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How to fight dino, again... (1 Viewer)

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I figured I would weigh in on my recent (ongoing) battle against dinos in my 10 gal.

About 6 weeks ago I noticed ich on my Lubbock wrasse and immediateltvpulled it and my clown into quarantine and started treatment, deciding to run the display fallow for 76 days. Of rouse, the following week I had to travel to Africa for three weeks and leave everything in the hands of my wife. Come my return home and I clearly had the start of a Dino love fest.

I was lucky that it must have been reasonably early as the coral was still flourishing (except my style frag that had been engulfed-it had partiallly bleached) and with my wrasse out of this tank, the snails, pods, and little critters were flourishing.

I researched a bunch and immediately arrived at two solution methods: dose h2o2 ( hydrogen peroxide), and increase nutrients since my tank had been fallow, likely triggering it.

I picked up some food grade (joke, but more pure at least) from sprouts and started a dose regimen of 1ml per 10 gal twice a day-this immediately started to abate things, in my opinion it at least put the Dino on its back foot. I also reduced my prime HD to 10% of the scheduled power to help reduce the staying power of the Dino’s.

I then returned to feeding reef roids three times a week, and on opposite days dosed aquavitro fuel to feed the coral, bump the nutrients a bit and in particular the phosphates.

Within a few days I had an immediate improvement, to include some hair algae. It’s been 2.5 weeks and I have a long way to go, but I’ve st least knocked back the Dinos for now. I am keeping up the h2o2 dosing for now, still feed the reef roids, and dosing fuel. I will start to reduce the h2o2 dosing over the next two weeks and do my first water change. Having the fish in quarantine I think has made this easier for me. I haven’t checked my nutrients in 2 weeks as I have been conservative inndosing, but hope to maintain slightly elevated phosphate and nitrate levels as recommended in this thread longer term. The corals are thriving right now, and I am slowly cranking the prime hd back up to make them happier. Photo of a still dirty tank, but to at least show it’s possible! I know I’ll never truly win and always have to key the, at bay, but I’m at least more comfortable with response.

Note the coral is all moved around to try to get them out of the worst dino. They’ll get resettled soon.
 

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Ecamden

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I had the same problem once my no3 and p04 went to 0. Took several months to fix but no I'm good. I fed really heavy to keep nutrients up and it helped but still had issues. Weekly water changes to remove as much as I could as well. I eventually ended up dosing vibrant and after 2 weeks the dinos were gone. You will get a cyano outbreak but mine cleared up in a few days
 
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Matyas

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I had the same problem once my no3 and p04 went to 0. Took several months to fix but no I'm good. I fed really heavy to keep nutrients up and it helped but still had issues. Weekly water changes to remove as much as I could as well. I eventually ended up dosing vibrant and after 2 weeks the dinos were gone. You will get a cyano outbreak but mine cleared up in a few days

Did Vibrant have an effect on your corals?
 

Ecamden

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Not at all. It didn't effect my cheato either. Also didn't have to clean my glass for a few weeks which was nice lol
 

tthouston

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I am not an expert but I would like to throw out something you can think or do now.
1- Check your Lights
2- Check your pumps (current flow)
3- Vacuum your sand at least one for every week (don't let the sand cover your rock, it may appear on the rock has sand)
4- Clean your rock if you can
5- Add more chaeto algae or Phosphate reactor.
6- Think about Salt mix expire date or bad batch?
Hope it helps,
 

frankc

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Let the battle begin! I finally got some stump remover and have the nitrates up to around 5 or so. I'll probably recheck Wednesday and raise it some more. I added a little bit of very thick cyano from my 150 on top of some dinos in the sand - we'll see who wins.

oF3TkLo.jpg


This is a pretty typical scene in the tank - it has truly reached nightmare proportions. I have lost 4 Acro frags, and my rainbow milli is hanging in there but has no polyp extension.

jBDdIbT.jpg
 

reefling

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Let the battle begin! I finally got some stump remover and have the nitrates up to around 5 or so. I'll probably recheck Wednesday and raise it some more. I added a little bit of very thick cyano from my 150 on top of some dinos in the sand - we'll see who wins.

oF3TkLo.jpg


This is a pretty typical scene in the tank - it has truly reached nightmare proportions. I have lost 4 Acro frags, and my rainbow milli is hanging in there but has no polyp extension.

jBDdIbT.jpg
Dose phosphates. That is what messed me up. When I got them detectable, they went way down. Dose at lights out as well. Not early on because you just feed them more.

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reefling

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When green algae started to grow, the dinos started declining and in 3 days they were hardly noticable.

If you want dino x. Hit me up. I ordered it and didn't need it. You can have it for what I paid. I am off tomorrow
b25267658b729b3b6418e0cf2fb8ed77.jpg
107576da09fef93089021afeb0c4bc84.jpg


Sent from my XT1710-02 using Tapatalk
 

Cody

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Let the battle begin! I finally got some stump remover and have the nitrates up to around 5 or so. I'll probably recheck Wednesday and raise it some more. I added a little bit of very thick cyano from my 150 on top of some dinos in the sand - we'll see who wins.

oF3TkLo.jpg


This is a pretty typical scene in the tank - it has truly reached nightmare proportions. I have lost 4 Acro frags, and my rainbow milli is hanging in there but has no polyp extension.

jBDdIbT.jpg
Cyano wins all day. We taking bets?
 

frankc

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When green algae started to grow, the dinos started declining and in 3 days they were hardly noticable.

If you want dino x. Hit me up. I ordered it and didn't need it. You can have it for what I paid. I am off tomorro

Sent from my XT1710-02 using Tapatalk

Thanks, but I will pass on the dino x. I tried Algae X before, which I think is the same thing, and it only sort of worked temporarily and I lost an Acro in the process, so I think I will just try the nitrate route for a while.

The scary thing is there is quite a bit of hair algae in some areas, and the dinos are growing on top of it.

I added some carbon to the system tonight in case these are toxic dinos and that is what is causing the Acro's demise.

I also lost a fire fish and a flasher wrasse in the last couple months - not sure if fish can be sensitive to dinos or if their deaths were unrelated.
 

frankc

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Update - my tank would still win butt-ugly tank of the month if we had such a contest. I got the nitrates to between 5-10, and two or three days later they were back down to 0. That leads me to believe the dinos are consuming them, and continuing to dose would just be feeding them. I'm starting to wonder about the idea of increasing nitrates to fight the dinos, especially since they are growing on top of the hair algae and the bit of cyano I added.

I have tried going in the other direction and dosing Microbacter 7, but that has not helped so far either.

Meanwhile, the Triton test showed that my tin level was 19, which I suspect is the reason for the Acro death. Even my birds nest has lost some tissue. I have been doing water changes and put a couple bags of Cuprisorb in to try to lower the tin. A screw from one of the lights had fallen in the tank and I'm guessing that is where the tin came from. I was also reading an interesting thread on R2R that mentioned part of the process of building a tank involves floating the glass on liquid tin. The glass is supposed to be installed tin-side-out, but this doesn't always happen, so a new tank should be rinsed thoroughly before use, which didn't happen with my tank. So I may have had high tin levels all along and didn't know it, or it may have taken a while to leach out of the glass.
 

RR-MAN

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I battled them for years until I got some larger fish and turned the skimmer off. Yes, it seems counterintuitive, but the only way I found to beat them was to increase nutrients. Of course, they likely will be replaced with other types of algae using that method, but to me anything is better than dinos.

Sorry to hear that Frank-
So do you know why your process is not working this time around?
 

frankc

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Sorry to hear that Frank-
So do you know why your process is not working this time around?

Not really. This is definitely a different variety from the one I had before, so that could be it. And who knows, maybe this species feeds off of tin! ha ha.

I've been thinking of trying a 3-day darkness period to see what affect that would have on the dinos, but I'm a little nervous with some of the corals already very stressed. Then again, maybe they would welcome the rest - I've seen corals that suffered some sort of trauma recover better in lower light.
 

TX_Punisher

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Dino’s live clean water. I’m starting to see that in my tank. I instantly broke out the kits. Yep, n03 down to 2.5 and po4 down to .03. Upped the dosers and stopped the skimmer.
 

Birdman

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im going to try 3 days darkness with dosing refresh for 3 days then dose waste away for 3 days. its not to bad but don't want it to get out of control.
 
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