. Otherwise, no need for water changes at the moment. 

Get the nitrates to 10+ and phosphates to 0.1+. If phosphates are 0.25, great. Keep the lights on a regular schedule (8-10 hours with the ramp up and down). Let the algae grow. Don't touch it.. It'll take a few weeks.... by the 4th week, i was getting 1-2" hair algae strands all over the rock. That's what kicked the amphidinium out. afte rlike 6 or 8 weeks, that's when i added snails and picked the algae off. And the dinos afer that were so minimal.  

 

What are your nitrate and phopshate levels atm? 

[Jessereef]

Sorry for the long delay, looks like both nitrates and phosphates are 0. Ive got a 5w uv running but it doesnt seem to do anything at all. Ive been syphoning the dinos out through socks, but they just keep coming. Should i take my filter offline? Im running just chemipure blue and filter floss. Some corals are taking a hit, my pom pom xenia and palau nepthea are looking horrible. 

My tank is 20lbs of dry rock, and 3lbs of live. 

[seabass]

You need a good low range phosphate test kit to monitor phosphate.  I recommend a Hanna ULR Phosphate Checker.  Although the bloom is obviously currently taking up your nutrients.

 

Did you ever rip clean this tank?  It's been awhile since Brandon has posted over here, so I'm not 100% sure what all his rip cleaning method entails today, or if he has modified it for dinos.  I know he has used tap water to rinse clean the sand bed (freshwater is actually very effective at killing the local dinos).

 

Dinos can be difficult to get rid of.  Some people believe that all of our tanks have them, but it's just when their populations bloom that we say that our tanks are infested with them.

 

Probably the most commonly accepted method is to quit water changes, raise phosphate to 0.10 ppm, and introduce competition (pods fed by dosing phyto).  UV is effective with some strains, and less effective on others.

 

It's hard to get rid of dinos via cleaning.  But I wouldn't assume that it's absolutely impossible.  Popular dino treatments usually start out with at least a three day total blackout (which weakens the hold, but won't get rid of dinos).  I'd probably add the blackout to whatever method I finally decided on.

 

Then, after you get rid of them, I might try to maintain phosphate levels at 0.05 ppm, while working on adding and supporting competition.  Just a disclaimer, the only time that I battled dinos, I ended up breaking down that tank (although that was before we knew as much about it as we do today).

[Frag Factory]

1. Remove as many as you can manually, siphon them out with airline, clean the gravel, turkey baste the rocks and use mechanical filtration and carbon. Bubble scrubbing works too, do this over several days until you're confident you can't remove anymore.

2. As soon as this is done and you have removed as many as you can black out for 3 days, this will knock any left over onto their knees and make them weak.

3. Add phyto and lots of copepods to compete with the dinos as soon as the blackout is over

4. Keep dosing phyto, both the PO4 and NO3 in it's water will help fuel other algae species to compete against the dinos as well as help directly

 

You need to do more than just clean things, dinos are a sign of biological imbalance. Your tank is a mini ecosystem, this new trend by reefers of using dry rock and starting sterile is likely causing this issue. Focus on increasing diversity (add a piece of LR if you can find some) and even look at dosing products like prodibio, ATM colony, Dr Tims to increase bacteria diversity. Even just adding snails will help, their shells can harbour life fairly well.

[Jessereef]

Yep when i had my old reef tank about 8 years ago, i had real live rock and sand and the tank thrived until i traded it for a ps4 and like 20 games. I had a bunch of dry rock in my storage and decided out of nowhere to fire a tank back up after a long break.  Never again will i bother with dry rock. I dont think i heard of/seen dinos back then when there wasnt much dry rock at all. 

[mcarroll]

18 hours ago, Jessereef said:

Sorry for the long delay, looks like both nitrates and phosphates are 0. Ive got a 5w uv running but it doesnt seem to do anything at all. Ive been syphoning the dinos out through socks, but they just keep coming. Should i take my filter offline? Im running just chemipure blue and filter floss. Some corals are taking a hit, my pom pom xenia and palau nepthea are looking horrible. 

My tank is 20lbs of dry rock, and 3lbs of live. 

I'm biased, but here's my best guide: Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

 

Start reading there to get yourself on track....understanding what's really happening will help a lot.

 

Importantly, make sure that what you have is really dino's.  

 

A "shake test" will do, but if possible get your sample ID'd at the microscope level.  If you don't have one, a toy microscope is all it takes....$10+.  $50+ for a decent basic REAL scope.  Doesn't have to be 1200x.  Even 400x will do.

 

UV may help if you can get your basics in-line.  How long has the current UV bulb been in use?

 

You should stop doing all "extras" that you're currently doing to lower or remove nutrients from the system....at most you should be running a protein skimmer and some PLAIN activated carbon (1/4 portion, changed weekly) to prevent toxins from the dino's building up in the water.

 

Your filter sock would have to be around 10µ or less to be very effective....5µ or 1µ mesh would be the most ideal.  A traditional 100-400µ sock won't be worth using in most cases...only thick glops of dino's will be caught....no free cells at all.

 

Your whole system is deprived of nutrients right now, based on your nitrate and phosphate results.  Phosphates in particular being zero is very bad.

 

PO4 at zero is the main reason that your corals are ailing AND one of the main reasons that the dino's are blooming.

 

So I'll ditto the right part now:

On 1/23/2021 at 7:44 PM, paulsz said:

Get the nitrates to 10+ and phosphates to 0.1+. If phosphates are 0.25, great. Keep the lights on a regular schedule (8-10 hours with the ramp up and down). Let the algae grow. Don't touch it.. It'll take a few weeks.

Ditto. 😉

 

Post back when you've had a chance to look over the main post of that thread I linked at the top....try to at least skim the linked material as well.

 

If you can post a pic as well that may be helpful.

[nanoreeFan]

On 1/23/2021 at 6:44 PM, paulsz said:

not sure what rip cleaning is......

Me neither, is there a DIY guide to it? 

second....... folks sugest " Add phyto and lots of copepods" but but will a UV filter kill photo and Copepods? Thanks for the help. 

[seabass]

Brandon429 has written about it in several places.  However, it isn't necessarily universally accepted (nor always practical) as a best practice.  Still, I wouldn't discount it entirely.

IDK, maybe best reserved for pico sized tanks.

[Tamberav]

On 2/4/2021 at 7:42 PM, Jessereef said:

Yep when i had my old reef tank about 8 years ago, i had real live rock and sand and the tank thrived until i traded it for a ps4 and like 20 games. I had a bunch of dry rock in my storage and decided out of nowhere to fire a tank back up after a long break.  Never again will i bother with dry rock. I dont think i heard of/seen dinos back then when there wasnt much dry rock at all. 

Thissss... 

 

If you ever want to start over, KPA live rock is excellent.

 

I rip clean sand beds now and again although not for dinos. If your sandbed is cloudy gross then I would do it but you need to bring nutrients up and get something else growing to out compete the space for Dino.