Bacteria in a bottle?
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CoralNerd
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If you have dinoflagellates, look up Elegant Corals LLC micro bubbles. Go to their Facebook area and talk to Cruz. I guarantee he will get rid of them for you. I had dinoflagellates in my tank for five months and his method cured it in two weeks. It would of possibly been one week but I fought the method at first. Bac7 Dr. Tim's One & Only. ..and many more are good products.
To me this is a question in two parts.
I used the silly BioSpira to cycle my current tank, as I saw no downside. The downside is that I totally missed the cycle. It happened so fast, it passed before I started testing for it. That stuff works.
As for dinos, I just beat them last week in my invert tank. It seriously took 10 days of blackout with hydrogen peroxide dosing at 2 drops per gallon per day to kick it. In my main tank, skipping a water change and a 4 day blackout with peroxide worked, but dinos suck!
I wish you luck.
I used the silly BioSpira to cycle my current tank, as I saw no downside. The downside is that I totally missed the cycle. It happened so fast, it passed before I started testing for it. That stuff works.
As for dinos, I just beat them last week in my invert tank. It seriously took 10 days of blackout with hydrogen peroxide dosing at 2 drops per gallon per day to kick it. In my main tank, skipping a water change and a 4 day blackout with peroxide worked, but dinos suck!
I wish you luck.
damon.strange.5
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I've used Dr. Tims one and only on 2 separate occasions and added fish immediately. Though this may be frowned upon I took the advice of a local guy and I never had any ill effects. That was a few years ago and my setup now was done the old fashion way.
imustbenuts
Active Member
I feel your pain @Dirtrider225 . I have been battling the same strain for 6 months at least. This strain is a beoch. After numerous blackouts, H202 treatments, Dinoxal treatment, I've had no success. After stopping the treatments i had a GHA bloom that turned into a full blown Dino bloom that killed the GHA. I decided to let it do whatever it wanted (I was feeling like I would be tearing it down soon). The Dino chains or streamers were 12" long in places with the highest flow. They completely covered the entire sand bed, all rocks, all corals, and even the entire back glass. I was ready to pull the plug until I started noticing they were starting to dissipate. I had a bottle of Dr Tim's Eco-balance and waste away in the closet. So, I decided to start dosing them. I have dosed more Eco-balance than waste-away because I had more Eco-balance available. Within 2 weeks all of the visible Dino's were gone. I was however over dosing my tank. I have an 80g and was dosing 100ml to 200ml per day. As soon as I cut back on the dosing they're starting to show up in the sand again. I don't wish this strain on anyone. This isn't even at its worst.
Keepswiming
Well-Known Member
The thread is such an interesting read! I hope that more reefers comment with their experiences so we all can learn from them. I am currently battling cyano and dinos but do not know which route i want to take for the love of my SPS. I started some zeo products (biomate, cyano clean, coral snow) and i had a couple pieces RTN by the next day. I turned off my GFO/GAC and had another piece RTN the following day. I do not know if these pieces RTNed for the same reason or not. At this point I am dosing Dr. Tims waste away and MB7 and i hope that helps. I might try the blackout and Hydrogen Peroxide but i am not sure my sps can handle any more stress. BTW, I started with live rock that I killed off to make sure I didn't introduce and pests into the new system (seems like a common factor in most of these cases). Any ideas?
Frowned upon?? Even Dr. Tim's doesn't condone adding fish "the same day". Here's his guide: http://www.drtimsaquatics.com/resources/how-to-start . According to him, Dr. Tim's can reduce the cycling time from 30 days to 5-7 days. Sure, your fish may have done fine. They just weathered through the cycle and the dangerous ammonia and nitrite spikes. But not a good advice to give to fellow reefers who want a stable tank and the safest environment for their livestock.
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Man, I feel your pain! I've been battling this exact same strain since May of 2015. What you have, my friend, is ostreopsis siamensis, and it's a nasty strain, resistant to a lot of the treatment methods used to eradicate most other types of dinos. I've been down your same road - blackouts, h2o2, high pH, dino-x, carbon dosing, copepods, MB7 and various combinations of those. Of all of them, the 72-hour blackout combined with double the recommended dose of h2o2 combined with elevated pH with kalkwasser came closest to killing off the infestation. For 5 days I couldn't detect a single dino under the microscope...but then, there they were again, reproducing, forming little bubbles, and eventually finding the weak tips of my SPS after only 2 weeks. Frustrating doesn't even describe the problem!
Then I tried the Cruz method that @CoralNerd described above. It incorporates Dr. Tim's Waste-Away and it's an all-natural method utilizing nano bubbles. Here is the sheet to help you do it:
Some things it doesn't stipulate though: you need to have your air pump drawing in fresh air from outside. I didn't do this until Day 4 and my dinos didn't budge until I used fresh outside air. Make sure you use an airstone that creates very small bubbles. Most prefer Lee's wooden airstones. It also doesn't say this, but talking to Cruz, he says that it's a nutrient purge and so you shouldn't feed your fish for a week. I could only make it to day 5 before I just couldn't take it anymore. If you can, run your skimmer air intake line outside as well. Like you, my skimmer is way overrated for my tank size, but it's important for the tank to reduce CO2. If that big skimmer is just pulling air from inside the house it's just putting that CO2 laden air right back into the system.
The great thing about the system is that you don't have to cut out your lights at all, so you can see those dinos run away! I was quite skeptical until I gave it an honest attempt, and even though the dinos aren't 100% eradicated, I've never been this close, and I've never seen anything work to keep them from coming back. If nothing else, this system will do that. Don't give up!
Then I tried the Cruz method that @CoralNerd described above. It incorporates Dr. Tim's Waste-Away and it's an all-natural method utilizing nano bubbles. Here is the sheet to help you do it:
Some things it doesn't stipulate though: you need to have your air pump drawing in fresh air from outside. I didn't do this until Day 4 and my dinos didn't budge until I used fresh outside air. Make sure you use an airstone that creates very small bubbles. Most prefer Lee's wooden airstones. It also doesn't say this, but talking to Cruz, he says that it's a nutrient purge and so you shouldn't feed your fish for a week. I could only make it to day 5 before I just couldn't take it anymore. If you can, run your skimmer air intake line outside as well. Like you, my skimmer is way overrated for my tank size, but it's important for the tank to reduce CO2. If that big skimmer is just pulling air from inside the house it's just putting that CO2 laden air right back into the system.
The great thing about the system is that you don't have to cut out your lights at all, so you can see those dinos run away! I was quite skeptical until I gave it an honest attempt, and even though the dinos aren't 100% eradicated, I've never been this close, and I've never seen anything work to keep them from coming back. If nothing else, this system will do that. Don't give up!
damon.strange.5
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The op asked which one the masses would recommend. I gave my input and my story. I didn't by any means tell him this was the right way or the way I did it was gospel just giving my experience with a product.
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Davy Jones
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It is awesome to see everyones responses and thoughts!
Recap lol
Dr. Tims is by far the favorite here for Bacteria in a bottle. I think im gonna get the waste away and one and only and maybe the reef one.
Many people are fighting with dinos way worse than mine, However i will let you guys know my experience with them. I DO NOT CLAIM TO BE AN EXPERT AND CLEARLY I AM NOT DONE WITH THE ISSUE BUT I have had better luck fighting them with nutrients and algae than i had with trying to strip the water of everything. I.e. 4x normal feeding, spot feeding all corals, feeding marine snow, feeding reef energy a&b, NOT doing waterchanges. GHA and Bryopsis have grown but id take that over dinos any day.
As for the bacteria in a bottle i am n ot cycling a tank, I already have fish and coral. At the end of the post ill show what my tank looked like during the worst of the dino outbreak and what im dealing with now, which is nearly nothing. I want to add bacteria for more biodiversity. I am also going to Add a LARGE amount of pods to the system. Might even try to get some live rock from someone and toss in as well for more critters.
For those of you suggesting to use the "microbubble Method" Can you please link some bubblers or air stones or whatever it is you guys use to have the desired bubble size and effect? I have read a little into the thread started here a while ago and when i was reading there was a lot of proponents and doubters, I have considered the method however my outbreak is little to none at this point so i dont want to spend a lot of money.
Here is the tank from last night. Sorry for the oversaturation on the photos, my phone either takes them super washed out or super saturarated.
This next photo has a little black/blue/green Cyano as well as bryopsis. (for those of you that dont know cyano and dinoflagellates go hand in hand a lot of times and feed off eachothers by products.)
Turf algea
Hair/Turf algea
Dino Stringer off of RFA
Burnt tips with dinos on the exposed skeleton
Burnt tips with dinos
Burnt tips with dinos
So as you guys can see I dont have an outbreak by any means, I am just trying to put the final nail in the coffin and keep them from growing on the tips of my acros.
Recap lol
Dr. Tims is by far the favorite here for Bacteria in a bottle. I think im gonna get the waste away and one and only and maybe the reef one.
Many people are fighting with dinos way worse than mine, However i will let you guys know my experience with them. I DO NOT CLAIM TO BE AN EXPERT AND CLEARLY I AM NOT DONE WITH THE ISSUE BUT I have had better luck fighting them with nutrients and algae than i had with trying to strip the water of everything. I.e. 4x normal feeding, spot feeding all corals, feeding marine snow, feeding reef energy a&b, NOT doing waterchanges. GHA and Bryopsis have grown but id take that over dinos any day.
As for the bacteria in a bottle i am n ot cycling a tank, I already have fish and coral. At the end of the post ill show what my tank looked like during the worst of the dino outbreak and what im dealing with now, which is nearly nothing. I want to add bacteria for more biodiversity. I am also going to Add a LARGE amount of pods to the system. Might even try to get some live rock from someone and toss in as well for more critters.
For those of you suggesting to use the "microbubble Method" Can you please link some bubblers or air stones or whatever it is you guys use to have the desired bubble size and effect? I have read a little into the thread started here a while ago and when i was reading there was a lot of proponents and doubters, I have considered the method however my outbreak is little to none at this point so i dont want to spend a lot of money.
Here is the tank from last night. Sorry for the oversaturation on the photos, my phone either takes them super washed out or super saturarated.
This next photo has a little black/blue/green Cyano as well as bryopsis. (for those of you that dont know cyano and dinoflagellates go hand in hand a lot of times and feed off eachothers by products.)
Turf algea
Hair/Turf algea
Dino Stringer off of RFA
Burnt tips with dinos on the exposed skeleton
Burnt tips with dinos
Burnt tips with dinos
So as you guys can see I dont have an outbreak by any means, I am just trying to put the final nail in the coffin and keep them from growing on the tips of my acros.
CoralNerd
Valuable Member
Just use Lee's Air Stone. I did use BacM, Dr. Tim's One & Only, Algae-Oust and Bio-Load as the directions call out for. Waste-Away might be better but I had the One & Only already so I used that. Just micro bubbling won't work. Oh yeah I also added miracle mud in the refugium. All these products will cost you some money but it will work. Good luck and reef on.
It's ironic that all the posters who are haven't beat the dinos haven't tried UV. There's a good thread on another forum where just about everyone who used UV in conjunction with other things had success. It's pretty simple. Dinos release into the water column upon darkness and a powerful enough UV will kill them. 100% kill rate.
I saw huge positive results after the first 12 hours and was able to remove the UV after 48.
I saw huge positive results after the first 12 hours and was able to remove the UV after 48.
Keepswiming
Well-Known Member
Does the UV kill beneficial bacteria also? Would you have to keep dosing bacteria to keep the "good guys" population up? What size UV for a 125g ? Or can you post the thread link on here so we can read?
Thanks
Keepswiming
Well-Known Member
Lol, that is part of the problem with finding a way to beat this. What someone says worked for them doesn't work for others and vice versa. I feel like i am hopelessly trying new things to beat the issue, in which most don't actually do anything besides waste my money...
Sorry, I didn't mention it in my post, but I did try UV for several months to no avail. While a lot of dinos make it into the water column overnight, plenty stay attached to coral, substrate, and rock...at least with ostreopsis siamensis. UV may very well work, but you likely also had some other form of irritant to the dinos to completely wipe them out. Copepods and bacteria or large populations of algae can then outcompete the dinos.
I stirred the tank up pretty good and cranked my 2 mp40's to 100% (90g tank). Here's what I did:
How I beat them.
Run the finest filter sock you can get your hands on (clean regularly)
Run as much carbon as you can (the dinos can be toxic)
Run a UV sterilizer, the dinos release into the water column at night
siphon out as much as you can before starting (I probably did a few 20-30% water changes)
I dosed KZ Coral Snow at night as it claims to bind to the dinos
I dosed lanthum cloride to reduce p04
I dosed twice the recommended dosage of phyto plankton to compete with the dinos
The dinos were just about gone in 24 hours. I think my only mistake was not turning the lights out for the 2 days while I was waiting for the UV to arrive.
If you have a few days to kill you can read the horror stories here-http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2307000
How I beat them.
Run the finest filter sock you can get your hands on (clean regularly)
Run as much carbon as you can (the dinos can be toxic)
Run a UV sterilizer, the dinos release into the water column at night
siphon out as much as you can before starting (I probably did a few 20-30% water changes)
I dosed KZ Coral Snow at night as it claims to bind to the dinos
I dosed lanthum cloride to reduce p04
I dosed twice the recommended dosage of phyto plankton to compete with the dinos
The dinos were just about gone in 24 hours. I think my only mistake was not turning the lights out for the 2 days while I was waiting for the UV to arrive.
If you have a few days to kill you can read the horror stories here-http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2307000
Get yourself one of these, it might be the best piece off reef tank equipment Petco sells. For $56 you can't lose and you can take it back if it doesn't work. I let the thing clog up pretty good so the flow is slow, very slow.
http://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcost...power-head-24w
It takes about 5 minutes to install...
http://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcost...power-head-24w
It takes about 5 minutes to install...
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Davy Jones
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UV seems to be hit or miss depending on the species of dino you have, for instance one takes to the water column when lights are out, effectively being zapped by a grossly overpowered low flow rate UV. Another species will actually go deeper into the sandbed when lights are out and feast on your nitrifying bacteria, meaning you can lights out and uv to your hearts content but as long as you have bacteria in the sand then youll have dinos.
Again, i am not dealing with the plauge like some of you are. I do not need to spend $600 on a new UV or do a complete restart. I am just looking to add as many different micro critters to the tank as fast as possible. In MY case and likely MY case only, letting the nutrients rise in the tank has a better effect on the dinos, when this happens i also see more micro life (astrea snails, brittle stars, copepods, amphipods, tiny snails, snails without shells (got 2 of them that are about a half inch long.. any idea what they might be?)
My THEORY is that creating more of a balance and having different things will keep the dinos from being able to do more than just survive. I know there is no way to 100% get rid of them. Like Ich they can encyst and live in the sand until the enviroment is right for them, however unlike ich, they can do this for many many many more years than you or i will be alive and reefing.
Again, i am not dealing with the plauge like some of you are. I do not need to spend $600 on a new UV or do a complete restart. I am just looking to add as many different micro critters to the tank as fast as possible. In MY case and likely MY case only, letting the nutrients rise in the tank has a better effect on the dinos, when this happens i also see more micro life (astrea snails, brittle stars, copepods, amphipods, tiny snails, snails without shells (got 2 of them that are about a half inch long.. any idea what they might be?)
My THEORY is that creating more of a balance and having different things will keep the dinos from being able to do more than just survive. I know there is no way to 100% get rid of them. Like Ich they can encyst and live in the sand until the enviroment is right for them, however unlike ich, they can do this for many many many more years than you or i will be alive and reefing.
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