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Dino infestation (1 Viewer)

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csb123

Senior Member
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Mar 25, 2007
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Location
Vadnais Heights, MN
Well I took care of my byprosis problem.
Now I need to take care of a dinoflagelate infestation. It's been developing over the last few weeks. It's on the rocks and is covering the rear glass. I assume it's part of the growing pains of a relatively new reef. It's 6 months old but the lights have been running for only 2 months.

Tank parameters are:
pH 8.2
Alk 8.0
Calcium 210
Nitrate <1
Phosphate 0.01
Magnesium 1400
SG 1.026

Tank specs include:
Total gallons ~400 including 60 gallon SSB refugium
DIY filter socks
Oversized protein skimmer
Calcium reactor
GFO reactor
Carbon reactor
Vertex biopellets
HS reefer salt with 20% water change over a month
T5 + Kessil LED lights

What steps should I take to deal with the brown, bubbly snot?

Your experience and input is greatly appreciated!

Sean
 
I have dealt with Dinos in the past.. tried the lights out method, tried H2o2, which seemed to help but it also hurt my corals and never solved my problem.

What so far has resolved my issue was removing the sandbed all together, Dosing Zeobak, MB7, Dr. Tims one and only. for MY particular issue (i dont know if it will help you any or if you will just waste money on bottled bacterias) was a lack of biodiversity. i started teh tank with dry rock and didnt add any live rock to seed it. Then shortly after the fall frag swap last year BAM. Dinos.

Good luck, its a pain in the ass. One other method people have had some success using is letting the tank get dirty, feed more often, stop waterchanges (still skim heavy) as dinos apperently do not like nitrates.

Take all of this with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila though, just what i read from the internet and have tried myself.
 
For mine, a combo of UV, peroxide, phytofeast, mild skimming and no water changes (although I siphoned out all the dinos I could see) eventually helped, however my acros and montis took a big hit.
 
Dinos are getting more and more common in the hobby. Esp. for new tanks. Everyone who has had to deal with Dinos has their own method of tackling it...

For me, I did a multi-prong approach for Dinos

  • Fauna Marin Algae X
  • No Water Changes
  • Lights Off
  • Heavy Skimming
  • Manual Removal with Filter sock changes


Fauna Marin Algae X (aka Dino X) has worked very well for me for Dino. Had to do 2 of the recommended treatments. First one took care of almost 80% of the dinos, and 2nd took care of the stragglers.
Multiple types of Dinos and Algae-X works on a couple of the common types, and not all. Do make sure you follow its instructions very well. Dinoflagellates is a zooxanthellae, and Algae-X goes after zooxanthellae. If overdosed, it will killoff zooxanthellae in your corals and you will end up with bleached corals.

No Water Changes aka Dirty method. Folks say Dinos don't like nitrates. IMO more than the nitrates thing, Dinos feed on trace elements. With stopping water changes, trace elements (i cant say which ones) get used up and with lack of trace elements, dino die off

Lights Off - I did turn off lights on my aquarium for 3 days. Honestly don't know if that helped at all or not but i was trying all other crap under the sun to fight dinos, so might as well try this.

Heavy Skimming - With Algae-X killing the dinos,there has to be a way to take it out of my system, thats where heavy wet skimming came into play

Manual Removal with Filter sock changes - I also plucked off as much of the dinos as i could, and changed filter socks more often to get dead dinos out of the system. You can also siphion via a hose, with the other end directly in a filter sock, and then remove the filter sock.
 
cheezybuda said:
For mine, a combo of UV, peroxide, phytofeast, mild skimming and no water changes (although I siphoned out all the dinos I could see) eventually helped, however my acros and montis took a big hit.
Click to expand...
No matter the method you go with, I highly recommend using a good amount of carbon to combat the toxin release.
 
Reef Central has a thread with over 100 pages full of information and treatments of dinoflagellates. It should be fairly easy to find with google, if you have the time and patience, i HIGHLY reccomend reading through it (or as much as your brain can handle, i could only do about 15 pages a day or so before my head was ready to explode)

As others have said, there are many species of dino's (about 3,000 if i recall correctly) and some are resistant to damn near everything and others go away after 3 days lights out. Microscope is the only way to identify what species you have and its a generalization at best.

I personally was too afraid to dose DinoX in my tank. Heard a lot of horror stories (follow the instructions EXACTLY. If you estimate your water volume wrong it WILL kill corals)

Depending on what you have in the tank and how large it is it is possible restarting would be easier than fighting them. It took me 4 months and about $600 in coral before i started even making headway. (to some thats not a lot but to me thats a pretty decent amount of loss) and i almost quit. If you can move your corals to a holding tank or a QT tank of sorts while you treat the tank with DinoX would be my reccomendation

Also, keep an eye on your ALK levels, my particular species of dinos wreaked havoc on my ph and alk causing a lot of death that could have been avoided i think.
 
Interestingly, it seems to be receding over the last few days. I have been reading that reefcentral thread. As usual, when there a so many treatment options, none of them are particularly reliable or free of side effects.
 
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